My birthday celebrations: the 2019 edition

As you'll have guessed from the title of this post, it was my birthday last week. My birthday was on a Tuesday which is arguably the worst day of the working week, so I booked the Monday and Tuesday off work so that I could celebrate for four days.


Saturday 

We made the most of Saturday's beautiful weather and took Jessie for a long walk to Penarth. Our local Coffee #1 branch has got a dog friendly area, so we stopped there for half an hour to have cheesecake and a hot chocolate (and water for Jessie, of course).

On Saturday evening, we went to Miller & Carter in Cardiff Bay for birthday meal number one. I hadn't had the opportunity to dress up for a while, and I took great pleasure in wearing a pretty new dress and highly uncomfortable shoes. 

Although my meal was nice, the service was terrible. They got every part of Neil's order wrong, even his very simple soft drink. It's sadly put us off going back to that particular restaurant for a while, but it'll make a good anecdote at least! 

Sunday 

On the Sunday, we had a lazy morning before doing some shopping and taking Jessie for a walk. I'd arranged to go to stay with my parents for a couple of days, so I packed a few things and headed west at around 4pm. I stopped off at Sarah's house first and was greeted with a little strawberry and white chocolate cake and candles. She'd also prepared fresh strawberries and a Highlights hot chocolate... she knows me so well.

After eating and talking with Sarah for an hour or so, I drove to my parents' house and caught up with them for a few hours before going to bed. I haven't seen them for a few months so it was lovely to catch up properly and to exchange some funny stories. 

Monday 

On the Monday, I'd arranged a spa day in Machynys Pensinsula Golf Club and Premier Spa with Nicola. We got there early and went to the gym for half an hour, then we had our back, neck and shoulder massages before lunch. We went to the hydro spa after lunch and had the whole place to ourselves. We spent loads of time relaxing in the jacuzzi and also made use of the sauna, aromatherapy room, steam room and heated stone chairs. It was such a relaxing day and it definitely encouraged me to make time for spa days more often.

After I got home from the spa day, I went to the Harvester with my parents for birthday meal number two. The three of us ordered the classic burger and it was SO GOOD. You absolutely can't go wrong with the Harvester in our opinion, and the service was impeccable as always. I had a voucher for a free sundae, so we shared two of their giant monstrosities between the three of us. I'm glad we didn't have one each as I couldn't even manage half of mine!

Tuesday 

On Tuesday, it was finally my birthday. I woke up and opened my cards and presents from my parents, then we went to Costa for a celebratory hot chocolate. The weather was absolutely hideous, but I didn't have any outdoor plans so I didn't particularly mind. 

After having some cake with my parents for lunch, I drove back to Penarth in torrential rain to spend the rest of my birthday with Neil and Jessie. I opened my presents from Neil and all my cards from family and friends, then we took Jessie for a walk as the weather had vastly improved. We then went to Tony's in Penarth town centre for birthday meal number three. It's one of our favourite restaurants, and the food and service was amazing as per usual. 

The presents! 

I know most of you probably clicked on this purely to see my birthday haul, so I had to include a little section on my gifts. I had lots of lovely presents, most of which are photographed below. 

The Minnie Mouse cupcakes were from Nicola and were a very tasty surprise. I had lots of bath and shower products and plenty of Disney themed gifts, along with an amazing phone case from clever Jessie which featured her own face. In addition to the gifts below, I also had a New Look gift card from my parents in law, a Lush gift box from my sister in law and an afternoon tea voucher from Sarah. As always, I'm really grateful to everyone for my gifts and I've already made use of quite a few of them!

After four days of celebrating with lots of my favourite people, it was very hard to get up to go to work on Wednesday. However, I felt as if I'd had a nice long break and it was the best birthday I've had since my 30th birthday three years ago. 

Now that my birthday is over for another year, I'm counting down to Christmas... 198 days to go! 

A summer of afternoon teas

Before last month, I'd only been for one afternoon tea in 2018. Can you believe it?

Thankfully, this precarious situation has been rectified over the last few weeks and I've been for two afternoon teas with lovely people. The first one was a brand new experience and the second was in one of my favourite haunts, so I thought I'd blog about them both to give you a bit of a flavour!

Sarah bought a voucher for a Mad Hatter's afternoon tea in Llety Cynin for my birthday back in June. We decided to book it for a Saturday in mid August as a mid point between both our birthdays. I stayed in Sarah's house on the Friday night to make a proper weekend of it, and we drove to Llety Cynin on the Saturday afternoon with high expectations.

From the minute we arrived, we definitely weren't disappointed. The function room was smaller than expected and only had about six tables, but this was a good thing as it meant our food was brought out quickly and it was nice and quiet. The room was perfectly themed and we even had photo props on our table. It was immediately clear that a lot of thought had gone into the whole afternoon tea experience as well as the food itself.

I had a peach iced tea to start which was tasty and refreshing. We were told we could have tea, coffee or iced tea to drink, or all three if we were so inclined! Unlimited drink refills were also made available for us if we wanted them, free of charge. 

The food came out within about ten minutes and it was a very impressive sight, to put it mildly. I loved the effort that had gone into the presentation, mostly because it made it very instagrammable. We had a selection of sandwiches, chive scones with cream cheese and parma ham, and an amazing selection of cakes.

The cakes were all homemade, including the Jammy Dodger, and the macaron was one of the best cakes I've ever had at an afternoon tea. I didn't need to eat anything for the rest of the day which is always a good sign that they didn't skimp on the portions. 

A few weeks after my great experience at Llety Cynin's Mad Hatter's afternoon tea with Sarah, Liz came to visit for a few hours on a lovely sunny day. We booked a table at Pettigrew Tea Rooms as it's one of our old favourites, and Liz also brought Abigail along (her 8 month old baby) for her very first afternoon tea experience!

One of the many plus points for Pettigrew Tea Rooms is that you have loads of choice when it comes to your drink, sandwiches, scones and cake. They have a great choice of flavoured teas on offer, as well as coffee and hot chocolate. I went for the Mango Noir tea as I'd never tried it before, and I managed to drink an entire teapot of it. 

We chose egg mayonnaise, brie and fruit chutney, and cheddar and tomato on mixed bread for our sandwiches, and we also had fruit scones with all the trimmings. And, as is customary at Pettigrew Tea Rooms, we had a massive slab of cake to finish. We both opted for the Passionfruit, Lime and Coconut loaf cake to take away and it was scrumptious. I was a little bit gutted that I offered to share it with Neil.. that'll teach me for trying to be thoughtful. 

I'm on a mission to make sure I book in a couple more afternoon teas before the end of 2018, and I've already got one booked in tomorrow with Amy which I'm very excited about. As always, keep an eye on my Instagram for updates. 

Do you have any afternoon tea recommendations for me? Let me know in the comments! 

Afternoon tea at Llanerch Vineyard

Did you know that going out for afternoon tea is one of my favourite pastimes? If your answer is 'no', you must be new here!

After visiting Llanerch Vineyard a couple of times for Sunday lunch (read my review here), I decided I really wanted to try their afternoon tea. As my friend Sarah's 30th birthday was rapidly approaching, I had a lightbulb moment and bought her a voucher for traditional afternoon tea at Llanerch Vineyard. Two objectives in one - an excellent birthday present and an opportunity to go for afternoon tea at a new venue!

We booked our afternoon tea for a couple of weeks ago, and our table was in the Cariad bistro which is a beautifully decorated room overlooking the vineyard. We were given a menu to choose our pots of loose leaf tea, but the rest of the afternoon tea was a standard fixed menu. This suited me fine as I'm not very decisive, particularly when it comes to food! I went for the delicious Strawberry and Kiwi tea and was very excited when it came with its own egg-timer to guarantee the perfect brewing time.

After sipping on our teas for a while and catching up on all the latest news, our magnificent three-tiered spectacle arrived...

Obviously there are sandwiches on the bottom tier, but I never tend to photograph those as they're my least favourite part (no offence, sandwiches of the world). The sandwich flavours were cream cheese and cucumber, chicken and tarragon, ham and mustard, and salmon and creme fraiche. They were all lovely, but let's move on to the most exciting parts... I was hugely impressed with the second tier in particular. Scones, Welsh cakes AND banana bread! The scones came with the usual clotted cream and strawberry jam and were among the best I've ever tasted, and the Welsh cakes and banana bread were amazing too. Definitely the best and most unique second tier I've ever had. 

Moving on to the cakes on the top tier... as you can see, there were four little cakes for each person rather than one big slice. The offerings on this particular day were raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake, strawberry macaron, lemon curd meringue tart, and peanut butter and chocolate brownie. They were all exquisite and I could have eaten them all twice over! The raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake was my absolute favourite, closely followed by the strawberry macaron.

The traditional afternoon tea at Llanerch Vineyard is £16.50 per person. I think this is very reasonable considering the quality and quantity of the food, along with the beautiful setting and the excellent service. You can also pay a little more to opt for the sparkling afternoon tea or the Cariad afternoon tea if you fancy a glass of Prosecco or Champagne with your food for a special occasion.

After this excellent afternoon tea experience, I can't wait to go back to Llanerch Vineyard again. Have you ever visited the vineyard for afternoon tea? What did you think?

Birthday haul #1 - gifts I can gaze at!

