birthday

13th January: Day 92 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.

It finally arrived.

MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Before I tell you what I did this year, let me backtrack to last year:
“When I first started working at a European company I began receiving emails about birthday sweets. Men and women alike were announcing their birthdays and offering up “candy cakes” (false advertising! the base is just for display!), brownies and divine Belgian chocolates. Though psyched about the offer of free sugar, I couldn’t help but think, what losers… they don’t have any friends to buy them a massive cupcake and sprinkle some confetti between the keys of their keyboards!

Without my nutty NY coworkers in 2008, and faced with the Belgian tradition of “it’s my birthday and I have to supply my own sweets”, I spent my birthday slaving over my tiny “easy bake oven” to bring in decadent chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and milk chocolate shavings. A great way to meet people when I’ve just started working at this company…. next time, though, I plan to simply hand over a few euros to Marcolini to spend my birthday somewhere besides the kitchen!”

…which is exactly what I did this year!

I woke up to receive text messages from a few work friends and when I arrived to work, there was an orchid on my desk waiting for me! Throughout the day, the gifts continued, a shirt and book from another work friend, a big box out of which a balloon emerged with a card saying to shake my tail feather, a bottle of wine from my company, a big foamex card signed by everyone and a cake!

Later that night I had drinks and nibbles with two very special work friends…  Very chill… lots of red wine and catching up!!!  Such a great way to end the day!

It was such a seriously fantastic day. I really had no inclination it would be so great.  If anything, after last year, I thought it would be a bit lonely…. But really, I felt so special… and I haven’t even told you about all of the Facebook messages.  And phone calls.  And emails.

100 times better than last year.  And 100 times less slaving in the kitchen!!

pre-party

11th January: Day 90 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.

Last year my birthday extended across timezones… why not across days this year??

The festivities started on 11th January (also my dog Spanky’s birthday) for a Sunday lunch / evening wine soiree / sleepover and go to work at my colleague M’s… (she’s a girl, sorry to disappoint… for you and me both!)

M, my favourite London foodie, picked from this book:

Moroccan lamb, couscous salad

And almond cake, topped with pomegranates:

ideas

1st January: Day 80 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.

I’m back from Cannes. Recovering from being totally fried. And determined to get this blog up to date. 13 entries to go. I can do verbose… can I do succinct…?

Big F.

He’s one of my very favourite people from Brussels.

And as I started thinking about what he’d like for his New Year’s Eve birthday, the idea came…. and grew…. until I had cast aside my plans to unpack, transformed my bedroom into a studio and had a photo project mapped out for all of my friends for the year….

If you’re lucky enough to be a Jan/Feb birthday you know what I was up to… otherwise you’ll have to wait!!

Ok, fine, one hint: