…17 DAYS & COUNTING…

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apartment, birthday, friends, oscars, PARIS, venue

Just 17 days left of being thirty-something!

Where oh where HAVE my 30s gone!? Anyhow, I plan to celebrate this milestone in style (well as much as possible anyhow).

I’m off to Paris for my actual 40th birthday weekend (excitedly it falls on a Saturday!) There are 8 of us going for four days – my partner and 6 close friends – and we’ve hired an apartment in the Bastille area of the capital. We did find a beautiful one on the side of the River Seine with a balcony that had a complete view of the Eiffel Tower – but sadly they wanted a minimum of 7 nights. So, even though the apartment we’ve chosen isn’t exactly what I wanted, I do love it…and it will do nicely as we’ll all be together. Want a little peek?

If anyone knows of any great places to visit or things to do in Paris then please let me know. Madeleine, if you happen to see this, I wanted to pick your brains about the whereabouts of the Parisian flea-markets ;-)

On my return I have a bit of time off work – so we’ll end up going somewhere else for a few days (we’re thinking of Edinburgh) plus I have a 40th birthday party organised! 70 friends are descending to a lovely local venue – with a theme of the Oscars. This is a mock copy of the invite courtesy of the lovely Trishia over at FrenchKissed (don’t worry we didn’t go for this date or venue in the end!)

The venue we chose is a beautiful 19th century building yet is newly refurbished inside – with a baby grand piano too :-) We have a backdrop all sorted for taking spectacular photographs of the well-dressed guests – and there are other Oscar themed offerings all night too – including awards, Oscar shaped chocolates and Hollywood confetti. Hopefully it’ll be a laugh – with friends from all parts of my life under one roof!

I’ll take lots of photographs – and promise to share some of them with you ;-) I can’t wait…

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AN ARCHITECTURAL BIRTHDAY

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andy thornton, architectural, bars, birthday, church, decorative, dressing table, edwardian, garden, industrial, lighting, restaurants, retail, salvage

Due to work commitments I was unable to do too much to celebrate my birthday this year. We had a group of friends round for a curry banquet – but I normally like to go somewhere for the day with my beau; usually to a ruined castle or the seaside ;-) I managed one afternoon off – so we decided to go to an architectural salvage place situated about 12 miles from where we live. It’s always a lovely afternoon out as it’s full of so many beautiful things and placed over 4 huge floors.

Based within a former textile mill, the premises have been lovingly restored to provide the perfect backdrop for their stunning finds. The company specialise in providing furniture and fittings for bars and restaurants to the US, here in the UK as well as other places abroad – although they sell so much more that it would take me forever to list what they stock. Everything from derelict churches, architectural metalwork, antiques, wood carvings, garden statues, vintage industrial furniture to decorative lighting and retail display fixtures can be found there – most of which are completely unique too!

I’ll share with you some photographs which might give you more of an idea of the kind of things I mean. The first collage are some pictures that I took during our visit, the second collage are some shots from their website. (Click on the photos for a closer look!)

Isn’t there some beautiful things!! Despite EVERYTHING being for sale – it really is like walking around a museum. If only I had the money and space…I would buy SOOOOO much stuff!!!

Anyhow, I couldn’t resist buying one thing – and decided to use some birthday money I had received towards its purchase!

Yes, I purchased this Edwardian dressing table – which is over 6ft tall – and now sits, as you can see from the photograph, pride of place in our bedroom! What do you think? Even the beau loved it – so it must be good! The mirror is huge and is framed by two small shelves. Sadly it had a matching wardrobe and washstand, but we have neither the money to buy them nor the space to house them at the minute. The seller was reluctant to split the set up at first, which I could completely understand, yet he finally gave in. The dresser was delivered on my birthday morning as the perfect present too!

We’ve been looking for the right dressing table for a while now and had even been looking at new ones which had been made to look antique; but what was so great about this set of drawers was that they worked out cheaper than a lot of the modern reproductions we had seen for sale!

I wonder what stories they could tell if only they could talk?!

40 CANDLES

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1980s, 40, Adam Ant, birthday, Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, DJ, fancy dress, friends, Madonna, party, video

Last week was my beau’s 40th birthday. We’ve spent the last 6 years talking about his next milestone – …and finally it has arrived – and so we decided that we needed to celebrate it in style – 80s style that is! My beau and I both adore 80s music and so it was only natural that we were going to organise a birthday party involving this era.

