Birthday celebrations

It was my birthday on Saturday. A pretty quiet day spent doing a bit of shopping and hanging out at home reading and stitching and knitting.
The husband made me a delicious sponge cake. I had peonies delivered - they are just divine. A friend visited. Self bought gifts - as the 14 year old said "just buy your own mum and you get what you want" ! Husband totally agrees and was kind enough to go shopping with me - he hates shopping, so this was quite lovely! He drew the line at going wool shopping though! Ha.

 All New Zealand goodies - why yes a 48 year old woman can wear Little Red Riding Hood hairbands! Adore the ear rings (NZ Pohutukawa flower) and the brooch. We live near Mixt - an amazing shop that only sells NZ made items.

 From my cousin - the gingernut biscuits are a giggle - a reward for me finally picking up my Gingerbread jersey again on the knitting needles. More on that tomorrow :) The calendar is awesome.

 Divine new wool - yes more new wool! Knitnstitch is a local wool shop which is lovely. I bought the wool and pattern to make this

 Excited about this!

 The husband and I had a picnic dinner at the Parnell Rose Gardens - no teenage boys wanted to sit at rose gardens and have a picnic, so they stayed home! I'm not bothered by this at all. I took as many photos of the roses until my camera battery died! A lovely end to a low key birthday.

 (birthdays are low key in this household - the children have never bought gifts for us; nor do they give each other gifts for birthdays or Christmas. They only get birthday gifts from grandparents too (and us!)..And for Christmas they will only get gifts from grandparents and possibly 1-2 sets of uncles or aunties if we see them on Christmas Day. If we don't see them, we don't exchange gifts. We don't post gifts at all anymore to family in NZ (out of town) or overseas. So it's very low key! And the list of who to buy for gets smaller every year! This year I have 8 gifts in total to buy for Christmas and will knock it off in half an hour or so :) - see - low key and virtually little stress! )