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Birthday and Christmas Time!

December has always been one of my favourite months, mostly because I have my birthday and Christmas within about a week of each other! It can be a bit annoying, I quite often get forgotten about because people get so wrapped up in Christmas... get it, wrapped up... But on the whole it's pretty good, everyone's in a good mood, everywhere is covered in tinsel and fairy lights and I can drink mulled wine and eat Christmas food till the cows come home.

This December has been as lovely as ever, lots of working, shopping, good news and birthday treats. Here's a little insight into what I've been up to!

I started off settling into a new role at work, I moved onto Reception which is something I've not really done before but I love being in the middle of everything, talking to guests and despite not being a morning person at all, I can even put up with being sat at a desk at 7am. There's also surprisingly more to the role than online shopping and polishing apples... We also take advantage of the 50% off cocktails, dinner and free activities!

I also get to work on my extensive repertoire of hilarious jokes. 
First I had an apple...

And now it's a pear!

This is where I've been spending most of my time this Christmas. And to be honest, if I have to work over Christmas I can think of worse places to do it...

I've made a few friends who help out behind Reception from time to time.

Anywho, enough about work... I've also not spent enough time with two of my favourite people and my second favourite dog. Josie, James and little Coco! We attempted taking some photos for James' mum and dads Christmas presents which would have been amazing but unfortunately it wasn't that easy. James was more interested in chewing the letters and playing on the gravel so we ended up throwing on coats and wellies and just messing about outside for the morning. 

We then treated James to one of his favourite past times... a trip on the Park & Ride which excites him far more than is normal. Josie explained to him that we'd be getting off soon and going to Nandos and a wander round the Christmas market by the cathedral (some of our favourite past times, only fair!) and James made it very clear how he felt about this... "No, bye bye, go away" Little charmer. 

James' first Nandos went down a treat and he was the worlds nicest child for the rest of the day. 

We then went home, dropped off the little one and sat down for a well earned cup of tea.

Mum and I have decided to make our Christmas shopping trips something of a tradition... Last year we went to Bristol and this year we went for a little miniature trip to Tavistock and then the big one in Bath!

In Tavistock I picked up some little presents for friends and these adorable little handmade felt lion slippers for James. They're so cute I couldn't resist!

We stopped for a cheeky Costa, as per, and I introduced mum to 'skinny honeycomb hot chocolates with no cream and a shot of espresso' well worth the difficult order and the irritated look from the poor sod making your drink.

I also laid my hands on my very first Christmas jumper! I absolutely love it, it's so festively tacky with the pom poms, diamantes and fluff that it would've been rude not to get it. It's from New Look and cost £27.99!

And then there was Bath...  It's one of my favourite places and we'd heard the Christmas market was worth a visit. We get up nice and early, stop en route for coffee and breakfast and have some festive music playing in the background whilst we put the world to rights! Then came the serious shopping... we lasted about four hours before having to drop off the shopping at the car having run out of arms and topping up the parking ticket! We walked right to the top of the main street and went in a lovely little shop called Vinegar Hill filled with lots of perfect gifts, jewellery and homey things! 

Another element of our shopping trip tradition... Mum finds a dress she falls in love with and has to buy it for any Christmas/New Year event that she might possibly be invited to that year. So this time we decided to stop off in Ted Baker and I bumped into an old colleague and had a quick catch up! Having spent nearly 2 years staring at the inside of a Ted Baker concession, it's somewhat lost its charm for me unfortunately but mum still loves it and we ended up getting a gorgeous below the knee gold number which looked a bit like a sack on the hanger to be honest but the sales assistant suggested she try it on. Lo and behold it was perfect and she looked really amazing. I didn't manage to get a photo of mum in the dress but this is the one from the website!

The market was HUGE! And full of mulled wine and mince pie stands and all sorts of amazing presents you'd never think of buying. I stumbled upon this company called Welsh Slate that sell things made out of slate... fancy that. So they had these really cool wine racks made of solid slate which had big holes cut right through to pop a bottle of vino in. 

I picked one up with 2 holes for dad and thought it would look really cool next to his woodburner with a couple bottles of red in!

After we'd spent about an hour lusting over Jo Malone perfume and me trying to talk mum into the Earl grey & Cucumber one as a Christmas present we had finally worn ourselves out shopping. The bank account had taken a serious battering and so we made our way back to the car and settled in for the journey home. We stopped on the way to pick up food supplies as Josie was on her way over for a slap up comfort meal!

We had baked camembert with garlic and rosemary, baked cheese bread and some amazing apple and cider chutney that Josie kindly bought me from the christmas market in Exeter. Next was garlic and rosemary (notice a theme here) chicken roasted with chorizo, creamy mash and cauliflower cheese. Low in carbs obviously.... And we actually had to give the melt in the middle chocolate puddings a miss, there was literally no more room! Also, those roast in a bag things are incredible, the chicken is amazing!

Thought I'd share my dad's genius Christmas card with you too, bet you can't get why it's even a Christmas card! It took me a good five minutes. 

Next up on December's agenda was my 20th birthday, no longer a teenager! Not allowed to laugh at 'bum' or 'boobies' any more..... I had an amazing birthday, it was almost perfect! I was spoilt rotten right from breakfast in bed!

I started the day with an amazing surprise from mum, she's made it a bit of a tradition to buy me something from Tiffany's for my birthday (lucky for me, not so lucky for her) and this year she completely surprised me and got me this beautiful ring. It's actually a chain rather than a solid band and looks so dainty and pretty. I'd totally forgotten that whilst I was at work about a month before we'd been browsing the Tiffany website and I cheekily sent mum a photo of this ring with the little kissy face emoticon almost as a kind of joke and thought no more about it until it fell out of the little blue pouch and into my hand! There was definitely almost tears...

Dad also treated me to a little late night shopping trip the Thursday before and helped me pick out my beautiful new watch which hasn't left my arm since... I already had a white and gold chunky watch that I wear everyday but it looked a bit too casual and clunky with my tweed country work uniform so this one is perfect and I absolutely love it. We found it in John Lewis by a brand called Skaagen from Denmark. It was the first one we'd seen which pleased dad no end because he'd been dragged around every other shop in Exeter that could possibly sell watches 'just in case' i saw another one. The lady who served us offered to adjust it there and then for me which was great but turned out to be highly embarrassing when it had gotten too tight to fit back on the display cushion because of my stupid childlike twig wrists! But there we go...

Mum and I spent the day being pampered at Bovey in the spa. We both had full body envelopments, which sounds scarier than it is, followed by a facial and then I waited for mum whilst she had her nails done and we went down for a glass of wine and some lunch which was a perfect opportunity to show off my new ring!

I then stopped off for a glass of mulled wine and a catch up with dad in a little pub in Chagford, we had a quick walk through the shops before he dropped me home where we were descended on by my extended family for 'party tea' (never too old) and cake.

It was an amazing birthday and I feel very lucky to have so many lovely people around me :)


Including these two weirdos... This is what happens when mum tries to get us to sit nicely for a sibling photo.

And this one sums up how I'll feel at the end of December when all the craziness is over for another year! Roll on that week off in January, it's been far too long...

Top tip: If you can't find a pillow, use the dog. Sorry Stanley. 

xxxxx