Confessions of a Clumsy Scot

I'm from Scotland, and I'm pretty clumsy. Go figure!

recent posts

About

Do what makes you happy. Taking the adult life one day at a time and enjoying the world around me

  • Career choices don’t define you

    So I’m a firm believe University isn’t for everyone.
    I hated the fact that school pushes you so much to aim for University with a total disregard for those that want to take a different route.

    Yeah you get a careers day to explore different options but from what I saw it was generally nursing, caring, law etc.

    I knew from as far as I can remember I knew I didn’t want to go to University.
    But what I wanted to do was something I didn’t know.

    I had ideas in my teenage years of what I wanted to do. This ranged from hairdressing, being a jockey, crofting (farming), equine therapist or a makeup artist. I did enquire about joining the Royal Navy when I was sixteen but as much as it would have been an amazing job, I knew I couldn’t mentally do a deployment and be away for a year at a Time.
    I come from a family of engineers, and since I was little I always had the idea that it would be pretty cool to become an engineer of some sort when I got older.

    Through school, my anxiety was awful and I was always nervous of new things and I wasn’t sure how to start the journey to engineering.


    During school I did one day a week in my local college where you chose a course to give you a headstart in careers. I chose hairdressing. I really enjoyed the course, and when I left school I elected to to college full time to study my second year of hairdressing.
    I enjoyed that year so much, I got on really well with my fellow students, college staff and lecturers. I enjoyed the course and loved gaining a new skill but ultimately I could never see myself doing that as a career.

    A hair up from my college hairdressing portfolio

    I’d worked in a local hotel since I was thirteen and after I graduated college I went full time and took on the roll of duty manager, and then also began working three days a week at my local riding centre. I did this for two years and as stressed and tired as I was, I thrived on it.
    Then Covid hit. I stopped both jobs and I was lost.

    My favourite part of working with horses was of course riding, and this boy is Christopher Robin who taught me to ride from day one and was my absolute heart horse

    My Dad is self employed as an electrician, and had my brother working for him for a few years but after my brother moved away my dad went back to working my himself.
    I asked if he would take me on as an apprentice.

    A melted fusebox we had to change out a while back!

    Fast forward five years now and I absolutely love my job. Don’t get me wrong there’s days where I would love to just stay in bed but for the most part I love it.
    There’s so much happened in the last five years that I’m so grateful for and I’ve done things that I haven’t enjoyed to get here but absolutely nothing I regret.

    Finishing touches on a new build we wired last year. I adored this customers style and really loved these lights.

    I’m so glad I never tried to force myself to go to University, and I really want other people to know that there are so many paths to take. But also even if you’ve left school and you still don’t know what you want to do? Don’t worry. You never only ever have to have one career. Just make sure you’re happy and healthy and do what you have to do.

  • Getting over a fear of baking

    So as you can probably tell from my blog, I love baking.
    However I normally bake the same things every time. Usually a variation of vanilla cake (like a victoria sponge or cupcakes), flapjacks, lemon drizzle or occasionally brownies. I love baking, but when it comes to actually eating sweet treats, I’m such a plain Jane. And normally it’s just Dean and I that eat whatever I make so I’ve never ventured out of my comfort zone.

    You’ll see on my last post, I attempted making a sourdough starter (actually I tried five times) but with it failing I gave up. But I bought some yeast and I actually make a loaf of bread from scratch today and it couldn’t have gone any better for my first attempt!
    I literally made a coffee and sat watching it rise for an hour…
    The smell while it was baking was amazing too, thats something that I’ll start baking it more often for alone!
    As with most people on their own homesteading journey, you want to know whats in your food and if you read the label on most things you buy there is an excessive ammount of extra ingredients.
    Knowing whats gone into my makes make me feel a lot better too. Admittedly you’re still buying ingredients from supermarkets with some of these extra ingredients but baby steps here. Up here on Skye we’re very limited to what we can buy without using our supermarket but I’m really making the effort to buy locally what I can, even if it’s just buying eggs from an honesty box.

    I also decided to make some butter to go along with my bread. It was a day for trying new things. I really couldn’t get over how easy both of these were! I mean my presentation skills definitely need some work but that will come in time!

    I did also make some good old flap jacks! I love these and they never last very long in my house! They’re very easy to adapt to different nutritional needs to so for Dean and I they make a great snack to have. They’re a good source of energy if Deans away playing Rugby or if I’m heading to the gym, but actually quite filling too if you need a little something to keep you going before dinner. I’ve also tried the 0 calorie syrup from MyProtein in them too and they taste amazing, I just haven’t bought anymore of this to keep using it!

  • I ditched the sourdough

    I was so keen to get onto the sourdough bandwagon, but I’ve given up. I know I’ll try again but for now I’m going to stick with using yeast and making from scratch.

    I started my sourdough journey about three months ago. I picked a recipe to follow and I thought it would work really well because I’ve used a few of this ladies recipes however for some reason, it totally flopped.
    My first attempt at a starter continued for around a week and I had religiously discarded and fed it every evening but it was so liquidy and the smell was awful, with absolutely no rise.
    Chucked it.

    The next two starters went very much the same. I did forget a couple of evenings to feed them but after some research I figured it would be fine to just continue the next evening. But after around ten days on each starter, I chucked it.
    I wanted a decent starter to begin making bread with and since I’m such a beginner, if it didn’t seem perfect I didn’t want to use it.

    My fourth starter, I chose a slightly different recipe and all was going well and it was doubling in size but after four days, I found mold on in the top of the jar. I didn’t want to risk it, so again I chucked it!

    Attempt five actually went really well, wasn’t too runny and rose nicely every day, but I forgot I was going away and also forgot to put it in the fridge. And she’s not been fed in about two weeks, thanks to my brain that forgets everything. At this stage she might be okay to pour off the hooch, discard and feed but I’m realising I’m sure I’m ready to commit to owning a sourdough starter, it’s too much responsibility.

    I know I will try again, but I’m off put for a while so today I made my very first loaf of bread from scratch and honestly, it was so easy! I haven’t tried it yet, but as long as it tastes alright, I think I’ll go with that!

  • Dancing over a blueberry Bush!

    I’m beginning to enjoy literally the littlest things in life so much.

    Planning my garden and wintering schedule!
    I started this week by a little visit to my local garden centre telling myself it was just to plan and I wasn’t going to buy anything unless they had a raspberry Bush…
    I came home with a blueberry plant, another strawberry plant and a couple of patio flowers that I’m hopeful will all withstand the winter.



    I won’t lie, I did a little dance tonight when I dug a hole in the garden and popped my blueberry tree in it!



    I’m going to hopefully have a row of various fruit trees, I’m aiming for a raspberry Bush, gooseberry tree and maybe either a kiwi or grape vine but I’ll see what I get and what will withstand the weather here.

    I’m going to see if I can get a few pallets this week too and see if I can make the ideas in my head for some planters and actually make a decent little area for produce for next year.
    I’m pretty confident for making just raised planters but I would really like to make a tiered planter for my strawberries but my carpentry skills are not the best although I try.

    I’ve also got lemon seeds drying out that I’ll plant in a few weeks. I feel like I’m missing something with these though. Am I doing something wrong? Why don’t more people plant lemon seeds? Guess we’ll find out.

    Also have a packet of birds eye chilli’s which I bought to make dinner with but only needed one so why not plant a few seeds and see what grows.
    Not sure what my plans are with these though, I don’t do spicy foods at all so if they grow, these might be gifts!



    What will I let my brain do in the garden this week?

  • Garden trial and error

    So we’re coming out of summer now, and I have big plans for growing more for next spring but I was just thinking about what I can try over winter.

    I had a good clear out of my little vegetable area in the garden today such as weeding and I had to chuck my spinach after I killed it (I still have no idea how).



    I popped some garlic into two pots, I don’t think I’ve done too many this time but time will tell!
    My plan for this week is to get some onions in and retry some spinach. I’ve read certain types of spinach can he Hardy for winter so no harm in trying.
    I know onion and garlic are to be planted in autumn to winter out before growing for the spring/summer so I’m hopeful there.



    I’m going to look at getting a couple of fruit trees too this week if I get the chance to pop to my local garden centre. I’ll just see what options they have before I decide what to get. Ideally a couple of Berry options.
    I’d like to get some seed potatoes in too but I need to think about where to put these so I think that will be part of next summers trials as I know they can be quite invasive in terms of always coming back even after you think you’ve dug them out.

    I’d also like to get a few pots of flowers dotted round the garden.
    We have a large circular rockery in the middle of our front garden so I’d really like to incorporate some kind of wildflowers into that for the bees and butterflies. Nothing makes me happier than watching the bees bumble about the garden.

    Stay tuned to see what I end up doing in the next couple weeks before I think about prepping the garden for winter!

  • I was the girl who loved Essays in school…

    I’ve always loved reading since I could.
    When I was little, Mum and Dad would put me to bed and the minute I heard the kitchen door close I would pull out a book from under my bed.
    I’d read it end to end, over and over.
    Any time I heard my parents come through I’d throw the duvet over my head and pretend to sleep. They knew I wasn’t sleeping.

    It took them years to tell me they didn’t mind if it wasn’t too late because I was reading and not doing anything mischievous.

    This was a book my Dad had to read to be 10 times over every night for years, and my Gran dug it out a few weeks ago 💙

    In school I adored writing stories and reading books.
    In primary school (elementary or first school if you’re not from Scotland) we had reading homework to do weekly which was just reading certain pages of a book to practice before we read it in school with our teacher, and then we had to get our diary signed by our parents to tell the teacher we’d done it.
    I went home the same night and read the whole book cover to cover and never ever got my diary signed and truthfully my teachers never seemed to care and I think it’s because I had a pretty good ability to read anyway.

    Then came high school. Obviously you start writing essays and not just stories. I LOVED IT.
    I wrote essays for competitions and won a few too and my English teachers were pretty proud too.
    It was the one thing in school I was good at. I had a physics and maths brain (hello engineering, post school) and I played music and these are things I enjoyed but I was genuinely good at English. I left school early but pleaded with my teachers and office staff to let me come in for my English classes and sit my final exam and they let me. I passed.
    That in itself is massive for me. I don’t do well in exams. I know everyone says that but I will genuinely walk into an exam, sit down and forget every single thing I’ve ever learnt and probably burst out crying. Something I still do age 25. They’ve never gotten any easier for me.
    In English classes in school we did little friendly competitions to see who could read the most books each term and I read a mental amount of books to be honest at the time.
    After leaving school, I stopped reading so often.
    And as time went past I read less and less.

    I missed it so a couple of years ago I bought myself a Kindle, downloaded a couple of free books and started getting back into it.
    Now I’ll lose myself in a book for hours at a time. I maybe won’t pick a book up for a few weeks but when I do, I could happily sit and read a book in a night.

    This is also why I started this blog. I wanted to start writing again. I’m not great at the fictional side of things. My imagination isn’t great, but when I find a non-fiction topic I’m interested in, I could write a whole dissertation on it to be honest.
    So although I know there’s loads of people who are not interested in what I’m doing here but this is my little outlet so if you’re here and reading my rambles, Thank you.

    A couple of wee links if fancy following my books and read!

    Check out the books I added on Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/friend/i?invite_token=NTlkOTE4ODktOTZiYS00ZWY5LWIxZGMtYTQ5M2E4NmQwODcz

    My Bookshop store (Affiliate Link)

    https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/
    EllieSometimesReads

  • Grocery shopping makes me want to cry

    So after moving out of my parents a few years ago, I truly did not realise the cost of living. In this post, I’m not talking Bills, mortgage etc, I’m talking day to day groceries.

    I decided to make a list of the things I hate buying and will shed a tear before doing so.

    1. Washing Powder.
    Dean has so many allergies, so I’m very specific about what I use. My go to is Fairy Non-bio but spending £15 makes me so reluctant. Especially when you stick a load of washing on, and forget about it for a couple of days so you then have to wash it again and therefore waste more washing powder (or in my case I buy the capsules). I do sometimes buy the supermarkets own brand to be cheap for when I do this though.

    2. Bin bags.
    I swear bin bags used to be about a pound. Now they’re three quid for the thinnest tiniest heaps you’ve ever found. I also have no idea what size my bins are so everytime I have to buy them I guess what size they are. You’d think I should just remember the last ones I bought, but I don’t. Sometimes they fit, sometimes they consume my entire kitchen, and something you’d be lucky to pick up your dogs poop with them.

