Farewell Party!

Time has come for us to say goodbye to London and everything that comes with it. Needless to say, after more than eleven years in this city, this is hard. Not only is London a truly amazing city but it is also the city we have chosen to call home. 

To mark the event, last Sunday we threw a little farewell picnic party at Potters Fields and we were blessed with glorious weather. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and the Tower Bridge was ever so majestic. Here are some pictures of such a lovely day with our beloved friends. I am not ready to say goodbye to any of this yet! 

Emilia is two!

It's Emilia's birthday today. It's hard to believe but she turned two. Where did time go? 

We are throwing a little party in her honour this Saturday, however, we still wanted to celebrate a bit today. So, we played with personalised balloons from Finland and ate a delicious almond and cherries cake. Emilia loved all the attention and practised blowing the candles before the big performance in front of everybody this weekend! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dariana's First Birthday Party

Earlier today Emilia and I went to a birthday party. Our local friend, Dariana, turned one and we were invited to a costume party. As I didn't have time to shop around to get something for Emilia, I looked into her wardrobe to see if I could fix something at the last minute and thankfully I found the lovely fairy wings that Matilde gave to Emilia for her first birthday party. Perfect! Originally I wanted to put on a dress, she has a lovely grey and pink dress that goes just wonderfully with the wings, however, it's rather chilly in London these days and it was raining when we were heading out, so I had to dress her with trousers and boots instead! 

On the other hand, the birthday girl was wearing a super cute Flamenco dress that her parents bought for her on a recent trip to Spain. How adorable is she? 

 

 

 

Like Emilia, Dariana is a bit of a mix too: her mum, Katrin, is Russian, while her daddy is from New Zealand. Katrin cooked all sorts of Russian nibbles, there was even caviar on the table! She is also a professional piano player and entertained us all with wonderful classical music and of course played the Happy Birthday song for her sweet little darling. 

At first it was just Emilia and Dariana but then another Russian friend, Sophia, joined to play together. It was a very cosy and sweet party and it's nice to see Emilia hanging out with little girls of her age. Our baby is growing up and has her own friends now!

 

Happy First Birthday Sweet Emilia!

Our little baby is officially no longer a baby! Today she turned one year old, can you believe it!? If you read this blog, you have heard me before saying how fast time has gone by in the last year and now, here we are, ceebrating her first birthday. Every birthday is special, at least, this is how I feel about birthdays. Some people don't see what the fuss is all about but I simply love celebrating birthdays. I have celebrated every single one and have the best memories of every birthday: there was the ethnic birthday, the red, the vintage, the college ones...every year I came up with something new. My old friends know what I am talking about and I am sure back then they hated me for forcing them to dress up according to the theme. 

So, of course, I had to celebrate Emilia's first birthday, perhaps, the most special birthday of all. For this occasion, I chose the enchanted forest theme. As we decided to celebrate with a party at my parents' garden, this theme was the obvious choice. Their garden is so lovely, just perfect to host parties, I think. 

It all started with the invite, isn't it sweet? I think it's my best  creation yet :)

And then I started browsing the Internet for some inspiration and asked my multi-talented mum to make crocheted crowns and magic wands for the little girls. Needles to say, they were a big hit!

 

 

Since her birthday fell on a Monday, we celebrated yesterday. What a nice Sunday afternoon that was! The whole family helped out decorating the garden, we had so much fun. We started in the morning and barely made it in time for the 4.00pm start. It's crazy how much we all worked to make sure that the party was absolutely beautiful. We all love Emilia so much that wanted to make sure she had the perfect first birthday party. I think the decor turned out just wonderful, the garden was really transformed into an enchanted forest!

 

 

For the kids we created a little play-and-dress-up area. They sat down to colour in specially made papers and had fun wearing the animal masks and the crowns! They were so sweet playing all together. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And while the kids played, the adults ate! The buffet was huge, I think we may have exaggerated this time! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, some of the adults played dressing-up too!

 

 

 

 

 

Overall we had such a lovely day. Most of all, Emilia really enjoyed being at the centre of the attention. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you all so much for making her day even more special! 

We love you - Vale, Rob and Emilia.