My 17th Birthday

Hi guys! As you might or might not know depending if you follow me on social media platforms, today was my 17th birthday! I thought that I could write about the day itself and the stuff I got because c'mon who doesn't like looking at stuff. F.Y.I it feels so weird being 17, like I still feel about 15 or something, 17 feels far too old (although obviously technically not) - it's weird that I can actually do stuff like learning to drive now. So here we go!

Presents

So the most common present was money but I thought I'd start with the main present from my parents! As a huge music lover and also someone obsessed with all things retro, I'd been wanting a record player for a long time. I'd had my eye particularly on a turquoise Crosley record player but unfortunately that one sold out, so out of the remaining colours left, the orange one was by far my favourite. I was shocked that I'd actually received it though! The design is so retro and while there's no bass, the sound quality is actually pretty good. I've been listening to records for so much of today!

So of course to go with my record player were vinyls! This one in particular in the 2014 record 'New Eyes' by Clean Bandit. I'd actually originally asked for this in cd format unaware that I'd be getting a record player. I loved Clean Bandit's first four singles so I wanted the entire effort and after one spin it hasn't disappointed. 'Rather Be' and 'Extraordinary' seem to be the only properly commercial tracks, but that's what I love about them, they're so unique and the instrumentation throughout is second to none.

These are the other vinyls that I got! It's the U.K. series of the NOW That's What I Call Music! franchise. I got numbers 1 - 10 which date back to between 1983 - 1987. I love the series as you always discover so many gems and I really love some of the tracks from the 80's, particularly some that I could find on these albums like 'The Reflex' by Duran Duran, 'Moonlight Shadow' by Mike Oldfield and '(Don't You) Forget About Me' by Simple Minds amongst many others.

Of course like most other teenage girls, I'd already read John Green's ever-so-popular novel 'The Fault In Our Stars' and really enjoyed it, so I was thrilled to receive 'Paper Towns' and 'Looking For Alaska' as presents as I wanted to explore his other works also. These will be ideal for my holiday to Spain in October as reading is essential for time on the beach!

Being a huge make-up lover, I was thrilled to receive this from my parents! This Lipsy London make-up kit includes the following: Eye Pencil, Sharpener, Glitter Eyeliner, Black mascara, make-up brush, a half light blue/navy eyeshadow and a half pink/navy eyeshadow. I look forward to trying this stuff out, handy as I was just running out of mascara, too!

Here's some more Now stuff! With my NOW 1 vinyl, I now have the oldest and newest NOW releases! Anyway, my brother bought me Now 88 which will be essential for car journeys over the next few months, and my grandparents got me the Now That's What I Call Music Quiz 2 interactive game, and it was so much fun to play this morning!

Last but not least, is the confectionary I got! As a total food obsessive, I was delighted to receive Crazy Sours Skittles, Maoam Stripes and a box of Maltesers. Not ideal for the dentist appointment I have coming up soon, but they taste just too good.

Lunch

For my birthday lunch we went to a place called The Britannia which is right next to the River Nene, as you can see from the picture above. I was donning a monochrome look today as I had black and white converse on as well! The river Nene looked so picturesque.

That's me and my brother there! It was so lovely to spend the afternoon out with my wonderful family. I was the only one who didn't care about sitting on the piece of wood going across the Nene haha, my brother insisted on staying at the table!

Ooh how tumblr was I trying to make this photo?! Haha! My dad's arm makes a cameo. This is when the drinks arrived, my coke with ice was so pleasant especially teamed with sitting outside.

This was a case of lucky timing! The boat came past on the River Nene for a brief 20 seconds or so but it was pretty cool to watch.

Okay so this was REALLY embarrassing. I simply wanted to take a quick picture of my meal but didn't realise that my flash was still on so it shone bright for everyone to see. And after all that the picture turned out quite terrible! This was honestly so much nicer than it looked, a lovely pasta dish with a garlic sauce, spring onions and rocket on top. Yum!

Dinner

It's become much of a tradition the past few years for my birthday meal to be at the Mandarin. It's my absolute favourite restaurant, and even though the food is so expensive, it is SO worth it. They specialise in Chinese food and their noodles and prawn crackers in particular are HEAVENLY. The only thing though is that I always leave feeling SO full.

That's about it now for the pictures, but after my birthday meal I went on a bit of a shopping spree! I don't want to make this post too long though so I'll most probably include that stuff in my August favourites or something. Hope you guys enjoyed this, birthdays are always a special time. Quite scary that time goes so quickly and that I'm already 17 but I guess I'll have to embrace that! Happy birthday to anyone else with an August birthday! Quite cool that I share my birthday with Obama, too. My question for you guys is what did you do for your last birthday?

Cheers for reading as always!

Jade xx