Happy Belated Birthday To Me

I know I'm really a bit late to post this but it happens...

On the 1st of August I celebrated my 33rd birthday.  I didn't have any qualms about turning 33, I guess when "they" say that once you hit 30, you stop caring.  Well, 33 came and I rang it in with style!  I had quite a memorable birthday due to some cheeky planning by my flatmate.

My great day began when I woke up to drawing on the mirror in the hallway.

Then two dear friends of mine (Caroline and Laura) had given me gift cards to Zara to purchase this dress I had been lusting after so the weekend before my birthday I got the dress and planned to wear it on my day.  Its a beautiful, bright orange, tennis-ish dress that made me stand out and makes me very happy as my friends knew how much I wanted this dress, but couldn't work it into my budget.

After work I met up with Tom who had given me a choice of three options the week before.  The options were, comedy, a musical or a classic film.  I told him that I would pick either comedy or a musical, but he gets the final decision as I wanted to be surprised.  We met up and I followed his lead to an undisclosed location. Along the way we "bumped into" my friend Emma and come to find out, the two of them were conspiring via Facebook to make plans.  We headed to Jamie's Italian where I heard Tom say he wanted a table for five.  I'm thinking "there are only 3 of us here, who are the other 2?"  So we head to a pub to get a drink and wait. As we are waiting in walks my friend Michael (who I was chatting with on Facebook earlier and I had no clue he would be there.)  Tom hands me a card which held a Groupon voucher for 8 sessions of boot camp which made me very happy as I am trying to lose some weight and get back into shape.  We finished our drinks and went back to the restaurant, but the wait was over an hour so we headed to Browns and when we walked in, Tom already had a table booked (as a backup to Jamie's which doesn't take reservations) my fifth guest arrived (with flowers!) and it was Adrienne, one of Tom's work friends and we indulged in a lovely meal.  However, that was not the end of the night, we were still booked to see a show...a comedy show above a local pub.  It was quite intimate with only about 25 people and the acts were good, well minus the very angry American ex-war journalist who thought dropping F-bombs into his rants about the Daily Mail were funny.  We parted ways after the show and when I arrived home there was a box sitting at my bedroom door.  I opened it and found the newest member of the flat, Cecil (pronounced Cee-cil) inside.  He props my door open each day and does an excellent job at it if I do say so myself!

Before calling it a night, Tom tells me I have one more gift and places another wrapped package on my bed.  I go to open it and notice its really heavy.  Upon opening it I see that in contains a bag with Tip Tree Tomato Ketchup and Tip Tree Barbecue Sauce.  You are probably thinking, what a random present, but there is a story.  Long story short, I went to a restaurant one night and they had Tip Tree Ketchup on the table.  This ketchup is DAMN good and in fine fashion I borrowed* it from the table and brought it home.  Much to Tom's chagrin he realized that the nicked ketchup was really good. We were running out of it so I decided to "borrow" another bottle the week earlier. Well, in order to put an end to my thieving, he purchased another bottle of it.  I cannot tell you how much I laughed as I opened that gift! 

I went to bed that night a very happy girl.  Tom really went out of his way to make my birthday a memorable one.  All my friends and family made it a special day and turning 33 was a piece of cake. It was a great start to a new year and I am really looking forward to whats in store for me!


*I do not condone stealing from restaurants.