Birthdays

Tomorrow is my birthday. Hip hip hooray! I've always loved certain elements of birthdays - the giving and receiving of gifts, and the one day you can spoil and indulge yourself. Everyone deserves to indulge on their birthday.

That said, I've never been a huge fan of celebrating myself. I'm not sure why that is, but I think it comes down to a combination of anxiety over calling people together (what if no one has a good time, what if no one comes, and various other silly questions) and a fear of being the centre of attention. Don't get me wrong, I am not by any means a shy person (I picture those who know me reading that and laughing), but I don't like to call the spotlight to myself. I'm good enough at getting attention as it is!

Despite this, I chose to actually celebrate my birthday this year, albeit only with a small group of close friends. I have had a sort of BLERGH year up to now, essentially just with things not going my way but the year did begin with my grandmother passing and my eardrum bursting and I've joked that it's struggled uphill from there. So I thought, bugger it, I'm going to go out and drink too much and eat too much and force my friends to come along for the ride.

We had SUCH a fun night which started with dinner at our new local, The Balmain Hotel, where we ate their amazing duck steamed buns followed by red velvet cupcakes made exclusively for me by my AMAZING husband (isn't that impressive?!).

We were at a loss as to what to do next until my clever friend T suggested karaoke, an idea that was hugely well received! We dashed off to Ding Dong Dang's in Surry Hills, where we hired a large room between eight people (far too large, FYI) and sang the night away before it was over all too quickly. I really think we could have stayed here all night, but we hadn't pre-booked and there was no room at the inn. So we headed to a friend's to have a few more drinks and dance into the early hours. BLISS. Special thanks to my gorgeous Mum who travelled down to babysit, bless her!

Sadly by this point I had lost my voice. I'd had a bit of a cold to start with and was feeling pretty lousy, but my mood was greatly boosted by alcohol! Funny that! Needless to say, today I can't talk. Seriously, I open my mouth to speak and nothing comes out. My throat is SOOOOO sore but I am sort of milking it by laying down and working from bed...so it's not all bad.

Anyway, now I've got my sights firmly set on the next two big birthdays in my life - my husband exactly one month after mine and our baby girl exactly one month after that. In my husband's family, birthdays involve a festival of celebrations. They all go completely over the top for their birthdays and they aren't ashamed of it. They love it.

I frequently refer to my husband's birthday as "The Festival of J," and last year we were in Germany for his AND his Mum's birthdays so it was a case of "The Festival of K & J, Germany" (literally, multiple events celebrating each of their birthdays. I think I counted five lavish celebrations) followed by "The Festival of J, Australia". The flip side to this is that he approaches my birthdays with the same attitude, giving me a "Birthday Weekend" (just passed) a "BirthDAY" (tomorrow) and a whole lot of gifts. What can I say, I hand selected him!

H & I after her 1st Birthday Party

We bring a shared love of birthdays and an even greater love of little H to the preparations for her big event. She will be turning two (can you believe it?!) and we will be having a "Star" themed bash to celebrate. While a star theme seems kind of random, if you knew her you would totally get it. It was one of her first words (she could pick a tiny star graphic out from far away at 12 months old, no kidding) and she is OBSESSED with stars. I'm not entirely sure how we're going to pull it off, I'm thinking "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" as the inspiration and will probably just pick a colour theme and then go NUTS with the stars. This will likely be H's version of heaven.

We learnt a lot from her first birthday party, and are planning to make the second a mostly adult event with just a couple of her closest friends and all of her favourite foods. It is, after all, "The Festival of H".

How do you celebrate birthdays? Is every birthday an over-the-top affair or do you prefer to hibernate and pray for it to be over like myself?

Z x