Lama Farmer

Hello everyone.

I hope you've had a lovely week and managed to have a peak at my bonus photo blog from yesterday of my high school Leavers Do.

Now something I don't think I've mentioned before is that me and my family own alpacas-around 13 I think. You know, the usual. Alpacas are small, cuter versions of lamas for those who maybe don't know and I am glad to say alpacas don't spit at humans like lamas do but if you're not careful you could get caught in the cross-fire between two of them. Ew. Speaking of lamas, one of the key reasons for my parents wanting to buy one or two alpacas was because my dad wanted to be able to call himself a "Lama Farmer". The Hodkinsons' purchasing priorities never cease to impress. 
Our alpacas live on our field and are quite sweet most of the time that is until it's time to shear them.... Each year at this time we need to shear them and my parents couldn't do it on their own so it ends up becoming a bit of a family event- again, the usual. I dread this time of year because it tends to be the perfect time for midgies and the idea of chasing, catching and holding down alpacas to be sheared just doesn't appeal to me (I know, shocking). We got through it though and managed to shear the five boy alpacas -just 8 more to go. Woo.
After shearing them however we do get some comic relief when we release them and see what a mess they are despite our best efforts. 

 Looking fabulous.

I think my face illustrates the level of fun I'm having... 

On the Monday it was one of my best friend's birthday. Iona turned 18! I can't believe that she's 18, I feel like an auntie or something who's feeling a little shocked that my little girl's growing up- despite the fact that I'm 4 months younger than her. 
On her birthday Iona was unfortunately working however everyone at work helped make her day special by presenting a little birthday strawberry tart complete with a candle and sang happy birthday to her. Our manager had also bought her some novelty glasses that had "Happy Birthday" on them and insisted Iona served a customer with them on. 
Shortly after, Iona left work and said "see you later" to me and little did she know that she would in fact see me later as me and some friends were going to meet at her house for a mini surprise party. We had all arranged to meet at Iona's at around 7 which was when I finished work so after glamorously getting dressed in a small bus terminal toilet me and my friend went up to Iona's house to find a lovely gazebo full of little nibbles and champagne as well as Iona's poor dad who was fighting off the thousands of midges. We all decided then that we should move the party inside and some champagne and strawberries later we sang happy birthday and had a good catch up.
It was a lovely evening and I think Iona really enjoyed it so successful mission.

After the party I went home for some sleep as I had work the next day and had to be up by 8. That was nothing compared to the time I got up yesterday though which was my day off - 6:30 am! Even the birds were still sleeping. One thing I love about getting up early though is seeing the sunrise; it's a beautiful reward for being awake at ridiculous times.
The reason I was up so early was because me and my family were going to the mainland and were catching the first ferry. Whilst there we did some errands and things and then went to see Despicable Me 2 at the cinema. Overall I was pretty impressed with the film and I loved that they brought in a new female character, Lucy, for Gru -she was so cool- and of course the touches of comedy were really great as in the first film. It was also interesting to watch as a wannabe film-maker because the level of detail in each scene, the use of colour, the life-like animation and the realism in the characters' movements and mannerisms are all fascinating to me to see in an animation.
After watching the film we then did some retail therapy where I think I was very sensible with my spending for a change which surprised even myself and I was very happy with my purchases when I returned home-some summery tops, summery shoes, jeans and the most important... cosy jammies.

That's the end of this week's update apart from mentioning this evening. I went out with Iona and some other friends for Iona's first purchase of alcohol in a pub. She stayed classy with a glass of wine whilst I was of course on the orange juice. We all sat down on the cosy couch in the corner together eating nachos and enjoying the live music playing. Me and my friend Alex got very into the music at one point with our air guitar etc. which led the singer to shout out to us to finish the line "I'm loving angels instead". We were horrifically out of tune but I think our jazzy moves more than made up for it. After that we began eyeing up the pool table and after waiting a loooong time in the line of people waiting to play, me and Iona began our assault of the game. We weren't the best players and everyone watching knew it so after a while it just got a little embarrassing. This is why we may have accidentally knocked one or two of the balls into the pockets when no one was looking. I'd like to add that I won the game though. I was pretty pleased.
The rest of the week I have spent working which for me isn't a bad thing. I'm still loving it there and today in fact a lovely customer out of the blue told me I had "amazing eyes". Aw shucks. It made my day.

Anyway, that is enough of my ramblings for this week. I'll see you next week with either another life post or a second installment of my series called "Mollie's Thoughts" that I'd like to begin to progress. We shall see. Until then,

Mollie

♥

Aprons and Castles

Hello everyone.

(I couldn’t think of a new introduction so this will do.)

It’ll have to be another life-update post as I have been too busy this week to sit and plan a more adventurous one. However, I do have a few ideas linked with my Youtube Channel that I’m excited to try in the near future.

