Last week was packed with holidays for us. I had my birthday on Monday, our younger daughter turned 3 on Saturday and, as everyone was extremely aware of, Sunday was St. Valentines. What did we do? We ate. A lot. And relaxed. And ate some more. In fact, it reminded me a bit of Christmas holidays, except that my husband still had to go to work and the older daughter – to school.

When it comes to my birthday, I like to have a bit of a holiday atmosphere at home, but I usually try to avoid large parties, which for me mean a lot of stress. I rather prefer a laid back approach. Hence, I only invited two of my close friends, who came over to our place from London. Add to that two kids and my husband (who actually lovingly told me that he loves me even this old – always a charmer). That was a wonderful birthday for me :) What made it even better is that one of those friends is actually a chef, so I had a gourmet dinner conveniently made at home!

Let me present you creamy dauphinois potatoes with pan fried chicken thighs and grain mustard veloute followed by vanilla cupcakes with white chocolate cream:

Yes, it was heavenly delicious :) By the way, if you’re a foodie, you can find photos of Angelika’s home cooked meals on her instagram account @whatangelikacooked!

The second holiday of the week was the 3rd birthday of our little one :) She’s a serious dinosaur lover, so everything had to be dino related in some way. The presents – toy dinosaurs from the Dinosaur Train cartoon. Cake – with T-Rex from the Toy Story. We also planned a trip to the Natural History Museum in London to show her lots of huge dinosaurs, but that had to be postponed – the older daughter came down with a cold the night before.

Instead of a day out, we celebrated our daughter’s birthday as a pyjama party and that was a blast! Little one still had a lot of fun playing with the presents. I totally enjoyed having a lazy day, when I did not have to supervise kids dressing/ going out/ driving/ not running away from us (madness that our trip would’ve been).

And the cake was very tasty! I managed to order it just two days in advance by calling up a local bakery, The Cakery. The person who took the order was very helpful and the cake came out exactly as I wanted it. If you live somewhere in or around Leamington Spa – try it out! (And this is not even a paid promotion – we all actually loved it!).

Finally, St. Valentines. We don’t do roses and cards with my husband, but instead I was given a perfect gift – some ‘me’ time! I went for a bit of a walk, bought a china tea pot and a set of cups, which I really liked, found a huge mug for my husband (he would prefer to drink out of a saucepan, if he could). All happy and relaxed I outdid myself and cooked a stir fry for him as well. Those, who know me well, would tell you that I usually cook the simplest meals possible, so a stir fry with a ton of ingredients was a bit of a heroic act for me. Again, @whatangelikacooked takes all the credit for teaching me how to do it (yes, it is great to have a chef as a friend!).

All in all, it was a wonderful week, even though it didn’t go exactly as planned. Now, both of my girls are home as it’s a half term here, so laid back pyjama atmosphere still remains in our Warwickshire household. Have a lovely day everybody! :)