Stórafmæli

A big birthday

It's been quiet here on the blog this week - I've been busy celebrating a big birthday in real life. I turned 50 this week.

Since the actual birthday was during the week, we really only celebrated with the family, all four children and grandchildren were here and we had a very cozy evening.

The “big celebration” came at the weekend.

Since I like baking, I came up with something: I would just invite you over for coffee and cake and let off some steam while baking cakes. And since I didn't want a typical birthday, I said that everyone in the family should please bring 2 to 4 surprise guests, just so that it would be a colorful, wildly mixed bunch.

I had planned for around 20 people, but in the end there were four cancellations due to illness, one additional guest came, but all in all it went well and we had a nice, loud celebration.

We had set up an old, discarded desk from the children in the living room and arranged the cake buffet on it.

I had let off some steam with baking the day before; I had actually planned one more cake, but I left it out. A dear guest brought a very tasty cheesecake as a gift! (You can see the cheesecake at the back of the picture, next to the carafe of iced coffee.)

Here in the picture of the buffet you can see the Sítróna bollakökur, i.e. lemon muffins or lemon cupcakes with thick icing on top.

On the second plate there is a sheet cake, an espressó sukkulaðikaka, an espresso chocolate cake. (As a precaution, baked with caffeine-free coffee powder because of the potential for children to eat with them.)

On the next plate you can see a 3-tier birthday cake, an Afmæliskaka. I baked this cake for my husband's birthday 1.5 years ago and last month "in small" as a surprise for a friend in Iceland. I thought it was delicious, so I made it again. I also like beautiful cakes!

I baked the cake here in three springform pans with a diameter of 8 inches (20 cm) - not quite large, but sufficiently filling thanks to the three layers and all the butter cream and the brittle (in this case almond brittle).

And of course there was also a gulrótarkaka, a carrot cake. When my daughter is there, there has to be carrot cake, it's her favorite cake! Here I baked a recipe with grated carrots and canned peaches, chopped almonds and a nice fruity cream cheese cream.

And as a “dessert” after the whole cake there was “Ostakaka í glasi”, i.e. “cheesecake in a glass”, which I had already tried last month. The dessert in the glass actually went down quite well!

Kósý kvöld - a cozy end to the evening

After some of the guests had left, we finally sat outside on the terrace with the lights on, wrapped up nice and warm with jackets and blankets, and talked about God and the world. A nice end to the day!

How do you actually like our “table decoration”? This is a sweet potato that was left in a box in the basement at some point and has been sprouting properly ever since. I thought the potato looked really good as a “arrangement” on the table!

Afmælisgjafir - birthday gifts

I also received many nice presents for my big birthday, thank you again to everyone!

My husband and my daughter had a similar idea for gifts - but both implemented them very differently.

My husband recently took a photo of me: I'm standing on our terrace in the evening and looking up in amazement and the northern lights are dancing wildly in the sky above me. I love the picture, I think it's really beautiful! You can see the original cell phone photo here in the picture on the left.

My husband and daughter also noticed how much I like this picture. So my husband gave me a print of it as a photo canvas for the living room.

And my daughter, inspired by this photo, implemented the whole thing artistically and painted me a picture. Me under the northern lights. I think it's so beautiful!

In this sense:

Happy birthday to me! Thank you very much to everyone who came or who otherwise thought of me. I had a really nice birthday! Takk fyrir!

[Translated from here.]