how to celebrate birthdays in quarantine!

People born in late March, April, May and potentially June have it really rough, as they are unable to celebrate their birthday anywhere other than their own home. I was lucky to celebrate my 18^th at the beginning of March, however, since lockdown, we have seen 2 birthdays in my household, in which we had different celebrations for. I’m writing this post to share some of the things we have been doing to celebrate birthdays as best we can in the house, rather than moaning we can’t do anything!

The first idea is a simple one but a good one: get dressed up. I don’t necessarily mean fancy dress (unless you want to), but dress up nice, do your hair and makeup as if you were off out for a meal, and put on a nice dress, jeans and a top or playsuit as I did. This is a new playsuit that has been featured in my recent Urban Outfitters Haul, and I loved wearing this for my sisters 16^th birthday, even if we were just ordering a takeaway! In my opinion, there’s something really motivating about dressing up nice, and it always makes for some good Instagram pics! (As you can tell, I can't take anything seriously!)

The next idea is to make decorations/cards. This may be a little harder for some, but in my household, it is a little easier, with mum working in a school and myself being a massive stationery geek, we had a lot of the items to make decorations and cards. I made cards for both my mum and sister, with the ideas being taken off Pinterest. I actually found these activities to be really calming and made me miss being creative as a child, so if you have the chance to do something like this, I would highly recommend!

The next 2 ideas are both food related. The first is to make a nice meal or a lunch. My sister and I prepared a buffet lunch for my mum for her birthday, with sandwiches, salad bits, crisps, chocolates, meats, cheeses, you name it, it was probably there! We sat and ate this as a family and it was all worth it to see how happy my mum was after decorating all morning!

The last idea is an obvious one: bake a cake. No birthday is complete without a cake, so again my sister and I baked a devil’s chocolate cake for my mum, complete with twix’s, kitkat’s and maltesers. This was a recreation of a cake that Kimberley Walsh made for her husband’s birthday a few days before, and it was so good she actually reposted it on her story! Cake is a key essential to a birthday, so if you can get a hand of some flour, I would definitely recommend it, as baking is a very fun activity in quarantine, and even better if you have some left over cake mix to lick the bowl out (I am forever going to do this, even if I have kids!).

I hope these ideas help those with upcoming birthdays to celebrate as best you can! Have you had a birthday in quarantine, if so, how did you celebrate?

by mills x