I turned 30 a few weeks ago and I've already blogged about my lovely birthday weekend. I've been completely overwhelmed by all the thoughtful gifts, cards and surprises I've received from various friends and family members so I thought I'd write a few blog posts to share these gems with my readers.

Although this birthday seems to have gone on for weeks as I've had lots of presents, cards and meals at different times, here's the haul I opened on my actual birthday morning...

Having to arrange your presents neatly before you tear into them is such a #bloggerproblem, isn't it? Not to mention photographing everything after you've opened them... I just tell myself that it'll be worth it when I've published all my posts! 

I'm going to start this mini series by blogging about the birthday gifts I received which I could happily gaze at all day long. It won't surprise you to discover that this post is almost entirely Disney themed...

Chip and Dale Disney Traditions figurine from Neil,

and a Bambi figurine from my nephews. Very cute, I think you'll agree.

A Belle figurine from Nicola. How beautiful is this?! 

Jungle Book canvas from Chris. I can't wait to hang this up!

In addition to these beautiful gifts, I certainly had something to gaze at when I went out for a belated birthday meal with Nicola and Sarah (my best friends from school) last week. I was spoilt rotten with a giant balloon, birthday badge, more presents and a surprise cake - my eyes were like saucers! 

I need to tear myself away from gazing at these gifts to write my next blog post at some point... check back soon to read my post on birthday gifts I can wear! 

My 30th birthday weekend

It was my birthday last weekend... I turned 30! Don't you just love it when your birthday falls on a Saturday? I enjoyed a whole weekend of lovely activities so I thought I'd blog about what I got up to.

My Friday evening started well when I got home from the gym and found Neil baking a summer fruits cake. An excellent start to every weekend! It was a total surprise so I found the whole thing very exciting.

We continued our weekend of indulgence later that evening with a couple of glasses of wine in the sunshine while we waited for dinner to cook (hence the R2D2 kitchen timer). I love sitting out in the garden on a quiet evening... it makes me feel relaxed, which is often a difficult feeling for me to achieve.

We tried Tesco Finest's 'two dine for £10' deal for the first time on Friday night and decided on potato wedges, beef and pulled pork pizza with salsa verde, and mango and passionfruit torte. All three options were amazing! 

I woke up early on Saturday morning to squeal excitedly and to open all my presents and cards. 30 or not, I'm like a child when it comes to my birthday. I'm planning to write a separate post on my fantastic presents so I'll save all those photos and descriptions for a later date. Taking the perfect photos of all my gifts before finding a home for them is definitely a #bloggerproblem and took me a good half an hour!

When I went downstairs later that morning after getting ready, Neil had a surprise waiting for me in the kitchen... our very own afternoon tea! He'd gone to loads of effort and made cheese & tomato and ham & mustard sandwiches, as well as the star feature of the homemade summer fruits cake. 

After eating the delicious sandwiches, scones and cake and drinking our fruity green tea, we hopped on a bus to Cardiff Bay for the afternoon. Cardiff Bay is one of my favourite local places to visit, particularly on a sunny day. We wandered around for a couple of hours to take in the sights, and I had a very decadent hot chocolate in Cadwaladers! 

We sat in the garden for half an hour after getting back from the bay, then I went to get ready for my surprise birthday evening meal. I decided to wear my Christmas sale dress from New Look for the first time, along with a couple of my new jewellery pieces (more on those in my upcoming 'birthday haul' post). 

I was very pleased when Neil drove me to Miller and Carter as it's one of my favourite restaurants and always feels like a special treat. We ordered the bread sharer to start then I had a tasty fillet steak with all the trimmings, washed down with a glass of Prosecco. Top marks! 

Neil had yet another surprise planned for me on Sunday afternoon... Llanerch Vineyard for Sunday lunch! The weather was beautiful so we were able to walk around the vineyard and soak up some sun after our massive meal. I had the butternut squash and ginger soup to start, roast sirloin for my main, and lemon posset for dessert. It's fair to say that the whole lot was spectacular and I can't wait until our next visit. We sat in the conservatory section of the restaurant, right next to the window, so we enjoyed a nice view with our lunch!

After we got back from Llanerch Vineyard, my in-laws came around for an hour to sit in the garden as it was such a sunny evening. It was lovely to relax in the sun and chat for a while about what we'd all been up to over the weekend. After they'd left, we finished off our day with a stunning evening walk to Penarth Pier. The beautiful views and the tranquil experience encouraged us to go for evening walks more often! 

I feel so fortunate to have had such a great birthday weekend (good planning, Neil), and I'm looking forward to going to visit my parents and friends in West Wales next week for part two of my 30th birthday celebrations. You definitely haven't seen the end of my birthday blog posts... watch this space!