On Saturday, my fiancé turned 25 - but I started planning his surprise birthday 2 weeks prior to that!
It was towards the end of last month that I realised I had to do something special for him this year, as our usual 'get dressed up and go out for dinner' wouldn't work out. Not only are we in a worldwide lockdown situation, but due to his medical condition, he cannot even go outside for groceries for 12 weeks. Therefore, something had to be done to give him a cheerier isolation birthday.
Step 1: Google search for local businesses/caterers which are still happily running during this time to help make birthdays more special. These are the caterers that I contacted in case you live in Reading and also want to use them. I highly recommend both of them. Highly professional and lovely, friendly owners, not to mention that everything was absolutely delicious. I ordered the Lemon Drizzle cake from Time for Tea Vintage because it's Stephen's favourite, and I knew he would be missing his Mums tasty dessert this year. Although she was lovely enough to send over the recipe, we haven't been able to find flour here for weeks so I thought this would be the next best thing!
We also absolutely loved this stunning array of afternoon tea goodies, especially the bean burgers, scones and petit fours!
Step 2: Order some sort of home decoration, and decorate the house while he's asleep (this was a 2 - 3am job for me but it was worth it) so that it feels a little more birthday-ish when he wakes up. I found these online and thought they were gorgeous! It's a seldom known fact that I have zero idea how to tie a balloon once it's blown up, so I loved these! You blow them up with a straw, and then they seal themselves shut as you remove the straw. Very clever, and very quiet which was useful as it took about an hour for me to blow up the letters and arrange them on the string in a fashion that I was happy with.
Side note: yes, the pack came with enough letters for "Happy Birthday" but as you can see - very small wall space and I actually thought "Happy Day" was quite cute. Also pictured: a bottle of prosecco and the bunch of flowers I also bought for him.
Step 3: Buy some cute candles for the cake. I saw these metallic rose gold ones in Tesco during the weekly shop, and they're exactly what my heart calls out for so I couldn't leave them.
Step 4: Ask if his family would be up for having a Zoom video call so we could all chat and sing happy birthday to him. (We did!) and it was so, so much fun.
Step 5: Tell my best friend all about this because I just could not keep it in. I am absolutely terrible at keeping secrets, but I managed it and Stephen had no idea. Job well done. Happy birthday, my love.
Please note: Other than the birthday balloons, I have not ordered anything needless online, as I do not wish to put any pressure on the postal service during this time. As I did, do support local businesses if you can though - it's really important we help those to keep going!
Happy isolation birthday to anyone else having one soon xo
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