a long birthday post (with pictures!)

It's been a great birthday weekend. After my little burst of melancholy on Friday night (and a little cry), I went to bed determined that I would wake and be positive and have a great day. And I did!

It began on Saturday with breakfast in Clovelly with mum. She gave me my present - another charm for my bracelet, of a little cat (left). After some delicious banana bread with cinnamon ricotta, we went to White's Cakes and bought some supplies for the party. We went to Bondi Junction for the rest of the things we needed, and I bought myself some candles and yummy smelling body cream (I always have to buy myself something...). DJs was having a special so I got two free things with my cream - so it felt like a birthday present from them too!

We set up my flat for the afternoon tea, and mum was brilliant, making sandwiches and salmon quiches and the obligatory pink iced cupcakes. Then people started arriving and we had rawther a lovely afternoon tea. They were almost all St Martin's people, with a couple of valuable extras - the Tonks, the MacBeaths, Bec R, Kieran, Meg, Jen, Em and Stu, Freda, and mum of course! People were very sweet and gave me lovely presents, like flowers, lovely stationery stuff, a voucher for a pedicure, the cuddliest Converse sweatshirt, a beautiful glass teacup and saucer, money to buy pampering things...and other stuff too. I'm so blessed with such wonderful friends. :)


All the delicious food - salmon tarts and quiche, neenish tarts, jam tarts (a lot of tarts), fairy bread, tomato sandwiches and egg and cress sandwiches, passionfruit sponge, maccaroons, merengues - the little pink cakes are not pictured because they disappeared as fast as mum could ice them.

me and my goddaughter, imi

me and my 'sister' bethany

imi and nathaniel

our elegant and refined surrounds in my flat

rebecca r showing us exactly how a lady takes tea

me and miss meg

Mum and Freda, the champions they are, did the cleaning up while I got dressed for the next portion of the celebrations. Dave came home, then we trundled off to Darlinghurst to Bill & Toni's for some cheap and cheerful Italian food, gelato and yummy wine with Heath and Simone, Jackie and Brett. I even played pinball and we had a couple of rounds of that gun game. Turns out I'm something of a crack shot (yeah right).

Heath and Simone face off

Me, Jackie and Mr Brett in my favourite 'Very Hungry Caterpillar' t shirt

Dave and me

And then, after all that, Dave and I went to meet up with Kiz, Renee, Glenn, Josh and Geoff for some drinks, dancing and pool in the city. For better or worse, I was introduced to Jaegerbombs and remembered that no matter how hard I try, I really suck at pool.

Kiz and me

It's really hard to take photos in the dark, while dancing

After a looong walk from one end of George st to the other, where Dave and Glenn seemed to stop for a conversation with every single person we passed, we finally got back to Central where Geoff's car was parked. Before we could leave, however, the boys had to go and help a taxi driver who had managed to get his taxi stuck on a traffic island (above). There were about 20 guys all pushing and bouncing the car, but it didn't go anywhere until Dave calmly headed over and suggested they push it sideways, off the thing it was stuck on. Oddly enough, it worked. Then we finally headed home and I was grateful for my lovely soft bed.

Today mum came round after church (I was still quite asleep), and we brought out the leftovers from afternoon tea and just blobbed around for a while. Then we went into town so I could spend my Dymocks gift voucher (from Heath and Sim) and I also bought a denim jacket, something I've been meaning to get for the last few years.

And now I have cooked a delicious smelling beef and red wine stew for dinner, and it's raining with thunder and lightning and everything, which seems just the perfect way to end a birthday weekend.