Today is the last week of August, which means it’s the last weekend before September with it’s familiar routine will arrive just before the Autumn leaves start to fall on the ground.

In a beautiful part of leafy Cheshire, where even the tiniest of the apartments are overpriced and small business are buzzing I find myself obsessing over next year’s goals while reflecting on the year gone by.

I liked the idea of moving to Hale before we actually moved in last year as it reminded me of a suburban part of London without the London rush. As we settled in, so have the new routines and experiences began to unfold.

It’s a pleasant uneventfully warm summer evening. Alan is watching a documentary about Blink 182, frankly I am not into Punk Rock so instead decided to mess around on my computer and here I am typing away while reflecting on the last 12 months.

It’s amazing how much can happen in one year. At a personal level, I got engaged, then we got married in New York, we started to properly settle into living in Hale as husband and wife. I love my yoga studio and a little “me time” routine every Saturday morning, then it’s our daily coffee routine, which usually varies between Costa and an Italian Carluccios. People are interesting to observe, you get to observe all kinds of them, from serious coffee drinkers to gangs of new mothers with too young to scream babies in the buggies. Sometimes we head over to the Garden where the owner is hippy and you get a feeling, the food has been spiritually blessed before it came out of the kitchen. We seem to be more drawn to unpretentious boho, perhaps it is in our DNA;)

We also finally gave in and moved our working space studios to a real building (versus spare bedrooms), with windows and doors, it’s a huge studio space in the heart of… well the only street in Hale that is;) This year we also started appearing in the industry events, and hosting more events for our businesses. Alan has translated his book I Am Bastard I Am War into Georgian and we look forward to presenting it to the Georgian audience, next time we are in Tbilisi.

We also completed, finally, the remake of an Ezo – our Tbilisi apartments for the city travellers. It’s looking pretty cool, but we are planning on going back this fall to complete the decoration journey. The journey of renovations have been pretty accidental, exciting and really amazing. I am learning more and more that it’s not just about renovating to make a profit, instead, I have discovered how important and essential it has become to us to present the space in their most authentic way possible, to let the visitors experience the space like a local and let them take away the piece of culture with them when they go back to their homes.

This year I also realised, perhaps more than ever, how to say more NOs to things that does not quite fit our life-style goals and visions, that makes me realise more what I want and what us as a couple want from life. It does not happen without challenges of the change, but it’s also exciting to let the next phazes of the lifestyle evolve.

As I start screabling notes in my diery for the year ahead, it feels important to back off a little from what feels like a busy summer of working. To re-connect to the vision of living the lifestyle we choose rather than something to do by default. It’s so easy to get carried away with different ideas, and habitual routines, but life is constantly teaching me that every now and again it’s a good idea to come off from the computer (says she typing away, I know right?:) and i-screens feel refreshed and only then kick start a new chapter of life-and-style, after all that’s the beauty of getting older and wiser right?:P

I intend to share more in my personal blog about my new experiences, in a way seems rather odd to want to do that through blogging, but I think as more of us continue to live in various countries of the world, physically apart from our friends and families, it’s only natural to want to keep the connection alive through social reality. In the past diaries used to be something personal only your close girlfriends would be allowed to see, but in today’s open society that too has changed, so here I am sharing my thoughts and as my ideas about business, life-style and home-living keeps evolving, I look forward to more inspirations, realisations and of course sharing.

Love, Tamara

x x x