My birthday

The plans for my birthday changed many times before we reached yesterday. It was a bit tricky, since we didn't know at the start when I was thinking about what to do, if Nathan was going to be here or not. When we realized he wasn't going to be, I was initially planning to take a handful of friends and go over to Singapore for the weekend prior to celebrate - but, it turned out Misuzu wasn't going to be there, and the logistics with sorting the kids all got a bit too complicated.
I also much prefer celebrating ON the day, so in the end I ended up doing a bit of a double birthday celebration all yesterday.

In the morning Anna and I had our nails done, and then we met up with a few other friends at one of my favourite lunch places, the Canadian restaurant Chez Fio. It was really nice to be a big group for lunch - and any excuse to get together and have a bit of a chin-wag of course!

I got celebrated by the staff at the restaurant with a little piece of chocolate cake! Hip hourray!

For the evening I had decided I only wanted a very few couple of friends around, for an intimate but fancy dinner. Only girls, since I didn't have my man here!
I hired the French chef Sebastien, again, since it was such a success last time, and he came and cooked us all another amazing meal.

I had asked my friends to wear their prettiest long dress, to make the evening a little bit more special, even though it was a Monday, and a school night! They were all so very pretty!

I got so many lovely gifts... Oh, I got truly spoiled! I realized that my friends know me really well, all their gifts were spot on!
I got a lovely sofa table book about 'Abode of Peace', wine glass markers and a gorgeous bangle, a beautiful necklace, a Fossil handbag, NZ Evolve charms of a pair of jandals and a pavlova, leather bracelets, A Vinturi of course (a bit of an inside joke/thing!), bath salts, pretty flowers, body lotions, home made buns, a hand made crochet bookmark and much more...

I had picked a different menu to last time. Always nice to try different things of course, even though the paté we had last time was going to be hard to beat!
For starter we had 'Mi-cuit salmon with creamed cauliflower and watercress'.
S-u-p-e-r-b.

For main course 'Slow cooked pork belly with butternut squash risotto and a mild garlic cream'. Mmmmm!

For dessert 'Vanilla poached pineapple with mango sauce and rhum cakes'.
Double yum!

Cake time! I had two cakes!

Group photo! My lovely friends who made my birthday so special! Thank you.

And as at any birthday party, there was party bags when the guests left. Very special tall and slim ones at this party, ha ha..!