Goodbye 22 and hello 23! As I get another year older, another year wiser, and spend yet another year without my farm, I look forward to this new age and what it’ll bring. My childhood brought magic with it, my teenage years brought travels, my young adulthood brought on college and work, and I’m sure that this year I’ll learn a lot of responsibilities from (hopefully) owning my own house.

For my birthday, my mother and I had went on a trip to some neighboring towns to go thrift shopping. This is one of our favorite activities to do together and I love seeing what thrift shops around here have. I actually found some really cute things, such as some mason jars (you can never have too many of those), a cute butter dish that had ‘Farm Fresh‘ on it, and some nice baked goods that reminded us of Germany (okay, that last one was from Walmart, not a thrift shop).

While we were out and about, we found this really cute mural that I wanted to stop and take pictures in front of. It was a little old and weathered, but it was truly a hidden gem, and I was dressed in the perfect outfit for taking pictures!

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After being out for the better part of the morning, we went back to my parents home to open presents and eat cupcakes and ice cream.

Now, my brother and dad were supposedly put in charge of decorating, and my brother had even come over to my parents house early to ‘help decorate’.. So imagine my mothers surprise when we showed up at her house and the only decorations that were up were 5 streamers that were attached to the umbrella over the table, and a few ‘Happy Birthday‘ signs that were stuck into tree stumps.

The boys had claimed that it was ‘too windy’ outside for any of the other decorations to go up, and that they didn’t need to decorate inside the house because we wouldn’t be inside. What did they do with all of that extra time then? They sat in the hot-tub relaxing.. *Face-palm*

All in all though, I had a really good birthday with my family. My Grandparents came over, I had my parents and my brother with me, we started a fire, had red-velvet cupcakes (my favorite) and vanilla ice cream, and I got some really cool presents including; candy, a ‘Low Waste Living‘ book, and a gift card for the place I work.

(My mother managed to fit 23 candles onto these cupcakes and light them outside during strong winds. For that, I applaud her.)

23 years down, many many more to go.. ❤