FAMILY WEEKLY UPDATE: BIRTHDAY PREP, NEW IPAD & MUSICAL THEATRE PARTY
Family Weekly Update
This week's family weekly update covers 20th–26th July, and it was a very busy one! Between a theatre trip, an early birthday date with Lawrence, the children's last days at school and getting everything ready for my birthday, I seemed to spend most of the week making, designing or organising something.#
There was also a very exciting early birthday present, plenty of musical theatre-themed crafting and, by Sunday evening, we'd finished the week with cake, friends and a very nostalgic game of Lips on the Xbox 360.
💻 Monday – Editing Day
Monday was a fairly normal start to the week. I spent most of the day doing what I usually do on a Monday – editing our weekly vlog and writing the previous week's family weekly update for the blog.
It might not be the most exciting way to start the week, but both jobs always seem to take much longer than I expect!
🎂 Tuesday – Designing My Birthday Cake
My birthday was at the end of the week and we were having a few friends round on Sunday to celebrate.
I didn't really want to make my own birthday cake, but I couldn't find anything I particularly liked in the shops either. In the end, I decided to order a plain cake from Costco and decorate it myself using my edible printer and lots of sprinkles.
Obviously, I couldn't just make a simple cake topper!
I decided to give the cake a musical theatre theme, and because I didn't have much time to design everything from scratch, I used AI to help me come up with some of the artwork.
One idea quickly turned into another, and before I knew it I was also designing musical theatre-themed crisp packets and KitKat wrappers to match.
That pretty much took up my entire day!
🎭 Wednesday – The Spy Who Came in from the Cold at The Lowry
During the day I caught up on some housework before heading to The Lowry with Mum in the evening to review The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
Dad dropped us off opposite the Imperial War Museum North at around 7pm and we walked across the bridge to The Lowry.
Once we arrived, I collected my programme from the Box Office, had a quick look at the merchandise and then we headed into the Lyric Theatre to find our seats.
We were sitting in Stalls Row N, Seats 25 and 26, which gave us a great clear and central view of the stage.
The play started at 7:30pm and finished at around 9:50pm. Dad came to pick us up afterwards and, when I got home, I decided to make a start on my review while everything was still fresh in my mind.
Apparently I was more tired than I realised because I ended up falling asleep while writing it, so I had to finish it the following day!
👉 You can read more about our trip to see The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and my shorter review [HERE – ADD SARAH MONAGHAN LINK WHEN LIVE]
👉 Read my full The Spy Who Came in from the Cold review on All About Theatre HERE.
🎳 Thursday – Bowling, TGI Fridays & My New iPad
Thursday was the only day Lawrence was off while the children were still at school, so we decided to have an early birthday day out together.
We caught the bus to the Trafford Centre and started with a game of bowling at King Pins.
Of course, I had to get a raspberry blue slushie. I don't think I can go bowling without one anymore – it's basically tradition!
Neither of us played particularly well, and somehow it turned into an incredibly close game that came down to the final go. Unfortunately for me, Lawrence won.
After bowling, we walked across from Trafford Palazzo to the Trafford Centre for lunch at TGI Fridays.
I'd been looking forward to this for ages because I love their steak with the whisky glaze. We went for the lunchtime menu, which was £12.49 for a starter, main and drink, although the steak was an additional £8.
I chose garlic ciabatta bread with cheese for my starter and a medium-rare steak with chips for my main, while Lawrence went for chicken bites followed by the whisky-glazed sesame chicken burger. We also ordered some whisky-glazed sesame chicken strips to share.
Lawrence accidentally ordered a Fanta that wasn't included in the offer, so he somehow ended up with two drinks!
For dessert, we ordered a chocolate fudge cake with ice cream to share, which was a lovely way to finish our early birthday lunch.
The food was delicious, and we've already decided that once the children are back at school we'll have to go again.
Before leaving the Trafford Centre, I checked my Krispy Kreme app and spotted a 12 doughnuts for £12 offer, so obviously we couldn't ignore that. We also popped into the Haribo shop, where I treated myself to some birthday sweets – Red Crush and Strawberry Softies.
We then walked over to ASDA for a quick look around and picked up some onion ring crisps for Alice, as they're one of her favourites at the moment, before catching the bus home.
Once we got back, I finally finished my review of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
Then my birthday present from Lawrence arrived!
Technically, I'd found it and ordered it myself and he'd paid for it, but that still counts as a birthday present, right?
I'd chosen a refurbished 9th generation Apple iPad and Apple Pencil. I was slightly concerned when the iPad arrived in nothing more than a padded envelope, but thankfully it looked fine.
Once I'd charged it and checked everything was working properly, I got it all set up and bought Procreate.
The main reason I wanted an iPad was so I could start drawing my own artwork and eventually use my designs on things like mugs and notebooks. It's something I've wanted to try for a while, so I'm really excited to start learning how to use Procreate properly and get back into drawing again.
