You're My Cup of Tea

I had my birthday party last Saturday evening, and I've been excited to tell you about it, but I've been waiting on my friend for the photos.  Here they are at last! 

Firstly, the most decadent chocolate mud cake on the face of the planet.





Puppy Birthday Cake

And secondly a beautiful birthday surprise! It seems only yesterday I was remarking to my friend that the only person who can do things perfectly for you... is you, and already I have been proved horribly wrong!  I am not the only one who knows me, and I am definitely not the only one who knows how to do beautiful things for me. 

Literally a Bouquet of Sharpened Pencils

Isn't this the most thoughtful and beautiful thing?  She literally gave me a bouquet of sharpened pencils, and I burst into tears when I realised what she'd done.  By now, the flowers have died, but the pencils live on in a bouquet tied with light blue satin ribbon on my book shelf.  It's amazing, though, that when Tom Hanks, Joe Fox, says those lines: I love New York in the fall.  It makes me want to buy school supplies.  If I knew your address, I would send you a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils, the idea in itself is so picturesque and whimsical.  But in real life, it's almost more so.  My bouquet of sharpened pencils is so fresh and woody and full of crisp suggestion that every time I look at them all, with their different levelled points bared like the swords to which J. M. Barrie compared them, I feel beautifully in love with writing and reading and being alive.  They are just so perfect, and the gesture in itself was perfect too.  Like something out of a chick flick. 

It turns out that my friends have been paying a lot more attention to me than I realised.  Almost all of them gifted me with some sort of reference to an inside joke, some sort of little token that they have indeed been listening and loving me.  Packets of mini-Oreos, tissues, highlighter pens, notebooks, and a beautiful tea cup with a Paris motif.  Not to mention a box of Melbourne Breakfast tea leaves that seduces you with vanilla aromas, and a card written all in Elven.  (Yes, wasn't it just the most perfect day?)  And funnily enough, two people  gave me a card with the same sweet message: You're My Cup of Tea.  No, you're my cup of tea.