Birthday - and The Cake for 2023
Thank you for all the birthday greetings.
I had a nice day. I started the morning by finishing off the Birthmas cake. As we were at D-d's on Christmas Day it was left for my birthday.
S2C gave me a rather beautiful, and practical, black handbag. Much appreciated as I have quite a few handbags but no other large black one. He also gave me a bottle of my favourite perfume (M&S Pink Peppercorn).
Lizzie and Edie came around for lunch and gave me... a handbag! This is burgundy - another colour I didn't have in my collection and one that will be a good replacement for my pink one which is getting rather tatty.
We had tomato soup and turkey and stuffing sandwiches, then tea and some of the banana and nutella cake I made before Christmas. Edie opened her Christmas presents - I wish I had taken a picture or two. She wanted to put her new, fur-lined, socks and her personalised pyjamas on there and then, but was eventually distracted by some farmyard finger puppets and a reindeer glove puppet :)
Edie ate a sandwich, then decided to get her own, small, fork out of her Mum's bag for the cake, much to our amusement as she gave the impression of having brought her own cake fork. She carefully used it to eat two or three small pieces that Lizzie broke off her own slice for her - then decided to try to cut through with her fork for herself. To our surprise she did manage to quite neatly detach a bite sized piece... then stuck her fork in the remaining half slice of cake and dashed off with it gleefully! :)
She then spent time sitting in S2C's large computer chair looking like the captain of the Enterprise, whilst he provided her with cat videos to watch :)
After they left, my sister and her husband dropped in for a natter and brought me, not a handbag, but a voucher for afternoon tea at The Tea Junction.
And about 30 minutes after they left D-d and her family arrived - rather earlier than expected! They had brought me a swish new kitchen measure and a game called Hand-to-hand Wombat.
However NYK1 immediately followed me out to the kitchen and began slicing cheese, preparing salad, getting out servig dishes and so on, and between the two of us we had the meal on the table in about 30 minutes. As everyone has different likes and dislikes we produced a tray of meatballs in cranberry gravy, plain and spiced rice, the salads, turkey and stuffing, plain tortillas, at least two sauces, and baked cheese sticks (possibly a couple of other things too - we had a very full table!). Then everyone mixed and matched, as conversation flowed.
Then we had cake -
I had planned a pale blue background with white snowflakes - but this pale sea green was the colour I got when I used the dark blue Dr Oetker food colouring! I decided I liked it anyway, and the family all thought it rather beautiful :) It tasted good.
Then we played a couple of rounds of the Hand-to-Hand Wombat. This is, to be honest, a gloriously silly game. It involves the players trying to build towers with your eyes closed whilst one of you secretly tries to sabotage the others.
It kept us amused for a while - and will doubtless come out again when they are here another time.
They went home about 9pm, and I sat quietly with a second cup of coffee and half watched the darts on TV that S2C was watching, and part read, until bed-time.
All in all a good day.
I had a nice day. I started the morning by finishing off the Birthmas cake. As we were at D-d's on Christmas Day it was left for my birthday.
S2C gave me a rather beautiful, and practical, black handbag. Much appreciated as I have quite a few handbags but no other large black one. He also gave me a bottle of my favourite perfume (M&S Pink Peppercorn).
Lizzie and Edie came around for lunch and gave me... a handbag! This is burgundy - another colour I didn't have in my collection and one that will be a good replacement for my pink one which is getting rather tatty.
We had tomato soup and turkey and stuffing sandwiches, then tea and some of the banana and nutella cake I made before Christmas. Edie opened her Christmas presents - I wish I had taken a picture or two. She wanted to put her new, fur-lined, socks and her personalised pyjamas on there and then, but was eventually distracted by some farmyard finger puppets and a reindeer glove puppet :)
Edie ate a sandwich, then decided to get her own, small, fork out of her Mum's bag for the cake, much to our amusement as she gave the impression of having brought her own cake fork. She carefully used it to eat two or three small pieces that Lizzie broke off her own slice for her - then decided to try to cut through with her fork for herself. To our surprise she did manage to quite neatly detach a bite sized piece... then stuck her fork in the remaining half slice of cake and dashed off with it gleefully! :)
She then spent time sitting in S2C's large computer chair looking like the captain of the Enterprise, whilst he provided her with cat videos to watch :)
After they left, my sister and her husband dropped in for a natter and brought me, not a handbag, but a voucher for afternoon tea at The Tea Junction.
And about 30 minutes after they left D-d and her family arrived - rather earlier than expected! They had brought me a swish new kitchen measure and a game called Hand-to-hand Wombat.
However NYK1 immediately followed me out to the kitchen and began slicing cheese, preparing salad, getting out servig dishes and so on, and between the two of us we had the meal on the table in about 30 minutes. As everyone has different likes and dislikes we produced a tray of meatballs in cranberry gravy, plain and spiced rice, the salads, turkey and stuffing, plain tortillas, at least two sauces, and baked cheese sticks (possibly a couple of other things too - we had a very full table!). Then everyone mixed and matched, as conversation flowed.
Then we had cake -
I had planned a pale blue background with white snowflakes - but this pale sea green was the colour I got when I used the dark blue Dr Oetker food colouring! I decided I liked it anyway, and the family all thought it rather beautiful :) It tasted good.
Then we played a couple of rounds of the Hand-to-Hand Wombat. This is, to be honest, a gloriously silly game. It involves the players trying to build towers with your eyes closed whilst one of you secretly tries to sabotage the others.
It kept us amused for a while - and will doubtless come out again when they are here another time.
They went home about 9pm, and I sat quietly with a second cup of coffee and half watched the darts on TV that S2C was watching, and part read, until bed-time.
All in all a good day.