thirty!

The day started well, with a leisurely read in bed in the sunshine, and the smell of breakfast wafting up the stairs. Chocolate and peanut scones - which I will most definitely be having again, very frequently. Mmmm.

Then downstairs for some presents.

Would you like to see?

A red stripey pure wool poncho, for snuggling up under the stars on summer camping trips, a bright red enamel jug, just begging to have tulips planted in it, a gorgeously green planter with a sunflower on, an enormous old visicard book for storing postcards and birthday cards and photos and cheery things, and look at the pattern on the stockings packaging! They'll be going on the wall, by the way, I don't think my thighs are that *ample*... :)

And if you can just indulge me for a second - look at those scales! Just look! Sunshiney, daffodil yellow, proper scales. How utterly fabulous :)

And even more fabulous - they came without weights, so Peter made some. He made weights. From nuts and bolts and cast off bits of metal, sawing and sticking and weighing. So not only are my scales extremely cheery, I think I'll probably be one a very select group of people weighing cake ingredients with scrap metal :)

Yes, if you hadn't guessed by now, yesterday was my thirtieth birthday. I'm pretty excitable about birthdays in general, but this year I was almost overwhelmingly giddy. I've never felt so strongly a feeling of actually moving from one decade to another (and I know, it's only another day...). I think it's because I'm changing jobs, finishing PhD, and lots of other things are moving on, life seems full of possibilities at the minute.

I thought long and hard about how I wanted to spend this most excellent of birthdays, and decided I wanted a tea party. An all-afternoon tea party, on a Tuesday, with plenty of fairy cakes, and lots of tea. So that's exactly what I did. My birthday cake was decorated in an extremely haphazard manner, amidst lots of laughing, and I think you'll agree it's enthusiastically decorated if nothing else :)

All afternoon people drifted in and out, many of them bringing more fairy cakes, and quite a lot leaving with more cake than they arrived with. People chatted who hadn't met before, some people just popped in for an hour, others for several, and the whole day was relaxed and gorgeous.

I was utterly impressed by the variety of cheery small food items that arrived, and by the enthusiasm of all of my guests for a Nice Cup of Tea. All in all, I had the most excellent start to the next decade.

I'm still parcelling up fairy cakes, and there's a few lingering in the freezer for moments in the coming weeks when a fairy cake is the only thing that will do. The last of the birthday cake will be eaten this week (well, probably today in reality!). I'm so glad I went with what I wanted to do, despite the lingering doubts of 'maybe I should have gone out for tea...', 'maybe nobody will come since it's on a Tuesday...'. Sometimes you just have to follow your nose, and sometimes, just sometimes, it works out perfectly.