🎶 Friday – Last Day of School & A Musical Theatre Game
Apparently designing a cake topper, crisp packets and KitKat wrappers wasn't enough musical theatre birthday preparation for me because on Friday I decided to create an entire musical theatre card game!
I designed the game, worked out all the rules and started planning the different cards. I thought it would be something fun we could play when my friends came round on Sunday.
Mum and Dad also dropped off my Costco cake, which they'd kindly collected for me.
I didn't get chance to start making the game cards straight away because I needed to collect Alice from school a little earlier than usual as it was the last day of term.
Once I'd collected Alice, we headed over to Leo's school, where they were holding a special parade around the playground to celebrate his final day there. It felt quite strange knowing this was his last day at the school, especially after it had been such a big part of our routine.
Once we were back home, it was straight back into party-preparation mode and I started designing toppers for the cupcakes and biscuits.
🍰 Saturday – Cake Decorating & Party Preparations
Saturday was basically one enormous birthday-preparation day.
The children and I walked to the local shops to pick up a few things I still needed for Sunday, including crisps and biscuits.
Alice had received a £5 Amazon voucher from school for her hard work and improvement with her maths. I added the voucher to our Amazon account and gave her £5 in cash so she could choose something from the shop instead.
She chose a cute cherries plush for £1.99 and a Dora the Explorer playset for £2.99.
I also spotted a Disney Princess stationery set and couldn't resist buying it. I'm a stationery addict and I love Disney Princesses, so there was really no chance I was leaving that behind!
When we got home, it was finally time to decorate my Costco cake.
I added the musical theatre cake topper I'd printed using my edible printer and finished it with the sprinkles that had conveniently arrived while we were out. I was really pleased with how it turned out, especially considering I'd started with such a simple plain cake.
I then quickly made a batch of cupcakes before moving on to the crisp packets I'd designed earlier in the week. Now that I'd bought the actual crisps, I could finally put everything together.
Then I went back to working on my musical theatre card game.
I'd decided that the song cards would use QR codes linking to the correct songs, so every card needed its own code. After completing around 50 cards, I realised I was planning to make approximately 300 altogether.
There was absolutely no chance I was finishing that before Sunday!
I decided to put the game on the back burner and finish it properly at a later date rather than rushing it.
Instead, I moved on to making some treats. I melted white chocolate and coloured half pink and half green before covering mini pretzels in each colour. I also dipped some wafer biscuits in pink chocolate and added sprinkles.
Finally, I used the remaining pink chocolate to make little pretzel nests. I broke up some pretzel sticks, mixed them into the chocolate, spooned the mixture into muffin cases and popped them into the fridge to set.
By that point, I'd definitely done enough baking and crafting for one day!
🎈 Sunday – It's My Birthday!
Sunday was finally my birthday!
I spent the morning finishing the last few things before everyone arrived. I iced the cupcakes I'd made the day before, as well as some biscuits we'd bought from the shop, and added the edible toppers I'd printed to both. I was really pleased with how everything came together.
While I prepared the party food, Lawrence blew up some balloons and put up a few decorations.
Our friends arrived at around 6pm, and we spent the first part of the evening eating all the food I'd prepared and having a good catch-up.
Then we decided to get my old Xbox 360 out and play Lips.
I hadn't played it in ages, but it was so much fun. Leo really enjoyed joining in too, and of course there was one song that absolutely had to be performed.
Whenever my friend Ste and I play Lips, it's tradition for us to sing The Phantom of the Opera together, so naturally we had to bring that tradition back!
Eventually everyone sang Happy Birthday, I blew out the candles on my musical theatre cake and cut it up for everyone. I then opened my presents before everyone headed home.
Once we'd got the children into bed, Lawrence and I did a quick tidy-up, watched a little TV and, naturally, finished my birthday with another piece of cake.
It had been a very busy week, but it was such a lovely way to spend my birthday.
Final Thoughts
Looking back at this week's family weekly update, I seem to have spent most of my time either designing, making or decorating something!
What started with the simple idea of buying a plain Costco cake somehow turned into designing a musical theatre cake topper, crisp packets, KitKat wrappers, cupcake toppers, biscuit toppers and an entire card game that will eventually contain around 300 cards.
Getting my iPad and Apple Pencil has also made me really excited to start drawing again. I haven't properly drawn for quite a while, and I'm looking forward to learning Procreate and experimenting with creating my own artwork.
It was also a big week for the children with the end of the school year and Leo saying goodbye to his school, before we finished everything off by celebrating my birthday with friends and family.
There was lots of food, far too much cake and plenty of terrible singing on Lips – which sounds like a pretty good birthday to me!
Now I just need to finish those other 250 cards...
Watch Weekly Vlog #461
You can watch everything from this week's family weekly update, including my birthday preparations, our bowling trip, my new iPad and Apple Pencil and my birthday celebrations, in Weekly Vlog #461 below.
Comments