So, we hired our friend’s art / wine bar – and utilised their projector by visually blasting out classic 80s videos on silent, whilst blended compilation CDs of ours – along with our DJ friend Marc – filled our eardrums with old vinyl and old favourite 80s tunes. We asked that people arrive in 80s fancy dress – and thankfully most people did. Pop icons filled the bar – everything from Adam Ant to Madonna to Tina Turner to Siouxsie Sioux to Phil Oakey to Cyndi Lauper! Everyone looked so colourful and timeless! You can see me – dressed as Adam Ant – top left with my sister on the picture below.

Want to see a few pics?

My beau really wasn’t bothered about getting a cake – although I decided the week before (how to make your life difficult!!) that actually we should go for it! So I had one cake decorated with a picture of my beau, taken when he was aged 5 – and the other cake I decided to do myself! As we’re both vinyl mad, I decided to design a turntable complete with edible turntable (sadly Trishia, the old 45 single is the ‘real thing’ and would certainly hurt your teeth if you bit into that!) For my first cake ever I was quite pleased with the result. Despite getting lots of help from my neighbour, I really am not sure if I’ll be making another one in a hurry! I surrounded the cake with retro sweets from our childhood to add further nostalgia to the party – check out those Sherbert Dips, Dib Dabs, candy necklaces, Drumsticks, Black Jacks, Fizz Wizz’s, Flying Saucers and Love Hearts…to name but a few!

Friends and family came from all over the country – and a fantabulous (& very drunken) time was had by all!!

For my beau’s actual birthday, we went to Chatsworth House – a stately home in the heart of Derbyshire. It’s somewhere that we both absolutely love – and so, we used this as an opportunity to revisit, taking in both the house and its garden – as well as the converted stables, shops and cafes! It really is stunning there – and we had such beautiful weather – especially for the end of October! The grounds are full of beautiful statues and sculptures – including some recent Damien Hirst pieces.

A beautiful and very active week – I’m sure you’ll agree!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOUDINI

Tags

birthday, dickie bow, photogrpahy, studio

I still remember this photograph being taken 35 years ago today.

It was my third birthday – I had gone along to the local photography studio with my mum and I was wearing a cord dickie-bow that my neighbour had made for me especially ;-) …I still have it! 

This photograph still makes me smile.

How young and carefree I was…what happened! ;-)

Thanks for the birthday wishes x

BIRTHDAY DRINKS

As I think I mentioned last time, I tend to try celebrate my birthday over a period slightly longer than the usual prescribed ‘day’. This is simply for the reason that I seem to spend a third of it sleeping and half of the remainder working – so I try and spread it out so that it’s much more fun and memorable. I tend to open a present and card a day too which also helps prolong the celebration.

This approach also helps when you have different friends of different ages from different crowds. Not everyone wants to go to a rowdy pub – and some of my friends would much prefer to go for a civilsed meal; so this is what has happened so far this week.

On Friday night I went to a local pub which has over 230 British and world bottled beers with other ales, ciders, lagers and bitters available on draught. It’s a place where you’ll find a real mixture of people and ages – and what’s also good about the place is that it plays no music whatsoever! It can get really busy, so you have to talk loudly to be heard – but at least you’re not competing with mega-volumes pumping from strategically placed imposing speakers! They also have lots of unique and contrasting art on the walls which I also like in a place. The art on these walls are not what I’d choose to have in my own apartment – but they are beautiful and complimentary to the people who frequent. I took a few cropped images of some of the more ‘revealing’ pictures by some local artists. Want to see?

I met a group of friends (some of whom are above) and we stayed there talking and drinking until we were nicely merry – nothing too heavy, but just perfect for a Friday night.

On Saturday afternoon I met an old friend for a walk around the second hand market (with some fab finds for another post) followed by a beautiful double-shot milky coffee and long catch-up.

Then, on Saturday evening, my beau and I met some other friends for some drinks in a local village bar before going on with them to a stunning tapas restaurant which I had never been to before. It served Mediterranean as well as Middle Eastern cuisine tapas dishes. The food was absolutely delicious, the place was buzzing with people all trying to get seated – and despite the larger-than-expected bill at the end of the night (which included drinks at £4.50 a pint!!) we had a fantabulous time! Depite taking my camera out, I just never got round to taking any photographs – so I have included a couple from their website instead – which really doesn’t do it justice at all! The best dish by far was the Moroccan chicken tapas cooked with dates and cous cous – it was simply delicious! I intend to have a go at making it myself sometime!

There’s a few more birthday things planned for this week and the weekend – including another friends’ evening soiree avec music – as well as a day trip out with my beau (although to where we’re not quite sure!) So, I’ll share more with you another time.

By the way…did I tell you I went for a music therapy job? Well, I got it! More on that to come too!