MY BIRTHDAY and Christmas is separated only by ONE WEEK. Ever since I was a CHILD I have always celebrated my birthday on the day of my birthday, on NEW YEARS EVE. It is the perfect birthday date because as a kid you don't have to go to school (and compared to summer.. where everyone is away, many people are at home) and as an adult most people don't work that day- at least not all day.. and even more importantly.. almost nobody needs to work the day after. In BERGEN where I grew up, New Years Eve is also the big CANDY day because we go JULEBUKK, it's a tradition similar to the American trick or treat tradition, where children during Christmas, or in my case, on New Years Eve, go from door to door singing carols for cakes and candy. When you grow older you realize it's the big day of CHAMPAGNE and CIGARS, which is not much worse. And did I mention the fireworks, I love that there is always fireworks on my birthday.
When I was a child my friends would come over for HOT DOGS and a CAKE shaped as SANTA'S FACE, the party would always end with my father firing up some fireworks. I found it especially exciting because in Norway there are rules for when on New Years you can start firing ..and my dad had to break that rule to make it before everyone had to go home.
As I got older traditions changed and I started having BRUNCH with my girlfriends every New Years. Later in the day I would celebrate with dinner with my family and the evening would most often end with a party somewhere. After I moved to Berlin the brunch has turned into a grown up CHAMPAGNE VERSION continued by dinner at the fantastic thai restaurant EDD'S. (Every birthday of course starts with gift opening in bed.)
As you might understand I have always had GREAT BIRTHDAYS ..of course maybe except of the year when I FELL OF THE CHAIR I was dancing on ..and landed on a stereo bench and a bunch of STRING INSTRUMENTS. Luckily the instruments survived, I on the other hand was covered in BRUISES and spent the rest of the evening on the toilet crying half naked(I was wearing a jumpsuit and those who have ever worn one know what kind of problems that lead to when you need to go to the toilet... or locate all your bruises) and feeling like Bridget Jones ..because I was at a COUPLES PARTY with a BROKEN HEART and big painful bruises all over... When your birthday and New Years collide there is room for a lot of fun, but also complete disasters if things go wrong..
Luckily there has not been more of those birthdays.. especially for my friends who had to comfort me that evening ..and their boyfriends who didn't really know each other and ended up having to sing KARAOKE together for a couple of hours..
Well, my intention with this post was not initially to talk about how much I love my birthday and my beloved birthday traditions, it kind of just happened.. but to talk about the GIFT COMPLICATIONS that comes with having your birthday and Christmas separated by only one week. You should think that I had stopped obsessing about presents at a certain age, but after spent a year in Berlin with limited income that was an issue that returned strongly to my consciousness in December. Especially because my birthday and Christmas is so close.. I don't get a second chance in about half a year if I kind of forget what I wish for around Christmas... so I knew I had to ATTACK THIS PROBLEM full on this year...
This/last year I therefor made a very DETAILED GIFT LIST (read: I also bought some of my present my self and told people they were giving it to me) and that turned out to pay off really well. The best thing about the gifts I got this year was still the combination of getting things I really wanted that people was kind enough to give me together with all the things I didn't ask for that still made me really happy. To all of you I will therefor say THANK YOU, I LOVED MY PRESENTS THIS YEAR!
For the record; a grey ALPACA sweater from COS that's super warm and soft, a VALENTINO FILM that I had not heard of that I am looking forward to watching, dark green HUNTER BOOTS that goes well with the wet and gray Berlin weather, dark grey FALKE TIGHTS, a CASHMERE SET from COS that I love wearing to bed at night, a beautiful timeless SILVER and PEARL BRACELET and NECKLESS by STEPHANIE SCHNEIDER, a pair of supertight highwaist CHEEP MONDAY JEANS that makes a post Christmas existence with some extra kilos much easier to handle, a grey WOOL HAT, my regular and classic mascara HYPNOSE from LANCOME, a pair of SUPERSOFT WOOLSOCKS in beautiful colors, shower gel and body lotion from one of my favorites; L'OCCITANE, hand sanitizer in a nice beautiful bottle that might come handy in these flue times, a pair of black leather WINTER BOOTS from SHABBIES AMSTERDAM, a skin product kit from ORIGINS, a handmade card from YRJA, a watch from GLITTER, a HOT WATER BOTTLE wrapped in CASHMERE with matching socks from JOHNSTONS, VOGUE .. and two more thing that people who follows my blog knows I can never get enough of; CHAMPAGNE and FLOWERS.
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