Birthday celebrations

My birthday celebrations didn't last quite as long this year as they did last year, but it was still lots of fun. That said I might try to stretch it out until Gosia arrives in 10 days. The only sad point was the absence of Pan, but I'll talk about that some other time.

It started a few days early when Ellie and I took each other out to Rise for an Italian-Japanese degustation. It was a lovely meal, but all-in-all I much prefer the straight Japanese degustation. We had a pre-dinner cocktail, but I was rather tired from being wined and dined in a "client" dinner the night before, so headed home after we finished the meal.

The following day I declined lunch invitations to spend the day making a dress for Ellie's 1920's 30th birthday celebration. I borrowed Xanthe's red and black feather boa so decided to make a red and black dress to match. I was impressed with my effort, especially considering I had no pattern and have only once attempted to make a dress from scratch before - and that's still waiting to be completed.

Before arriving at Ellie's party I first had to head south to The Shire for my aunts 40th celebrations. Her birthday was more than a month before. She has some affinity for my birthday, it was also her 11th wedding anniversary. It was lovely to see most of my family, even if most forgot it was my birthday too... and my brother and sister-in-law were up from Melbourne for the 40th so I got to see them for a short time, before I headed back to civilisation and on to Ellie's which was most conveniently held at bar very close to my house.

Everyone at Ellie's party had made such an effort and everyone looked amazing. Lots of feather boas and lots of fedoras. I'm still not quite sure what possessed me to smoke a cigar, but Ellie insisted that as birthday girls, we should. It seems I'll try most things once. However, it did cause a few jaws to drop.

The following day I had a few people over for drinks to celebrate my birthday. Another lovely day.

And now I have lots more cookbooks to drool over, I even received two ice cream recipe books, which will go perfectly with my new ice cream maker!