What I Did Last Night

If, after reading this post's title, you are expecting something kinky or at least saucy, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. Because what I did last night was what I have been doing every 22nd of March for the past few years: throwing a cocktail party.
In 2015, I posted about my party here. That post contains clickable links to the party posts from 2012, 2013 and 2014 - just in case you want to compare pictures and look for what has changed and what has remained the same.

What has remained pretty much the same is the way my living room looks usually:

I had the day off and so plenty of time to do everything that needed doing without even the slightest hint of stress. 
Some cards and a present had already been arriving for the past few days:

The above flowers were delivered around lunch time, sent from one of my sisters-in-law from Yorkshire. My sister helped me do some last-minute shopping - stuff I can't get before, because it has to be fresh - and brought me these flowers in my favourite colours:

The blue flowers are called "Bauernbüble", literally "farmer's boys", because in times gone by farmers here often wore linen working shirts dyed this same shade of blue.

Preparations went smoothly as usual, with only a few phone calls to take. Nowadays, most of the people who can not be there for my birthday will either send cards, emails or text messages; there are only a handful left who will ring.

As usual, most of the party food was going to be made by my Mum and my sister. My only contributions to the buffet, as always set up in the Third Room, were these. By now, it was 5.00 pm - time to change into my brand new dress!

Actually, I had intended to wear heels, but the only shoes I could find matching the silver belt were flat ones. My downstairs neighbours were probably grateful!
You can't really see it in the picture, but the fabric of this dress is very tiny light blue squares on white. Something else you can not see is that I am wearing a silver ring with a light blue stone, and a silver necklace with a light blue stone. Of course (!) I was wearing light blue eye shadow, and a scent called Cuir Blanc (white leather). I really love this new dress and am sure I'll wear it often as soon as it gets warm enough outside.
Maybe the pictures I have nicked from the fashion label's website (comma) give you a better idea.

As every year, once my guests started to arrive, there was no way I could have (or would have) taken any pictures. But rest assured that it was a great evening; there were 18 humans and 1 dog, an amazing pile of presents (all of them great and much appreciated), lots of laughter, plenty to drink and hopefully enough to eat (after all, it was a cocktail party and not a dinner invitation).

Most of my guests had to work today, so the party didn't last quite as long as it would have on a weekend. By 1:00 am, I had finished clearing up what I did not want to leave until the morning. Today, I have another day off and spent the morning putting everything back in order. I did it all at a nice leisurely pace, with enough time to take pictures of my gifts table and the wonderful flowers:  

This blog post will keep reminding me of my wonderful 48th birthday, but I hope the flowers are going to be a reminder for at least a week, too.