My Birthday

(During my 23rd birthday dinner-party celebration. Silly hats and balloons a requirement)

Yesterday was my 23rd birthday! I already celebrated 2 weeks before by holding a dinner party at my house for 4 of my friends where I made two different variations of tagliatelle pasta for everyone from a recipe which I adapted from the great Italian cooking bible I got for Christmas from my boyfriend. One version was with an Italian ham and cream sauce and the other was a vegetarian option for myself and one of my friends with an asparagus cream sauce - it was a hit! Apart from with my best friend, who I shamefully forgot she's not a fan of peas! For dessert I made a lemon syllabub (one of the easiest and tastiest recipes ever invented I think). I'll post the recipes shortly after making this post and you can find them in the 'Favourite recipes' section of the blog.

We spent the rest of the evening playing Just Dance on the Wii (hilarious, believe me) where I realised I am a master at Take on Me by my Norwegian heroes A-HA and playing our own very special version of Scattegories. It was a lovely evening! I'm glad we all made the effort to get together and celebrate!

(Yesterday during my 23rd birthday lunch with my mom)

Yesterday, during my actual birthday, I spent the day with my mom in Brighton. I'm lucky enough to live within a reasonable distance to Brighton which is definitely one of my favourite cities. It's got a strange laid back cosmopolitan vibe that is very difficult to find elsewhere. I'd love to live there someday! 

My mom and I had lunch at an Italian restaurant together. The portions are huge!! I had a pesto tagliatelle and my mom had a lasagne. 

(Tomato-Pesto Tagliatelle!)

We did a little shopping too. I bought two new adorable dresses - one with polka dots, the other with this cute bunny print on it. I'll make a different post dedicated to those new dresses in the following days from now. I also managed to pick up a super cool new purple tie dye purse on sale in Urban Outfitters. 

After a lot more shopping and stopping off at a sweet little cafe with the most delicious juices we stopped off to visit my brother and his girlfriend who live in Brighton. So all in all, I had a great day!! 

Now on to the important part.....the gifts!!!!!! 

I received this beautiful Skagen watch from my parents. I've been admiring their watches for a long, long time. It's typical Danish Design - clean lines and very modular looking. I absolutely love it! Among other things I also received a lot of new cooking equipment from my parents including a very powerful looking blender (which I plan to test out on a soup recipe later on), a brand new mixer to mix up my cake batters with, some colourful silicone cupcake cases, a year subscription to National Geographic Traveller and, subtle hint, a shoe rack to keep my mountain collection of shoes tidy - ha ha!

My brother and his girlfriend were also very generous. They gave me these polka dot knitting bags so I can finally keep all of my balls of wool tidy and stop having needles scattered all over the floor. They also gave me that little cassette bag filled with a lot of fun things, which you'll see below.

(Sea-green coloured beaded bracelets, nail polish and ice cream earrings!!)

I also received a lot of lovely items from my friends

I this cute heart pendant necklace and loads of balls of yarn in different colours from one friend. A bird printed notebook and an H&M voucher from another friend and a self-made photo album of memories, pyjamas and polka dot socks from another friend. 

So, thank you for all the messages, gifts and well wishes everyone. I had a lovely day and I'm so glad I got to share it with all of you.