Baking is more of an exact science though, so I figured I would enlist the help of my glamorous-domestic-goddessy-type-friend Catherine and we would start with the basics – the simple cupcake.

Baking has never been a strong point of mine.

Actually, let’s be truthful here.

It’s never even been any kind of point of mine, let alone a strong one. I have vague memories of whipping up some Gypsy Creams while being babysat by my Granny & Aunty Ann but that’s a good wee while ago now, and lets face it, licking chocolate cream from the bowl while your Granny does the hard work is not exactly baking.

The reasoning behind my list of Thirty Things is to try and encourage myself to learn about/make/do/experience a lot of things I’ve had at the back of my mind for a while, and my lack of expertise in the kitchen seems like a pretty obvious contender for self-improvement. Some of the first things to make the cut were “learn to cook” and “learn to bake cupcakes”.

“Learn to cook” is pretty broad, I grant you, but that just means forcing myself to try out recipes and prepare dinner by actually chopping things and stirring them as opposed to lifting the phone or stabbing the film of a ready meal.

Baking is more of an exact science though, so I figured I would enlist the help of my glamorous-domestic-goddessy-type-friend Catherine and we would start with the basics – the simple cupcake.

I love cupcakes. I know they’re horribly clichéd now and that every middle aged woman and her ‘bestie’ is in the Magnolia queue pretending to be Carrie Bradshaw, but there’s still something about them that pleases me. I think it’s mainly just because I like small things.

Incidentally, these are Catherine’s cupcakes. She made them for our wedding. And they were seriously delicious.

They looked pretty special too. You can see I was in good hands. And that I had a lot to live up to…

But we started well and – thanks to Catherine’s expert guidance and the glass of white wine Ross kept topping up for me – I was soon creaming and folding with the best of them.

And just a little while later, the end result…

Delia would be so proud…

We celebrated my culinary achievements with a lot more wine, a Dommy’s and a couple of rounds of Singstar. Good times!

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One of the (many) good things about falling for a West Coast guy is discovering a whole bunch of new day-trip type places. Like, the kind of places you used to go in the summer holidays when you were little, when your Gran would come along too, where you would have a picnic (and an ice cream if you were good).

Wine, sandwiches, Kettle chips, Cadbury’s fingers, homemade banana bread and a Kinder egg. Not the classiest picnic in the world but we loved it.

And while the East Coast crowd have their St Andrews’ and their North Berwick’s and their, the go-to destination for the Weegies seems to be Loch Lomond.

Which is a pretty nice place for a day out.

John has been going to Balmaha for years – for hill-climbing, picnic-ing, boating and, more recently, photographing. He took me there for the first time in 2008 and we’ve since gone back time and time again in summer…

… and in the dead of winter…

I absolutely love boats and being on the water so when John told me you could hire a motorboat from Balmaha Boatyard and spend the whole day exploring the loch I was pretty frigging excited. We planned to do it in Summer ’08 but didn’t ever see it through and then Summer ’09 also came and went without our day of boating fun. And this is why ‘Hiring a boat at Balmaha and spending the day on Loch Lomond’ made it on to the List.

We finally got round to it on the August bank holiday weekend, which was amazingly one of the sunniest days of the year. The flipside to that of course is that ‘Hiring a boat at Balmaha and spending the day on Loch Lomond’ proved to be a popular day out for a whole lot of other people too and by the time we got there all the motorboats were gone. We were left with a rowing boat, meaning we quickly abandoned our plan to ‘tour the loch’ and settled for a little jaunt to a fairly close island… where we abandoned ship for lunch in the sun on our own little private beach. Wine, sandwiches, Kettle chips, Cadbury’s fingers, homemade banana bread and a Kinder egg. Not the classiest picnic in the world but we loved it.

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At the end of an incredibly difficult couple of weeks, we found we had some unexpected time to ourselves. We knew we needed a day-trip, and one which involved a good lunch and the sound of waves lapping against the shore. We flirted with the idea of going somewhere new, heading West instead of East, looking for a one-night-stand kind of getaway. But in the end we couldn’t shake the feeling that we were cheating on our long-term lover and so we grabbed the cameras, pushed the roof down and escaped along the familiar coastal road to North Berwick.

But in the end we couldn’t shake the feeling that we were cheating on our long-term lover and so we grabbed the cameras, pushed the roof down and escaped along the familiar coastal road to North Berwick.

One of us could barely contain her desire for a (toasted mango chicken) Sandwich at Tiffany’s and so we ditched the car in town and headed straight for lunch. Duly satisfied, we did the requisite nosy round the shops, taking home the most lovely metal parcel tags and 20 of these cute little pegs from Tippecanoe. We don’t quite have a use for them as yet, but one will undoubtedly emerge. Incidentally, Tippecanoe’s bags are made out of recycled newspaper by a project which supports street children in India. Very cool. Very good. Very green.

From the shops to the beach, and from the beach to the putting green. One of us was feeling confident after her stellar performance over the peaks and troughs of the Himalayas. The other one of us was beginning to regret the handicap she’d been given and was was keen to reconsider the scoring system. There would be no need for a review, however, as the Little One’s winning streak came to an abrupt end in a tense sudden death drama on the 18th after we were all square.

We felt like we had not a care in the world. It couldn’t have been further from the truth, but it felt like it for that afternoon at least.

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One of the good things about a long and crazy-busy week at work is the glorious feeling of relief and euphoria that comes over you as you walk home in the sun on Friday night. Three nights and two days of freedom. Yes please.

We spent our Friday evening in the usual manner – Chicken Bhuna, white wine and a little bit of Patrick Jane. Not that we’re creatures of habit or anything…

We also decided that we just had to finish the friggin’ sun canopy. This has been an ongoing project for about four months now and has been starting to irritate one of us whenever she notices it just sitting there in it’s half-finished state. So it was time to blitz it and just Get. It. Done.

Three nights and two days of freedom. Yes please.

Ever positive, we like to call it a sun canopy, but really we know that it’s a rain shelter. We decided we needed it on one of our very first trips away, when we pulled up to our pitch, got the deckchairs out, cracked open a beer and sat ourselves down to toast the weekend. Just as the rain came on. Drinks down, chairs folded away and everything back inside the van. And a bit damp.

We figured a light-weight canopy would be a good way of keeping us a bit more dry (shaded…?) on one-night trips when we can’t be bothered putting up our killer awning. We searched the net and quickly decided we could save ourselves around £100 by going DIY, so we ordered some tent material and started drawing up plans. Fast forward 16 weeks and we finally have our finished sun canopy…

To be honest it didn’t take that long to make at all, it was just one of those things that seemed like such a big project that we kept putting it off. We’re pretty pleased with how it came out though, so pleased that we actually high-five’d on completion. True story.

And so it was with much excitement that we packed up our new canopy ready to head West early on Saturday morning. We couldn’t wait to get out of town.

But Doris had other ideas.

You see she’s starting no problem, but as soon as we take our foot off the gas she just cuts out. Maybe some little part’s just worn away. Maybe it’s something bigger than that. Maybe the old girl just fancied a weekend at home, who knows. But she certainly wasn’t up for going anywhere and several hours after we lugged the bags down our three flights of stairs, we were on our way back up again.

We knew this was going to happen at some point, lets face it you have to expect a few issues with a 30 year old vehicle, but it was a bit depressing when we were so excited about getting away. We felt sorry for ourselves for about an hour… and then we got over ourselves and decided to have a fabulous time in Edinburgh instead.

Although we couldn’t resist a (not very polite, sorry mum…) gesture of contempt towards her as we headed out…

We ended up having a really nice little day. We watched the colourful and celebratory Pride march and we played tourist for a day and went round our city on the hop-on hop-off bus tour. We laughed at the sullen American man who interrupted our tour guide’s flow to ask where the skyscrapers were and we learned that the cockles on the side of the old buildings on the Royal Mile were put there to ward off witches. Who knew.

One of us indulged in a little retail therapy at the Jenners sale and the other one of us virtuously proclaimed that she didn’t want to shop as she didn’t need anything at the moment, thank you very much. She was quickly reminded that she’d already bought 6 dresses since the start of the month and should probably get down from her high horse.

