How To Celebrate a Lockdown Birthday at Home
As lockdown begins to lift like a thick mist, the world as we know it has yet to resume. With bars and restaurants closed for the foreseeable, travel restrictions in place and social distancing an ongoing part of life, making a birthday at home feel special (and distinguishable from every other samey-at-home day) is easier said than done.
But with a little bit of planning and imagination, it’s really quite amazing what you can do with limited props, space (and physical freedom)! Here are some of my top tips for creating a special day at home, tried and tested on my husband’s birthday last week.
Create an Itinerary
Having a plan for the day gives it structure, instantly helping to elevate it and make it feel special. Canva is my best friend - find an “itinerary” template and adapt it to your day. A theme can definitely help tie the whole day together. For this particular birthday, I went with a travel theme for obvious reasons (which lets face it could have gone either way - dreamy or torturous).
Some pretty tenuous links (“Copenhagen” being an avocado toast recipe we ate on a trip there) - but I wanted to evoke happy memories at every turn.
If you have multiple rooms in your house, moving into a different space can also really help break up the day! In our case we live in an apartment with one big-ish open plan living area and kitchen, which made it tricky to set up different “spaces” in advance. I thought up various distractions to keep my husband occupied while I transformed the space for my different activities (more on the art of distraction below). This meant each activity felt like a new room, and meant I got to surprise him many times throughout the day!
Create a Video of Birthday Messages
While the closest thing to a hug one can hope for remains an awkward wave from no closer than the length of an olympic ping-pong table, a video of funny clips and messages from loved ones is the next best thing. I put something pretty great together on iMovie with zero experience & made a ticket for the “screening” inside his birthday card (with, you guessed it - Canva). I ended the video with a montage of happy memories of all the things we can’t wait to do again one day (like doing a cannonball into a large body of water). It was such a hit!
Do an Escape Game In Your Living Room
There are many different at-home escape room kits out there. I used this one, which has a Kyoto theme! I used the Photo Booth props it came with to decorate the walls, lit the room with lots of candles and made my own escape game playlist (beginning with gentle Japanese music, growing more and more tense for added drama)! Having read some reviews online, I worked out the kit would probably only take us 40 mins to work through (we are quite good at IRL escape games, if I do say so myself.. and like a challenge).
Host a Murder Mystery Soirée
Organise a Murder Mystery Party on Zoom with one of these flexible, downloadable kits. They are not originally designed for zoom but can easily be adapted (we chose the Murder on a Train theme). I put together a funny invitation email including individual character booklets and the zoom details a few days in advance.
IRL the murderer would be chosen by each guest picking a piece of paper out of a hat, so to get around this I sent all of the participants phone numbers to a friend anonymously, to pick one and let them know they are the murderer by text on the day (this means even the host gets to play along, with only the murderer knowing who they are).
Each kit also comes with it’s own Spotify playlist and you can create themed zoom backgrounds on you guessed it, Canva. I printed out some vintage posters, stuck up some postcards and created my own branded Orient Express notebook and glassware with cut-out logos and blu tack 😂 Très Professionelle.
My Piece de Resistance - Creating a Restaurant Experience at Home
We are both really missing the conviviality and simple pleasures of popping into our favourite local cafes and restaurants. So what better than to create not one, but two fictional restaurants at home.
First, a traditional champagne afternoon tea at “Fortnum & Maison” (inspired by lovely London and the dreamy table scapes of Charlotte Jacklin) followed by dinner at “Trattoria de la Nonna” - think tall candles in bottles of Chianti and that song from The Lady & The Tramp. This was truly the day my obsession with plates and senseless penchant for buying picnic napkins paid off in spades. If you can dream it, I have a paper napkin to match.
Afternoon Tea ft. Home Baked Treats
I put together an oh-so-serious menu I could recreate with relative ease (hello delicious Ploughman’s Finger aka cheddar and Branston pickle)!