So this Sunday I had my first day at my new job and I arrived on the busiest day they've had so far. Typical. This meant I fluttered around trying to find things to do as everyone tried to explain their system in the little free time they had. It was fine though and I still learned a lot. It was on Monday that I began my real training and I can honestly say I really enjoy working there. It’s such a friendly, relaxed environment - even when it’s busy. Everyone helps each other when they have a free moment and it just works.

Tuesday and Wednesday were my days off work. I would have liked to have just chilled out or got some things done but I still had art to do (nearly finished now though!). It almost seems never-ending. However I did get an un-planned rest yesterday when I went for a costume scavenger hunt at our Island’s castle for the school play with our school play’s director and a friend. This year we’re doing The Importance of Being Earnest and my part is a female version of the character ‘Merriman’-a housekeeper. This meant we needed authentic looking maid costumes for mine and the other maids’ parts hence the reason we pulled on our Island’s resources and went to the castle. It was like being a child playing fancy dress with all the beautiful dresses and accessories. My costume is a black dress with a white apron and I love it!

The castle isn’t the only place that is donating props to our play; the director has sourced various plants and pieces of furniture from different businesses on Arran to feature in the show -one of the many benefits of living on a small Island.

Anyway, I stray from the story. When we had found our costumes and got into the director’s car, it wouldn't start. I wasn't complaining though because it meant we were ‘forced’ to spend more time at the castle on a lovely sunny day.

In other news, I’ve recently become very aware that I am long over-due a new video on my channel. This will be one of my priorities once my art is finally all done and dusted. If you’d like to visit my channel there is a link HERE).

So that’s this week so far. Not so many exciting things to talk about but still a busy week. Hopefully next week will be a little more interesting as my art should be packed and sent away finally and I’ll hopefully have a shift with my friend who has also recently started where I work-if they can cope with two people who are not really sure what they’re doing working at the same time.

I hope you’ve had a great week and if you have any topics you’d like me to talk about in a future blog post then please leave a comment below.

Mollie

♥

So You’ve Had a Bad Day?

Hello everyone.

Today’s post is as the title suggests, about having a bad day. “But Mollie, nobody wants to think about that, it’s such a depressing subject!”. Ahh well my observant well-spoken reader, the truth is, I know.  Having a bad day isn’t fun at all but it is something that just happens sometimes and besides, this post ends positively. Promise.

I feel I should justify why I have chosen such a melancholy subject to talk about today so here we go. For me today began as just ‘one of those days’. You know what I mean, you wake up with a sigh and an “Oh, here we go again” attitude and nothing seems to go right. The jump in the shower to find there’s no hot water left or style your hair nicely just to find that the wind and rain have other ideas or maybe like me you’re just a little bored of the prospect of yet another day at school/work sort of business. From the moment you walk out of your front door you’ve already got your ‘Well, let’s just get through the day’ head on. This now is where I see I’ve gone wrong.

One reason being that because you’ve got the idea of having a bad day already into your head, you’re stuck thinking you’re going to have a bad day and so all the little things that go wrong which would usually go unnoticed suddenly become your impending doom. You begin to think negatively about everything and before you know it, you dropping that pen for the second time was God’s way of telling you to quit everything. But see, this is where I began to stop and think.

Was me having a double free first thing at school with hardly anything to do with myself really such a bad thing after all seeing as I ended up learning lines for a play and having a giggle with my friends?

Was the dread of going to my admin class and working through a past paper really going to ruin my day when I ended up learning some important skills and identifying a problem with my computer now which if me and my teacher hadn’t spotted could have affected me in my exam?

And was the prospect of me having to stay after-school for two more hours for the school’s play rehearsal going to get me down when I ended up practicing some new scenes and laughing hysterically with one of my friends?

Even after returning home from school, I still thought about my day in a negative way because I failed to notice these positive outcomes to what I felt were frustrating circumstances to be in. That was until just an hour or so ago. You see, following ‘one of those days’ from a few weeks ago I came home and reflected on the day to see what it was that made it a ‘bad day’ and the truth was, I found it wasn’t such a bad day after all; in finding these negative situations I began to remember many of the positive ones that happened either on their own or because of a negative situation.

It was on that ‘bad day’ that I decided I was going to stop remembering the negatives in my day and focus on the positives. It was also that day that I began my “What I’m grateful for today” diary. Starting that day, whenever I’ve had a bad day-or a good day- I’ve sat down in the evening before bed and thought about the things that made me smile. To my surprise, even when I thought everything had gone wrong that day, there was a list of at least 10 things that really made me smile; whether it had been talking to an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while to simply someone holding the door open for me or paying me a compliment. It all adds up and it all leaves me feeling my day might not have been so bad after all.

I hope this post hasn’t been too sad. It’s just something I felt I wanted to share and that I know a lot of people can relate to. (It’s also another item to add to my list of “What I’m grateful for today”!)  I hope that after reading this you will want to begin a diary like this or even just take 10 minutes of your evening to focus on what positive things happened in your day; you will be surprised at how many you can list if you really think about it!

