autumn in georgia. kakheti.

and traditionally i will be sharing with you some beautiful moments and pictures from my autumn voyages around georgia.

in autumn my trips are usually limited to kakheti mostly, main reasons being that first of all, kakheti is my second home - i used to spend all my summers there with my grandmother; and secondly, autumn is the season of wine picking and vintage, which i love the most.

my grandparents used to have a beautiful house in the village, where they spent a lot of time when they didn't work in telavi. the name of the village is Artana. we used to go there often when i was little, though i didn't like staying there for the night, because i was so afraid of the big space in the house and numerous rooms with old books and houseware. but it had the most amazing garden with lots of fruit trees and dozens of flowers. i can still feel the taste of apples from that yard: tastier apples i have never tasted anywhere else. my grandparents are long gone, the house is now empty, nobody waters the plants except the rain and occasional workers, whom we pay to clean the garden... but every time i enter it, the fruits are always there; my old chair is standing in the corner and my childhood comes back.

the season of wine making is on - with dozens of cars filled with grapes, ready to be weighed in my uncle's wine factory, the wine routes filled with those who make wine - be it companies or just people who make their own family wine. and i will be sharing some photos from our own vintage in one of the next posts. 

instagram killed it

i was looking through my albums on facebook to find old photos from my trips. and i remembered i have deleted them all. and instagram ate all my albums, all the professional camera photos, all the collection of pictures from the past. now it's all instant without much thinking or sorting.

but i used to love those albums, each for separate event, taken with a canon or nikon, uploaded in high resolution without all those filters... it's time to go back to real photography

season soundtracks

every season has its soundtrack. 

winter songs have jingles on the background and deep voices that warm your heart better than any marshmallow chocolate drink and a chimney. spring soundtracks have bossa nova flow for me. they are so flower-blossom-like and light-rain-like and you walk and almost dance down the street with the melody of spring in your ears. summer songs are full of sea and salty wind. they give you positive emotions and the dance mood. those are the happy tunes, that keep you up all night with the fruit cocktail in you hand and a straw in your hair. 

                       

but with autumn it's different. for some reason the autumn soundtracks are so sentimental. they bring the sadness sometimes, and make the memories come often to your mind. so do the days - that get darker, windier and rainier...

until the season of fir-trees, cinnamon cookies and tangerines is back, these are the songs for you to enjoy and feel sentimental. because it's the right season to. 

ps. special thanks to NS for inspiration and some motivational messages today

                                  

missing the twenties

i rarely regret things in my life, because there is no big use in doing so. i just usually miss things, which i want to return back in my life. 

among such things are my 20 years old age. i know i haven't left my twenties yet, but i can see a big difference between now and back then. 

now i usually get invitations to lunches and dinners, then it used to be the invitations to cinemas and parks. now we quickly text, whatsapp and imessage each other, then we used to call. the landline. for hours. we used to say everything we thought, now we think 10 times before saying, weighing each word, so not to offend anyone and be as diplomatic as possible. now we have so many things to worry about, so many things to plan, we keep the diaries, we schedule meetings, cancel them, reschedule and shake hands with the partners. then we left home in the morning and did everything without any plan or purpose. now we commit, then we didn't. we walked and walked when we didn't have cars. now we do. and we drive and drive. we used to drink everything, now we know the names of favourite wines, cocktails and how they are made. we eat healthy food.. we grew up.

i won't lie, i miss those days. and i miss myself, the person i used to be then. person, with pink sunglasses and pink hair, in cinemas, parks, with telephone talks, hugs and smiles, no worries, with sincerity, walks and millions of plans for the future.

i know i don't have much to regret, and all the great things are still ahead, but it was so much fun being 20!

ilia's birthday photobook

what can you get our child as a present for his 1 year birthday?

when ilia was turning 1 on 13th of June, i was thinking about possible birthday gifts for days and days. and you know, i think i came up with the best decision - to give him his first-year review in pictures in one big 90-pages photobook. you should have already noticed what a crazy collector i am, so i have all his moves and pictures collected during the whole year - the only thing left was to put them all in one book, add stickers and comments to each page - and a photobook with all the memories was ready. i have received it today and can't wait to go back home and show it to my son :)

and i have a plan - to keep making such photobooks every year - that's a great thing to have for my son, who will probably love memories just like his mom, genetically ;)

                                   

shampoo for coloured hair

you may think what a weird title to a post in a mother-baby blog, but today morning one detail  made me smile and i decided to share it with you.

as a child, i have always watched the red shampoo bottles standing in our bathroom. those used to be shampoo bottles of my mom for coloured hair. i never used them, always thinking they were only for older women. i had all kinds of shampoos - first with princesses, then with flowers and all of them were different colours possible - except red.

today looking at my bathroom shelf, filled with red bottles, i realized that i have entered the category of women, who are grown-ups, dye hair and have children of their own, who have their own shampoo bottles with dinosaurs and princesses and never use shampoos in red bottles.