Step 1: Baking Le Cake - easer said than done if, like me, you have next-to-no patience in the kitchen and only one cake tin. I followed this straightforward Mary Berry recipe with no drama, baking the sponge layers the night before so they only needed assembled with jam and buttercream on the day (the most fun part).
I pre-ordered a box of bright, fresh edible flowers from Maddocks Farm Organics to create the most colourful, flower-themed afternoon tea table. They arrived the evening before I needed them, super fresh with a few ice packs keeping them chilled and I would absolutely order them again!
I used the spare blooms and greenery to make gorgeous ice cubes and to scatter over the other plates. I also used some raspberries and mint I had in the fridge for ice cubes which looked super effective in a jug of water.
Top Tip: To make clear ice, boil the kettle (apparently bottled water is best but I used tap water) and let the water cool completely before reboiling (ideally 3 times). I did it twice and mine turned out slightly cloudier than I would have liked but still much more translucent than usual “at-home freezer ice”. (I will never take see-through bar ice for granted again.)
Step 2 Les Scones: For foolproof scones that turn out perfectly every time (see previous at home attempt below), I use Angela of Rooftop Tea Barcelona’s recipe (saved in her Insta Story Highlights). I may be a walking 2020 cliche with my recently acquired passion for baking these, but having never made scones before pre-lockdown, I’ve gained so much confidence from Angela’s insta-live bake-a-long!
I also ordered a box of 4 x giant, super chocolatey Berto’s Brownies, which arrived the night before.. Baked here in Glasgow and delivered throughout the Uk, I can’t recommend them enough!
Finally, I set the scene with a sign (hand-drawn in sharpie), lovely soft jazz on vintage vinyl, fresh roses and colourful assorted crockery we had at home (I recently acquired these plates-of-my-dreams by Clare Vivier for Anthropologie on sale, and gently carry them to and from the table like a newborn Bebe Jesus).
*Disclaimer: This table was in no way endorsed by or affiliated with the iconic Fortnum & Mason, and was just a fun idea I had for a tongue-in-cheek play on words. Phew.
Dinner at Trattoria de la Nonna
*FYI a lengthy lie down was required between these two meals.
The Trattoria de la Nonna was inspired by Anthony’s main birthday presents (a pasta roller thingy-ma-bob & Pasta Grannies recipe book of infinite wisdom from real Italian Nonnas).
The idea being that he would get to work creating beautiful fresh pasta, while I made Gino’s delicious meatballs! I bought Italian wine, San Pellegrino, Olives and much coveted pasta flour from our local deli Sonny & Vito’s in Glasgow’s West End.
I found this brilliant Italian Cooking Music Playlist (full of classics) to set the scene and the chalkboard already lived on our kitchen wall (and will do forevermore, thanks to the previous tenants who painted the wall around it, leaving a huge beige rectangle if we ever try to move it).
All in all I was going for a Godfather-style-mandolins, Clemenza-at-the-next-table vibe with a bit more romance and whimsy. 😂 Nailed it!
Top Tips To Occupy The Birthday Girl / Boy While You Transform the Space you both live in
(aka distraction, distraction, distraction!)
Take them an enormous coffee (or even better breakfast) to bed. While they indulge upon a duvet cloud, get busy in the next room!
Set a dress code challenge (for example, I set him the task of finding Japanese themed attire in the bedroom while I set up the Kyoto themed escape room in the living room).
Set up calls with loved ones throughout the day in keeping with your itinerary. This win-win means they are showered with love whilst you get to make magic surprises happen!
Run them a long, relaxing bath. Emphasis on the long. Imagine emerging from all those bubbles to an utterly transporting set-up in your own living room. Major brownie points accrued!
Most importantly of all - have fun & no pressure! At the moment just being alive and healthy and able to function is worth celebrating! I’d love to know how you’ve celebrated important milestones at home in lockdown? One of my personal highlights has to be getting to watch my best friend take her Hippocratic oath during her virtual graduation, which was subsequently toasted with (very real) champagne! xxx
Read my Life-in-Lockdown Series for more inspiration and ideas including The Best Things to Do in Lockdown This Week
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