One of us wanted to see Prince of Persia so we headed to the cinema for the early evening showing. The other one of us was easily persuaded that for an extra 20p she could have an extra large portion of Ben & Jerry’s, scoffed four scoops of the stuff and then promptly fell asleep in a post-sugar-rush comedown. She was quite pleased to have missed half the film though to be honest, once you’ve seen one sword fight in the sand you’ve seen ‘em all.

Sunday brought with it some news that deflated us a little and made us want to just stay in our little flat, cosy and protected. We had a very lazy day, flirting between sewing projects, photo processing, website stuff and watching England crash out of the World Cup.

Sometimes it’s good to just be at home, ignoring the laundry and the dishes and the ironing. It was exactly what we needed to re-charge that day. Hey, maybe Doris planned it like that all along….

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There is a three month period each year when one of us is – on paper anyway – 2 years older than the other. One of us finds it amusing, the other one of us finds it disturbing. Which is why she is very happy come June when the balance is restored and we revert to our regular 1 year age gap.

In celebration of this particular birthday, we spent a brilliant day at Go Ape in Aberfoyle. The little one booked it as a surprise (and then failed miserably to keep the secret) and we were both really intrigued to see what it was all about. It basically involves getting strapped into a safety harness and making your way across an assault course suspended up high in the tree-tops of the Queen Victoria National Park. And those are some pretty tall trees…

One of us finds it amusing, the other one of us finds it disturbing.

One of us doesn’t particularly love heights you know (you would think this might have been taken into account when choosing his birthday day out). But he got over it and it was all fun and games in the end.

Here’s a video of the boy going down the last zip wire, all 426m of it!

And one of the girl jumping to off one of the platforms and crashing into a cargo net…

After a few hours of monkeying around in the forest (boom boom), we headed to our campsite – the Trossachs Holiday Park. Not a first-choice kind of site but a handy location which didn’t require a minimum 2 night stay. What is with that by the way!? It was a gloriously sunny evening and we sat out barbequeing, cross-stitching and reading for hours. Good times.

On Sunday morning we drove back to Aberfoyle and then cycled around the edge of Loch Ard. When we say around, that does not of course mean all the way around. More like for 20 minutes or so till we got hungry and decided to go for lunch.

But first we got sidetracked by our new friends, the Fishermen Dudes. They caught sight us taking pictures on the edge of the loch and called over to see if we wanted to “tak a photie o’ a really big fish”. Well, who could resist such an invitation? So we trudged down through the mud to find them grappling with the biggest fish we had ever seen (not that we see many fish, but you get the idea) and quite happy to pose for a photo with their catch. The whole exchange was slightly surreal to be honest and we were left wondering how we manage to get ourselves into these sort of situations with surprising regularity…

We celebrated our (ahem…) mammoth cycle with lunch at The Forth Inn and a flick through the Sunday papers. Lovely.

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A year ago, we had this vague notion that we might quite like to have a campervan. We can’t remember how it first came up in conversation, but we weren’t surprised to find that we both thought they were the coolest things ever. We’d never actually seen one up close, but we somehow knew this to be the case.

A few internet searches later, we’d realised how much these things go for nowadays and figured we were probably looking a few years down the line.

And then we went to Volksfling, the biggest VW show in Scotland. Not somewhere you want to go if you’re trying to put all notions of owning a campervan out of your mind… A year on we returned to Volksfling as ‘one of the gang’.

Well, kind of. You see we didn’t actually camp overnight. We didn’t even actually take Doris, as time was short and the practicality of nipping down in Mr 2 outweighed the romanticism of the van. But we did go along for an hour or so and enjoy the slightly surreal experience of seeing hundreds of Doris’ buddies all in the same random field in Biggar.

A few of our favourites…

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Or alternatively, The First Weekend of Married Life!

Circumstances being what they were, we didn’t have a ‘normal’ honeymoon straight after our wedding. For a start, we had enough to do trying to fling the big day together, and we also didn’t want to venture too far from home given the reality of what was to come. We decided to look on it as a gradual process – we had our micro-moon to North Berwick the day after the wedding, a mini-moon to St. Andrew’s the next weekend and next year we’ll hopefully get the real deal, our long-talked-about honeymoon road trip down the west coast of America. And it doesn’t really matter whether you call it a honeymoon or not, that’s a good holiday.

But for now it was Fife. Not quite as glamorous but we both love St. Andrews – it’s somewhere that evokes childhood memories of school trips, ice creams and family days out.

Incidentally, we’ve realised recently that we have a tendancy to name things. We’re ok with this.

We found the most gorgeous campsite just outside Strathkinness, high up on a hill overlooking the town below. It’s called Nydie and is essentially just a big field in the middle of the country. No kids clubs, no games rooms, no big ugly static caravans…. Just a big open space with great views. Exactly the kind of site that we love.

When we arrived we were delighted to be told we could choose a spot anywhere (a nice change from being allocated a pitch and nervously driving up to it, craning to see if ’141′ happens to be the tiny bit of gravel next to the annual reunion of the Shameless family). Most people had stayed fairly close to the entrance but we went for all-out isolation and chose a spot right down in the far corner with the killer view. We thought we were so clever, and we totally didn’t get why everyone else was bunched up at the top end.

Until we needed the toilet that is. Another camping lesson learned…. Peace and quiet is one thing but it’s not much fun cycling uphill through a grassy field, in the rain, at seven in the morning just to use the facilities.

And yes, we did cycle. This weekend was another major milestone with Doris – the weekend when we fitted the bike rack. Actually, lets not dwell on it. Suffice to say it was one of those jobs that we thought would take us half an hour, tops. Two hours later one of us was trying very hard not to say anything that could be construed as ‘unhelpful’ and the other one of us was about to break down and cry. That thing’s never coming off by the way.

So we made it to the campsite mid-afternoon, popped the roof and jumped straight on our bikes to cycle the 3 miles into town. We should probably say here that our experiences thus far with cycling have been mixed. Before we were together, we were persuaded to sign up for a charity corporate challenge through work. Four of us walked 16 miles and cycled 39 through the gorgeous countryside from Drymen to Kenmore, which could have been amazing if it hadn’t poured with rain from 2 hours in. It took us 13 hours to complete (we weren’t the fittest…) and at the end of the day we dumped our muddy wet bikes in the garage at work.

That was June 2007.

By June 2010 a lot had changed. We’d realised we loved each other, moved in together, bought Doris, hell we’d even got married. But our bikes were still sitting caked in mud in the garage at work.

We decided the time had come to rectify the situation when we were very generously given a Fiamma bike rack as an engagement present from the little one’s aunt and uncle. So off we set on our bikes, trying to remember how gears work and whether we were still capable of bumping up and down kerbs as we did so easily at age 8. Turns out one of us can. The other one of us is still having too much trouble with the whole balancing thing to consider bumping up kerbs.

We made it into St Andrews in about 8 minutes, the glory of an all-down-hill-cycle, and then had a lovely afternoon wandering round the shops in the glorious sunshine. After a re-energising (and amazing!) fruit smoothie we headed for what is surely the best putting green ever, The Himalayas, stopping en route to try and emulate some of the most iconic golf shots ever.

The Old Course Panorama…

The Swilcan Bridge…

18th Fairway…

The new Tiger…

It was another win for the little one before we headed back to the campsite on the now-all-up-hill-cycle (which took considerably longer than 8 minutes this time round) for a lovely evening of satay king prawns, beefburgers, kettle chips and beer. It was also the first outing for The Megablanket, one of our favourite wedding presents. Incidentally, we’ve realised recently that we have a tendancy to name things. We’re ok with this.

In classic Scottish style the weather completely changed overnight and Sunday morning was a complete and utter wash out. By 7am the family in the tent nearest to us had called it quits, piled into their car and driven away. We were cosy and dry inside of course, but there was no getting away from the fact that it was a bit of a trek to the loos… And by the time of us had finished loading up the bikes and tidying up the remnants of our BBQ, he looked like this…

In a bid to warm him up we went back into town for a fry-up at The Westport – lovely end to our mini-moon.

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Cold. Very very very cold.

That will forever be the first thought that comes into mind when we think of our first camping trip of 2010. Which is a shame as we actually had a very nice time. It’s just that we were frigging freezing.

It was the middle of probably the most hectic period of our lives, but we’d always planned to go away for the first bank holiday of the year and we were determined to stick to that plan. Saturday had been set aside for what would become the most productive shopping trip known to man so we only had one night to play with.

Arriving at the campsite in the late afternoon, we went for a wander along the river bank before heading back into the village to find a pub for dinner. We liked the look of the first place we came to, but thought we would walk up and down to see if there was anywhere else that took our fancy. Hmmm, not so much. Timewarp alert. Sometimes you’ve just got to trust your instincts.

And so we settled in to “The Inn” for a couple of drinks and a bite to eat – one of us had scampi and chips while the other one of us had a gorgeous creamy seafood stew (and chips!). We had a lovely meal, and then an after-dinner series of pool games saw the little one cruelly defeated, deflated and ready to head for home…

For home, read Doris, where we would get tucked up with a blanket, eat chocolate and watch a movie. Sounds perfect doesn’t it?

Except that once the power of the hot water bottle had faded away and we were huddled together in the ‘upstairs’ bed covered with a thin film of moisture it didn’t seem so perfect after all. It was at this point (approximately 3am) that we realised we only bought Doris in the middle of June 2009 and had never tried to camp out so early in the year. We simply weren’t prepared for a particularly cold night in early May. I mean it wouldn’t have been hard to have a take a little heater with us or even a couple more blankets, we just hadn’t thought to do so. Hey, you live and learn.

As the sun came up early on Monday morning things suddenly seemed a lot more positive and we were able to get a few hours of much warmer sleep. On the way home we stopped in Callendar for lunch at our favourite fish and chip shop (any excuse…) and a wander round the shops.

When he told us the price we tried to look nonchalant and hand over the cash casually, but all the while we were thinking lets get the hell out of here before he realises that that is faaaaaar too little money.

And this is when we found Deal of the Year 2010. We were browsing in a little antique/junk shop when the little one spotted an old suitcase that looked like something we might be interested in for the old girl. On closer inspection it turned out to be a 1950′s Singer sewing machine, complete with carry case, instructions and all the original accessories. It was gorgeous. We fell in love with it. It is exactly the kind of thing we want to fill our house with and we each instinctively braced ourselves for an internal debate about whether we should splash the necessary cash to make it ours or not…

Nervously, the little one asked the shopkeeper how much he was looking for. And then said teenage shopkeeper had ‘tae phone up his maw’ to ask her how much it would be. This is when we think communication might have started to break down a little.

You see when he told us the price we tried to look nonchalant and hand it over casually, but all the while we were thinking lets get the hell out of here before he realises that that is faaaaaar too little money. We walked quickly down the street and tried not to high-five till we at least rounded the corner… Total bargain. Nice wan. We do worry that his mum might have skelpt him one when she got back to the shop and realised what he’d sold, but hey, the boy’s got to learn…

Pictures and a post of the sewing machine to follow….

And that was the ups and downs of our first trip of the season. We’re very much looking forward to more.

Footnote: Bring back Sega Mega Rally!

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It had been an absolutely gorgeous week. The kind of week that puts a spring in your step, a smile on your face and makes the usually long, dreary, weekday morning walk to work a pleasure. Hmmm, yeah well not quite, but still the sun had made its first prolonged appearance of the year and all of the sudden the mood in our chilly little city seemed to have lifted.

Welllllll, have you heard, the bird is the word? Oooh everybody’s heard that the bird is the word!

From Monday to Friday we sat gazing out of the office windows, planning summer road trips in our lunch hour and a weekend picnic on the beach at North Berwick.

Until we woke up to the sound of rain lashing off the window.

In typical Scottish fashion, our summer had been and gone by 18 April, just in time for a wet and windy weekend. We decided to try and make the best of it though, and had a quick adjustment of plans.

Out: getting the car roof down, summer dresses, lazing on a blanket on the sand, reading magazines and enjoying a picnic, some strawberries and perhaps a nice cold beer.

In: golf umbrella, North Face jackets, a morning walk in the rain, lunch at cosy little cafe and back to the flat to work on our projects. Oh yeah, and a nice cold beer.

We actually had a really quite lovely day in the end. We kept warm dancing a la Peter “Family Guy” Griffin* on the beach and were delighted to discover our new ‘local’ – Tiffany’s Tea Rooms. Toasties and lattes and scones, oh my.

And a trip to North Berwick wouldn’t be complete without a gander round some of our favourite shops…

*Welllllll, have you heard, the bird is the word? Oooh everybody’s heard that the bird is the word!

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