My Lockdown Birthday 2020

Celebrating my birthday in a global pandemic, being locked down inside my house, was not the way I imagined it.

Pre COVID-19, I had 5 different birthday celebrations planned – from lunch with my family, and date night at Chiltern Firehouse, to a night out with my friends.

Post COVID-19, as the situation escalated and things began to get shut down, I sent out a barrage of texts to my nearest and dearest informing everyone that the in-person celebrations were off.

Of course, this did not mean that all the celebrations were off. Hell no! No way! I’ve still rotated myself the entire way round this fucking ball of fire in 365 days and come out the other side unscathed!

We celebrate with or without global pandemics okay!

So, what did I get up to?

🤯 Waking up to a surprise decoration situation!

The morning of my birthday, I walked into my living room still half-asleep and found that Lu had somehow managed to blow up a million balloons for me while I was sleeping! They were everywhere! This was the perfect surprise for a quarantine birthday!

🌷🎈 The Birthday Table

I like to make a focal point in the living room for birthdays – a place where all your cards live, and you can add stuff too depending on how extra you wanna get, like flowers, balloons, and of course, cake!

This year, I was super lucky to receive a bunch of cards and gifts from my nearest and dearest so I opened all of those in the morning, and laid them out on the table.

To brighten up my quarantine birthday, I’d also organised for some big tabletop balloons to arrive, thanks to my faves, Bubblegum Balloons!

I was also lucky enough to receive some beautiful flowers from my lovely friend Angelica, so they popped on the table too.

How gorgeous are they?

🎂 The Cake!

It doesn’t matter if there’s a virus on the loose, there’s nothing on God’s beautiful Earth that will stop me from enjoying a chocolate cake on my birthday. However! This year was a bit different as all of the occasions where I would normally receive a cake (aka parties!) had been cancelled.

So, I had to source my own – and let me tell you, sourcing someone to come deliver you a cake in the middle of a pandemic is no small thing.

Luckily, Flavourtown Bakery came to the rescue! I ordered their Bad Ass Brownie Cheesecake Cake to arrive the day before my birthday:

I had ordered the smallest size, 6 inch, because lets face it, we are inside in a lockdown, and I’m not looking to eat 24 portions of cake all by myself 😅. However when this monster arrived, I realised that it didn’t matter that the fucking diameter of the cake was 6 inches, it was about ten feet tall 🤣

On the day of my birthday, it came out with sparklers and candles around lunchtime, and placed on the birthday table like the queen it was, surrounded by cards and balloons and love 🥰

Then I fucking cut into it like a madwoman and consumed its delicious inner bits for the best birthday lunch EVER:

🥳 The rest of my birthday

So, surprisingly for a locked down birthday, the day went quickly! I had so many birthday texts to go through and respond to, a ton of video calls – to the extent that I probably spoke to more people “face to face” than on a regular birthday!

I also finished the day off with a takeaway involving my favourite pizza, so it was kinda perfect!

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Thanks to everyone who made my birthday feel extra special, despite the weird circumstances. And here’s to celebrating doubly as hard next year 😂