28th Birthday

Right lets tackle this overdue blog post (I feel like most of my posts these days start with that sentence!?)

MY BIRTHDAY!!!! This year I turned 28, a seemingly 'unimportant' age but for me EVERY birthday is a blessing and I will always celebrate them. I know first hand how fragile and short life really is and so I never let these celebrations pass without fully appreciating and enjoying them. You never know when your last birthday is so why not make the most of each and every one, right?

I also just like to have an excuse to have a party ;)

My friend Sasha is turning 30 this year and she has planned a trip to Mauritius with friends to celebrate. She hadn't planned a birthday party so I asked her to join in on mine so that, with our forces combine, we could make it even bigger and better! We decided to have it at Social On Main on a Sunday as they have live music and a beautiful outside deck that we could take over. I didn't do a final head count but we must of had at least 70 friends and family there. It was very special.

Yes we did wear matching outfits on purpose!

The birthday celebrations started the day before when we decided to bake a cake.... What a FUN DISASTER.

It began with my mom and I baking the actual cakes so that we could take them to Sasha's house later to ice and decorate. I haven't baked in a while (I gave up sugar at the start of last year) and so my skills and supplies were lacking. We decided to do a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing and then decorate with fondant flowers. The idea was solid but the execution process failed.

I don't have a round baking dish and so we had to resort to making my classic chocolate microwave cake which we edited to turn into red velvet. The hardest part was getting the red colour correct. I carefully measured out a few lids full of red food colouring and whilst putting the red colouring down I dropped it and the colouring went EVERYWHERE!!!

The first thing we had to do was find the bottle... with my mom and I in hysterics we started looking frantically for the small bottle. After a minute or 2 I had found it.... in the cake mixture! What a mess!

After cleaning up and me attempting to unsuccessfully remove the stains form my hands, we continued with our baking. 4 red velvet cakes later we had finished the baking and begun on the icing. We didn't have all the ingredients for cream cheese icing so I just edited the recipe and used what we had... big mistake. The icing would not stiffen and we were left trying to ice the 4 cakes with a very runny bowl of icing. This lead to the tower leaning and falling and just looking terrible in general. It was now 9pm and we had to continue. Sasha's younger sister and husband worked with my mom and I through the night to try and make these cakes work. We had Cam, the husband, rolling fondant icing flowers whilst Sasha mixed ombre icing and I oversaw my mom's icing skills. It was a night of many laughs and much fun which resulted in 2 very "interesting" cakes which luckily tasted good on the day.

The next day we placed our 100 balloons outside on the deck of Social and one by one our friends trickled in to fill the tables. We were absolutely spoiled rotten with gifts from SO many people. I was overwhelmed by all the love and it was such a lovely afternoon.

I was surprised with the most amazing gift from my friends, Jade, Justine, Daniella, Sasha, Alice and Gen. I had told Jade my house mate) that I had my eye on a stunning mirror but couldn't afford it. She went and bought the mirror and hid it in my bedroom and at my party they all huddled around me smiling with a card. The card had a photo of the mirror that Jade had snuck into my room in the morning. How amazing are my friends? Thank-you girls, this was one of the most special gifts I have ever received! 

I had old friends, new friends, family and some of my medical team all there on our special day and I couldn't be more grateful for everyone taking the time to spend the day with me.

Sasha and I only became friends last year but it was one of those friendships that happened instantly and she is now one of my closest friends. Thank-you Sash for being such a special friend to me and I know we are going to have many more fun filled adventures together.