Sunday 3 March 2013

Sam Sunday 6: The Birthday Edition


It's been a busy week here as Friday was my birthday! I turned 27 and had a nice evening out with my family.  And then on Saturday, my husband took me to Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant in Stratford as part of my birthday presents, and I had the most delicious meal.  I'm not a foodie but I do enjoy cooking so it was a lovely treat.  I had an antipasti board of cured meats, cheeses and pickles/jams followed by a ragu of different meats with tagliatelle.  Yummy :)

We've also given notice to our landlord that we don't wish to renew our contract at the end of March so we now officially have one month to get moved into the new house.  I'm hoping it can be done.  Our landlord is already advertising our current house so we're getting a steady stream of visitors.  It's always a bit awkward as it's not 'our house' but we did decorate it; luckily we've not had any tricky comments yet!  I had to phone our solicitors and have a big moan at them on Friday as they've not done anything on our case all week - I'm going to phone back tomorrow and check things are actually happening as I'm not going to be homeless due to their incompetence! We're looking to exchange on the 15th and then move on the 22nd.

Aside from that, it's been business as usual this week with work etc.  Next weekend I'm baking cupcakes for a friend of my sisters as it's her hen do.  As part of the evening they're going to see Wicked so I'm making coconut and lime cupcakes with green icing and a sugar paste witches' hat.  For the rest of today I plan to curl up with a good book before my in-laws come to visit in the evening.  Hope you all had a good week :)

This week, I've been reading:

  

Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth - this is a historical fiction retelling of Rapunzel for a blog tour I have coming up on March 11th.  It was incredible, one of my favourite reads of the year so far.
Vow by Wendy Plump - I'm just over half-way through this memoir of marital infidelity.  It's well written and incredibly honest.

Review Posted:

16 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday Sam! Sounds like you had a lovely time - I love Jamie's Italian especially the breads! :-)
    Hope the move works out for you - I remember how stressful the timing can be. Good luck!

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  2. Happy Birthday! I always wanted to go to Jamie's Italian, there's one near where we used to live so maybe we'll get there one day! Hope the move works, we've just started looking at properties this week - very exciting! I'm also reading a memoir about infidelity at the moment (Cleaving by Julie Powell), also includes butchery and is weird but interesting.

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  3. Happy Birthday!! Jamie's Italian sounds wonderful. Good luck with the packing and moving :-)

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  4. Happy birthday belated! And happy packing!

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  5. Happy late birthday! And very very very best of luck with the move -- that can be such a headache, and I hope it goes smoothly for y'all.

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  6. Happy birthday! It sounds like it was lovely, especially the eating part :-)

    I love the cover of Bitter Greens.

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  7. Happy belated birthday! Bitter Greens was a lovely book I thoroughly enjoyed too.

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  8. Happy happy birthday! Aren't February birthdays the best? ;) I hope your move goes off without a hitch!

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  9. Happy Birthday, Sam - Jamie's sounds the perfect way to celebrate your special day.

    Best of luck with the move. :-)

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  10. Happy Birthday :) We have one of those restaurants in Leeds - I keep meaning to go as I've heard wonderful things, but I just haven't had chance.

    Good luck with the cupcakes - lime and coconut sounds amazing.

    I need to get started on Bitter Greens! I've picked it up and stroked it lovingly a few times, but that's as far as I've gotten. I'm really excited about it, but I've spent this week just rereading old Terry Pratchett books. I haven't got enough time to read something that I need to pay attention to!

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  11. Happy birthday and happy moving!

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  12. Happy birthday to you! :)

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  13. Happy Birthday :-)

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  14. Happy belated birthday Sam! I've been to Jamie's Italian in Cambridge once and the food was very good.
    I'm reading Bitter Greens at the moment also for the blog tour and was glad to see that you had liked it a lot. Good luck with the move.

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  15. Happy birthday!!! Hope you had a good day!

    I recently finished Bitter Greens and really enjoyed it!

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  16. Happy Birthday! Bitter Greens looks interesting. I like the idea of it and the cover is eye-catching!

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