Mini NYE recap

This year we celebrated New Year's Eve with D's family, so it was a night full of my favorite thing: champagne-fueled, animated conversations in a foreign language!

Here are six photos from that night-

Winter waterfall

For the ultimate in creepy beautiful...


Drive to the forest.
Make sure it's good and green...

... the kind of place where an elf or ogre might appear if your back is turned too long.

Wait for dusk to fall heavily upon the land, wiping out the sky.

Orient yourself. Look around for a bridge perhaps straight out of Middle Earth, or an entire galaxy of water plummeting onto rocks of ice.

Then...

Virtual matryoshka haul (and more)

I love the matryoshka (aka Russian nesting doll). Put a matryoshka on anything and I will probably buy it. That's what lead me to a very thorough scouring of the internet last night. Behold, the results!

Well, first behold these fun salt and pepper shakers from a friend.

Stickers. Stamps. Fabric. A chalkboard matryoshka. Post-its. Doesn't even matter that I have neither a Kindle Fire nor a Samsung Galaxy S4 mini nor a child, these two covers (here and here) and nursery art prints are adorable. And holy matryoshka- there are even cookies!

But as everyone knows, you get on the internet to do one quick thing and three hours later, you're still planted in front of the computer. That's how I found loads of other neat stuff on Etsy.

Very cool: the ultimate Ukraine necklace.

I would so get this decal... if I had a car to put it on.

Jewelry for fans of Dostoevsky.

9 new things I tried this fall

1. Making blini for the first time in our (now not so) new apartment.

It's official: wherever one goes, whatever the local ingredients available for toppings are, blinis are still the best snack food ever!

Kharkiv's White New Year

A friend sent these pictures after a heavy snowfall ("сильный снегопад и метель") on December 29th. Looks like Kharkiv was the place to be this/last year for a postcard-worthy holiday photo!

2014 recap

While there were some massive changes this year- like starting in Ukraine, ending in the United States- one thing that didn't change was D's job. A programmer in any country is still a programmer :p I started the year with the goal of sharing a triple-digit number of posts on this blog... and just a few days shy of the New Year, here is #100!


January 2014

Tragedy in Kyiv, while Kharkiv lay quiet under a blanket of snow. D and I took what turned out to be our final trip to Simferopol together. All the winter weather reminded me of a winter spent in Siberia long ago. This post- Blue & Yellow- brought together images I'd been collecting for two years. With the uncertainty of EuroMaidan, the topic of leaving Ukraine came up.


February 2014

This blog hit 100,000 views! Dark things started happening in Kharkiv. On Feb 22nd, the (now former) President of Ukraine fled the country. The next day crowds gathered again in the city's main square. On the homefront I went through some old belongings of D's family and shared 24 pictures of Ukrainians going about their daily lives.


March 2014

It was my birthday and we went to the 4D theater for the first time. The city's zoo issued a plea for help and the community responded. Only spring and temperatures were already up to 64F/17C! Someone got his international passport and we visited an awesome fairy tale park. Meanwhile, the waiting game continued for the nation and the world.


April 2014

Read the newspaper a lot. The MTC Kharkiv International Marathon took place, a flower show came to town, and spring was generally welcomed by all.

Christmas Day

Here's the first thing we saw when arriving at my parents' home for Christmas: