Happy Birthday to Us

Thank you for all your birthday wishes to both of us. As of about 10.30ish this morning and 1.30 ish this afternoon both I and H are 28. So far we have just about managed not to say Happy Birthday to anyone apart from each other - trust me, it's a challenge when in your home Happy Birthday is a bit like saying Merry Christmas in December!

It has been a WONDERFUL day. We woke up to the postman delivering a parcel from Zee and her husband and then they called to sing to us and demand that we open the presents in 'real time'. Zee gave me a cake tin to add to my collection - garden themed and you can see a picture here, together with a few tubes of icing to decorate. What made it even funnier was that my MIL (whom we shall call Beth) and I were talking about Lakeland cake tins last night as I cooked up a set of cars for our Birthday cake. We could remember the train tin and the beehive but forgot the garden gang until it appeared before me. Beth brings me back a cake tin from Williams-Sonoma for Christmas each year so I'm building a wonderful collection.

Then my parents called and sang and then H's sister called and sang and we covered the floor of our lounge with a sea of wrapping paper. There may also have been a little yarn (from H) and the means to acquire yarn (from both sets of parents and Gran) so I am a very happy (and spoilt girl).

We had breakfast-brunch courtesy of H's wonderful fry-up skills and oven baked French toast.


Mine (on the left) is Peach French toast from this recipe and it's going to be my birthday breakfast for EVER now - there's a good reason why it gets 4 1/2 stars.

Then we took Beth to Birmingham on the train to pop her on another train home and had a pootle round Birmingham including a trip to Lush for bath bombs and to Selfridges for Krispy Kreme doughnuts (mmm!).

And now this afternoon has been spent in a haze of happy smiles, birthday cake and playing with new toys - oh and a little knitting:


The swimmer is named Violet and is a present from H to match the swimmer Father Christmas put in his stocking - and also goes with the bath basketball H gave me today! And the yarn has been testing me. It started off trying to be a paid of diagonal cable rib socks. Then it got ripped out and we tried a mock cable wave and then I pulled that out at lunchtime and started my original instinct - the monkey you can see growing in the picture! They are for H's brother's wife next Saturday so I need to get those fingers moving!