My Birthday!

As usual I like it best when my birthday is spread out over as many days as possible and this year has been no acception to that. Normally in the 6 months up to my birthday it is all I can go on about but this year I have been strangley quiet about the whole affair. This might have something to do with the fact that I have no entered in to the slow and steady 30's hill and the only way is down. No more can I say I am in my early or even mid twenties. I am 26. Oh the horror!

Now that I've added just a hint of melodrama to the post I can continue. This year I decided to join forces with another friend of mine who is also on the slippery slope and we chose the Monopoly Pub Crawl as the best place to begin. As my birthday was on a Monday and his on a Tuesday we decided to do it the Saturday before, inviting about 80 people and knowing that only 10 where going to turn up at best.

If you havent ever done the Monopoly Pub Crawl it really is great fun. This was the second time that I have attempted it, making your way round 26 pubs from 10.30am - midnight and drinking 13 pints (you have half pints at each pub) this is not a challenge for the faint hearted. Its almost impossible to keep to the time limits and last time we made it round 20 of the 26, feeling satisfied with out attempt. This year we wanted to try and beat our previous record however.

You can download the route here (we went for the quickest way, not the in-order of the board way). It's such a good experience but you do have to be prepared to move quickly, you can't really sit around or you wont make it round. Rather than bore you with the repetition of - we went to a pub, we had a half pint, we moved on - here are some fun pictures of the day!

We made it round 21 pubs in the end and went and got a chinese at 12.30am to celebrate!

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On my actual birthday I woke up relatively early and opened all my presents :) My parent's got me a digital photo frame and some kitchen ceramics. My wonderful boyfriend bought me this gorgeous necklace which creates little rainbows if it catches in the sun and its just perfect.

I took the day off work as I think its the one day that I shouldn't have to work but as luck would have it the rain decided that it was a good time to show up and so my previous plan of a picnic went out of the window. Instead we spent a couple of hours uploading pictures on to the new photo frame before moving on to the very important baking of the birthday cupcakes. If you are a avid reader of my blog you will know how much I love to bake but I decided it was my birthday and I was going to be lazy so they were made courtsey of our good friend Betty Crocker.

Once they were iced and had cooled we packed some up and headed into town and Oxford Street so I could do a little bit of shopping before Leigh took me out for dinner at a yummy pizza place called Pizza Pilgrims. They serve wine in big carafes and I had a black pepper salmi pizza and Leigh had spicy sausage.

After that we went to go and meet my close friends for a few drinks, blowing out of a tealight (nobody had candles!) and general merrymaking. It was quite lovely.

Thank you to everyone who celebrated with me one way or another, and to the woman at the pub who ID'd me on my birthday so I got to hand it over with a "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY" cry. Also thank you for thinking I look young enough to get ID'd, you made my night.

xxx

A Year in Review 2013

It is that time of year again where I do my yearly review. These can get a little bit cheesy so I'm going to try and keep it short.

To be honest that shouldn't be too hard because my year has been brilliant. There haven't been any lows at all, only highs and I am so lucky that once again I have had a year filled with fun, laughs, good holidays, Leigh and friends.

Here is a round up of my year in a series of pictures:

January started off very snowy with promises of things to come for 2013

In February we found a new house and set about decorating it and making it in to our own little home. Unfortunately will still only live in rental but at least we upgraded the rental

March bought about the move and the start of spring

April was a very busy month, not only was it my 25th birthday but at the end of the month we also went to New York for a week.

In May I had the lovely trip to The Savoy for afternoon tea and we also went to Field Day -a one day festival in Victoria Park London. Unfortunately that day Pumpkin got hit by a car and hurt her paw which was awful but luckily 6 months later she was as good as new

In June of course there was Glastonbury, which was my 4th year and brilliant as always

July was filled with sunny days and lots of ice-creams

We went to Leigh's uncles wedding in August which was lovely as who doesn't love the romance of it all and I caught the bouquet!

In September we jetted off to Menorca with Leigh's family and it was so nice to have 2 weeks in the sun not doing a thing

October passed in a blur of colder weather, a spa day and Halloween

And November saw the night's draw in, fireworks everywhere and I was asked to write 2 columns for a new website which was very exciting and will be going live in a few days

And lastly December with the twinkly lights, Christmas fun and parties it has rounded off my year perfectly.

I hope you have enjoyed my little yearly round up. Like I said, everything this year was just lovely and I can only hope that 2014 will be just as delightful. A very Happy New Year to you all. I wish you all the best :) 

xxx