    3. Fruit.
    I do love some fruit, but I’ll only eat it when I’m in the mood for it. The cost of fruit I think has gone up so much, and the shelf life seems to have gone down. If I buy a punnet of strawberries, I’ll be lucky to get two days out of them. Likewise with grapes etc.

    4. Ice Cream and Ice Lollies.
    Basically any frozen sugary treats.
    £6 for a tub of ice cream? Or £4 for a box of ice lollies with maybe three in a box? Definitely a want but a reluctant spend with the heatwave at the moment.



    5. Meat, fish or poultry.
    Both Dean and I are pretty fit, I go to the gym and Dean plays rugby. We both try and get a good amount of protein and natural fats into our diet and a good way is things like red meat and fish. In the last few months I’ve noticed the price of meat has sky rocketed. And truthfully I don’t think the meat we’re buying from supermarkets is amazing…
    I’d love to support local farmers/business much more but just the expense is not something I can justify.
    My local supermarket is £5 for a small pack of beef meatballs that don’t have a huge amount of taste, and £6.50 for a packet of chicken thats about 50% water.

    There’s absolutely hundreds more but this is the first five that come to my head since usually its the go tos on the shopping list.

    There will probably be loads more of these posts.

  • Minimal Minimalist or Maximum Maximalism

    We do dream of Having a big house, with a massive white couch, 12 foot ceilings, with everything in sight basically white. Maybe a bit of monochromatic decor like a black coaster, or a black vase with some red roses.
    And maybe we like that idea because we see the influencers on Instagram and Tiktok with that.
    But honestly how realistic is it?
    Maybe if you live alone and you enjoy cleaning and have the time to do so.

    But that idea is actually not so appealing to me anymore.

    So I’m probably somewhere in the middle of minimalist and maximalism. I hate clutter, but I do love the idea of ‘things’ having a story.
    Like that bit of gravel on the window that looks like a toddler threw a tantrum then lost interest, but you know if came from a beach where you saw your first shooting star.
    Things like that are not clutter.
    Also I have two dogs, and Dean and I (Dean moreso) don’t work particularly clean jobs so the idea of having white in my house actually scares me a little.

    Don’t get me wrong, if that is you and I go to your house, I will happily visit and take my shoes off and wear little bags over my feet and white gloves (genuinely unsarcastically) because I really appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into your ideal.
    But that’s not for me.


    If you visit me, please don’t take your shoes off, probably wear something black because Macey likes to say hello (we are trying to stop her jumping, but she sometimes just can’t contain her wiggles) and as much as I try my house is rarely tidy but I do try to keep it as clean is realistically possible.


    At the moment I’m definitely going for more of a maximalist home. There’s memories and tokens that we’ve gathered over the years and I can’t wait to build on that.
    Little trinkets like fossils that I’ve gifted Dean, my precious plants (that’s been an addiction for years and Dean definitely didn’t realise when I moved in) and having loads of colour in our home.

    The car photographed is a BMW E30, which was Deans first pride and joy car.


    I’m definitely going to share little bits of my home on here too so stay tuned!

  • The Lawn Project of 2025

    So the lawn itself was Deans project for the summer. I’ve never seen someone with such a hatred of dandelions or moss. Which living on the Isle of Skye means thats basically what our lawns are made up of.

    Back in April when we did the first grass cut of the year, we borrowed my Dads scarifier and spent two days basically digging up the whole front graden. We let that rest for about a week while we waited for grass seed to arrive.
    Once the grass seed did arrive we let it pre-germinate in little mesh bags in a bucket for two days before removing them and letting them dry out. This just sped up the process of the grass seeds rooting.
    The first attempt at spreading the grass was by hand and basically just walking around for hours sprinkling handfuls of grass seed.
    The seed did take but took about three weeks to just show. We also had a bit of a heatwave so keeping them damp was an issue as well as birds having a good meal.

