PREPARE FOR A RAMBLE – I apologize greatly for the length of this post.
If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram then you may know that I turned the ripe old age of 21 last Thursday. After spending most of the week feeling sick to my stomach with excitement like I do every birthday and Christmas, then having a mini mental breakdown at the thought of being closer to 40 than 0, Thursday finally came and I had a very lovely but chilled day! My actual birthday I just relaxed in the house, a couple of family members and Alex came round to visit and I got some extremely lovely presents and cards. Rufus was actually my present from my parents but they still got me a few little things like a new purse, a cute little money box and even put some money in my birthday card for me. Alex my boyfriend (that guy I’m in the photo with above!) bought me a lovely Radley purse and a very swanky bottle of champagne, and my best friend in the world Manda is taking me for afternoon tea at Marco Pierre White’s in Newcastle!! She clearly knows me better than anyone and I just cannot wait to go! Another one of my favorite things someone did for me last week though was when my friends from university Sophie and Zoe made me a UNICORN CAKE!! A cake in the shape of a unicorn, which when I cut into it was pink and green stripy with smarties inside. Oh. My. God. Check out my Instagram for photos :)
Friday was then spend in total party preparation mode as I was going to be properly celebrating on the Saturday. I decided I want to have a garden party, a proper Pinterest style garden party with all of the things I absolutely loved. A lot of people would usually just opt for a party in a pub or some other venue, but I just don’t think that’s me. I’m not someone who is big on going out partying/drinking/dancing all night anyway, so have a little soirée in my very pretty garden was definitely more up my street. I say little soirée, so many people came to celebrate with me! I was overwhelmed and felt truly spoiled/lucky by the amount of cards and lovely gifts I received. I literally didn’t have enough space in the living room to put my cards up! I don’t think I’m going to do a ‘what I got for my birthday’ post just because I feel a bit weird about it, but I got everything from the cutest fluffy pink Miss Selfridge jumper, a gorgeous bag, jewellery, perfume, and ridiculous amounts of alcohol! I probably will do some sort of haul when I treat myself with the money and vouchers I got though so watch out for that if you’re interested.
The garden party itself had a pink and green theme, and I got most of the decorations from the internet. Ali Express turned out to be brilliant for party decorations but you’ve just got to make sure you order them early as they could take up to a month to arrive. I got some tissue paper pom pom things to hang from the ceiling of the marquee which I hung up with invisible thread so it looked like they were floating, and it was well worth the hours I spent making them! I also got some chinese lanterns which I hung down one side, and of course the obligatory bunting which was from eBay. It’s surprisingly expensive but I can’t wait to hang it up in my bedroom now! What else did we have…. balloons obviously! I got those on eBay too as they were much cheaper than the card shops. And what would a garden party be without jam jars? The giant ones we filled with biscuits, popcorn and flying saucers were £1 each from a car boot sale, then we had some normal sized jam jars filled with other random sweets. I got those from Tesco ages ago, I just bought the Tesco everyday value jam for 23p as that was cheaper than buying the empty jars!
Overall it was a really, really lovely day and I was so pleased with how it turned out. Everyone who came along had a good time, commented on my decorating skills (and cake making skills – see cupcakes above!), and loved the food that my mam and aunty had prepared. Really none of it would have happened without them, and I know they won’t be reading this so I can say that I’m off to buy both of them flowers as a big thank you. I just want to add too, I got my hair done at the hairdressers and liked it for about 2 hours… then decided to wash my hair halfway through my birthday party. I’m sassy enough to do that, if you ain’t happy with your hair you wash it gurrrrllll.
So, there you go. My not so average 21st birthday party! Well…. I did go out to the town on the night with all of my friends and *may* have ended up falling asleep in the pizza shop and being home for 1:30am, but what 21st birthday wouldn’t end like that? I’m definitely blaming it on the long day I had….
