Living so far away from my family and my adopted family meant this year's celebrations were pretty minimal. I've never had huge celebrations for my b-day. In fact I remember when I was 11, my friends and I realized I had not had a birthday party with school friends (ever.). So I had a surprise party hosted by my best friend E on a random date in June. It was her first foray into birthday party planning. Little did she know she would have it as a job for six years.
I wanted my day to be small and pretty calm. I'm already not the biggest fan of lots of noise. So L2 made me a day of suprises. First - buttermilk pancakes. Second - a massage at
Bliss Spa (thank you levesque family!), Third - picnic at Hyde Park looking onto the water. Fourth - magmums at the Serpentine. Fifth - watching of Wall-E with a friend. Sixth - It was topped off excellently by having my favourite cake (mom's choco cake), we had friends come over, ate loads of garlic bread, pasta and cake with wine and I acted like I was Marie Antoinette. It was a great day filled with pastries and other delicious food. I couldn't have asked it any other way!
This was the closest version I could find!
Image via
a new exhibition opened recently in Camden. Always the artsy area - it now has a gallery that has iconic images of artists who died at 27 including one of the originial roling stones, jimi hendrix, kurt cobain, jim morrison and janis joplin. BBC did a little feature on it as well talking about how it's not a cool thing or something that should be struck as unusual for so many infamous artists to die so young. Besides Kurt - most of those people were experimenting when there was no limit/no knowledge. What else could we have expected? Perhaps i'll drag L2 there in september. the b/w photos look gorgeous if a little overused.
I always wait till the last minute to pack. When moving to London - I had to wait until we had moved into L2 parent's house to pack my clothes. Needless to say, things were stuffed, I brought stuff over that really wasn't necessary and L2 had to bring another suitcase when he visited in October. Planning for Romania was relatively easy as I didn't feel like I really needed to have good fashion. I had seen the styles of Eastern Europe. I can compete any day with stuff I wore in 1999. However, Switzerland concerns me. I've gone with a colour scheme of cream, green and black. I still want some gladiator flats (despite the fact that they shorten my legs) and shorts (despite the fact that no other europeans wear them) are on the list because of practicality reasons. The gladiator flats will help me fit in, but the shorts --- I fear they will be my downfall...........