    We ordered more grass seed and after some research we bought some compost and top soil. After pre germinating the seed again we mixed the compost, top soil with the grass seed before sprinkling.
    This process worked a lot better because it gave the seed more protection from the birds, but also kept the seed damp letting it root better so we got a lot more coverage out of this.
    The next time we sowed some grass seed was just to cover some patches. And to be fair, the front lawn now does look like a golfing green.
    I do think this might have to be a yearly project though with the moss growth on the Island, simply because of the acidicity of the ground here.

    The back garden was a bit of a different task. I just wanted grass.
    I didnt care what was there as long as it was green as during the winter, the garden turns into a swamp and the dogs churn the ground up and turn it into a race track.
    Theres one little patch in particular that gets very soggy with heavy rain. This is where a rosebush used to be which we dug up to move as Macey kept hurling herself into as a puppy. So what we do with this patch will be a work in progress but I’m hopeful that having some grass will help with some water absorbtion.

    Macey trying to model with the swamp she’s created


    For the most part its now actually green everywhere, just the odd little patch that didn’t take where it’s very much in the shade and gets little sun light or even rainfall. But now that Mac is older and the dogs don’t chase each other round the garden anymore, I think this will actually just grow back in due course.
    The real test will be come the winter and see how much of it survives. If it doesn’t, next years plan will be just to overseed the shit out of it and fence sections off so it’s totally undisturbed by the dogs running on it.

    My biggest issue with having done this is the grass seed getting everywhere round the patio and gravel round the back. I. Hate. Weeds.
    I started pulling weeds as they grew but I couldn’t keep up, so I decided to leave it until we had finished all the grass seeding for the year so more seed wouldn’t just start growing.
    At the end of last year we put new kerbing round the lawn and there is one patch beside it that is all gravel, and embarrassingly I left it because I was so overwhelmed with the weeds but now it’s time to do something about it before summer is over totally!

    I started digging up all the gravel sections. Pulling out all the weeds and grass before sifting and cleaning the stones. Chucked the stones in the wheelbarrow and then starting laying down a membrane to stop the weeds growing so much.
    I started this section and admittedly it took me about three hours, so I really need to figure a more efficient way without turning the patio into a total mud bath. But I’m already much happier with the outcome, I just think It’s going to be a slow process only being able to do this on weekends and evenings while trying to midge clouds.

    Stay tuned for the progress though!

  • What keeps me awake at night?

    Fecking everything.
    I am a massive overthinker, but it’s usually not *those* scenarios that keep me awake at night.
    It’s just about every single thought you can think of that does.



    The tangents you go off with your friends but on steroids and only in my own head.

    Maybe this makes me sound mental but I recently learned that there are people in the world that don’t have a voice in their head.
    No dialogue.
    Is it just actual silence? What goes on. This is the main thought that I think about at least once every night before I go off on another tangent.

    Then the tangent usually goes; ‘what job am I on tomorrow? Oh I’ve done work for them before! Was it changing a socket? I wonder who the first person to get an electric shock was and how did that come about? Maybe if I painted rubber on my hands I’d become insulated? But would I stink of those Jelly shoes you wore when you were a kid? I wonder if you still get those shoes with the little doll in the heel?’ Etc etc etc

    This normally goes on for around two or three hours before I fall asleep.
    Is this normal? I’m not sure if this is something you can just ask people without sounding like you’re a lunatic.
    Maybe I am, but alas this is just thoughts in my brain that I rarely actually speak about.

    I mean I do get those anxious thoughts and replaying scenarios but it quite quickly goes off on a tangent of some sort.
    Maybe this is some kind of undiagnosed ADHD? Maybe this is normal and just no one has ever told me.
    It’s probably just Millennial neurodivergence.

    I’d love an off switch. People have said to try meditating.
    How the fuck do you meditate when you can’t empty your brain. When I try I start thinking about the origins of the brain.
    What is a thought?

    I’ve tried various sleeping remedies, I’ve forced myself to try different teas, which if you know me is exact opposite of my tipple (black coffee). Minus taking actual sleeping tablets, I’m always open to suggestions to shutting my brain up and being able to sleep.

Contact us

Welcome to a world of limitless possibilities, where the journey is as exhilarating as the destination, and where every moment is an opportunity to make your mark on the canvas of existence. The only limit is the extent of your imagination.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