Birthday Tales and more. . .

This was the sight from my back door on my birthday eve at 7.15pm last night; I couldn't deny the children 15 minutes of mucking about before bath time!

The next day I woke to the sound of my daughter's footsteps flying lightly over down the hall before she came in and jumped into bed with us - "Happy Birthday Mummy!" she cried and snuggled up. Freya hardly ever gets up first and usually calls us into her or we have to wake her so this was a special start to the day. Her brother joined us shortly and my husband made tea and brought in my lovely collection of presents with a steaming mug of green tea. One card from a dear local friend made me laugh out loud emblazoned with the words " You is like SUPER old!" on the front. Thanks Sarah!!

After the flurry of openings, I was treated to scrambled egg with smoked salmon and croissant - a tradition we seem to have created in our 14 year marriage - and then chocolate cake. Oh yes.

Then the mad dash to get the children off to school with their lift and Tony and I drove more slowly than usual into Norwich. We had to take a detour due to a possible accident but I managed to get to my wonderful yoga lesson with Jane from Yogalightness.com which was a complete joy from 9.30-11am. Pure bliss and re balancing. Perfect for my theme word of 2013 "Balance".

After that I met up with dh; bought some gloves at Jarrolds sale; bumped into a friend; went to our favourite bookshop and climbed the narrow stairs to the top floor. Here I feel as though I am in someone's slightly ramshackle office/library, where papers and books are scattered over a corner desk,  and tall shelves are filled with art and design books. I found Reinventing Lettering by Emily Gregory and was gripped by it. The irony is I am far more interested in lettering now than I was when I did my graphics degree. I'd have made a good mature student! I'll aim to add some photos of the interior in another post.

I've been experimenting with lettering lately and am really enjoying using my hand writing in my new range. You can see what kind of card this is but I am going to do another version tomorrow with 'You'll do' on the front or maybe 'You're the one for me'. I think 'You'll do' is really funny .. probably one for us long marrieds! What do you think?



Back to today. Straight after buying the book  we walked down the cobbled hill to our favourite candlelit lunch-brunch-bar-restaurant called 'Franks Bar' .



I wanted to share some of their platters so we had a Morrocan one and a cheese one; DEEElicious marinated olives and some crispy fried broad beans! See that pint of cider? It looks massive doesn't it!? It's been an aeon since I had a pint of anything, but I did today.



We whiled away an hour or so and the room grew darker as the sky filled with snow and let it fall fast. It was like being in Amsterdam in the winter when we'd gone there together years ago. At 1.15 we thought we'd better leave sharpish and stepped out onto cotton wool that before had only been slush. Covered in snow we reached the car and drove into the crawling traffic.



About an hour and 20 minutes later,( the journey normally takes about 25 minutes), we reached home having almost run out of petrol!



The children came home a few minutes later; a lovely friend who never forgets my birthday popped in to give me a present and Tony whisked the children off to the park for half an hour, while I  sat in front of what became a roaring fire catching up with birthday tweets and emails . A memorable day. We felt very, very lucky to get home. The snow is beautiful but we've since heard stories of people gridlocked in Norwich and stuck on the A11 trying to get back in. Will this country ever be able to cope with snow?