Remember: everyday may not be a good day, but there is something good in everyday. And besides, I think you're awesome.

Mollie

♥

A Lovely Day

Hello everyone.

I know I usually try to post on a Wednesday but I feel there can be a cheeky bonus post today.

As I mentioned in my previous post, today was the day of Fiona Doubleday’s Studio Opening/tea party in aid of The Butterfly Tree Charity which I was asked to attend and film. (You can read her post about the day HERE.) And what a wonderful day it has been!

It began with painting a butterfly for the tea party’s raffle before me and my mum headed up to Fiona’s at one o’clock so that I could begin filming before everyone arrived.  As we entered her house the hard-work put into the event became evident as we looked around the beautiful arrangements of butterfly goodies, gifts from local shops and crafters that were attractively organised in Fiona’s living room, an array of cakes and scones and of course the wonderfully decorated studio.

 My painting for the raffle

                                                       Fiona's display of butterfly products

Products from crafters and local shops

As Fiona, her husband and two of her sons finished preparations I began by filming some scenes in and around the studio before the ribbon was tied across the doors to be later cut.

Two o’clock arrived and people soon began to flutter in and were all very impressed with the studio and transformed living room. Around 31 people arrived and with tea and cakes in our tummies, pennies spent on butterfly merchandise (all proceeds going to The Butterfly Tree Charity) and crafters’ products, we settled down for Fiona’s inspiring introduction to the event as she talked about all the work put into the day and her exciting future plans to help The Butterfly Tree. We all then went out to the studio for the grand opening where Fiona’s husband Peter read a touching story of the origin of their studio followed by a speech and cutting of the studio’s ribbon by a friend of Fiona and her family, Lynn Ross.

Yummy cakes made by Fiona's son

People beginning to arrive

 The studio with its ribbon

With the sun beginning to shine on the much loved studio everyone had a peek inside before returning to the living room for a raffle and another look around some of the merchandise.

Before long, Fiona’s hand-made butterflies had all found new loving homes along with many of the other items available and the profit of these sales combined with the selling of the raffle tickets totaled up to an amazing £200 meaning that this one day will provide the money for 40 mosquito nets for the people in Zambia meaning 40 lives have potentially been saved in a few hours of fun, laughter and donation. 40 mosquito nets. 40 lives. This is truly amazing.

 Fiona's mum sorting raffle tickets

Fiona's handmade butterflies

As people began home with high spirits and some lovely purchases, I recorded 

some of the final footage for the film of the day. I can’t wait to begin editing and hope it captures the enthusiasm and joy of all who attended this lovely day. It will be featured on Fiona's blog once it is finished and I'll upload a link when it's there.

A child dies every 40 seconds from malaria. But today, thanks to Fiona, her family and everyone who attended her event, 40 lives have been potentially saved by the money raised for mosquito nets.

If you have been as inspired as I have by Fiona’s event please visit The Butterfly Tree website and if you can please make a donation.

I hope you too had a lovely day.

Mollie

♥

Finding Home

Hello again!

Firstly, thank you all for your support and lovely comments on my last post. It was so encouraging! And a big thank you to Fiona from Scottish Island Mum who encouraged me to start a blog in the first place.

I mentioned on my last update that I live on the lovely Isle of Arran and thought I’d share the story of how me and my family came to live here as I like to think it’s quite amazing.

I’ve lived on Arran since I was 7 years old; we were destined to live here as my parents have always loved Scotland and even eloped to get married here. They said that when they had a family, Scotland would be the place they’d like to live.

Fast-forward a few years and there are my two younger sisters (aged about 3 and 5) and me (about 6). Now that my parents had a family they began to think seriously about moving to Scotland.

Now around this time they decided to buy a new car for my mum (this is relevant I promise) and amazingly after buying the car they realised that the license plate included “ARR4N”. No. Really! They had been thinking about Arran as a place to live around that time so this was truly amazing.

A few months later and my parents, sisters and me all embarked on the long drive to Arran and loved it from the moment we stepped off the ferry-even my little 3 year old sister. I remember on this visit that we found a go-cart track and went cycling through Brodick-me and my dad on a tandem (with me just sitting on the back, my legs dangling above the pedals) and my mum cycling with my two sisters attached to her bike on a little cart. I was sold. I would have moved right there and then!

(From left: Me, Emily, Megan and Mum behind us)

(Us with dad)

On returning from our first visit we had already grown attached to this beautiful little island and going back to England didn’t feel like we were going “home”; it felt as though we were driving away from it.

A few more visits by my parents and they grew more and more in love with the island and more determined to move here and overcome any obstacles that might arise.

After visiting one of the island’s attractions my mum thought long and hard about our potential move and prayed about it asking "Is it the right thing to do?" as they pulled out of the car park. To her amazement when they began down the road a car drove past with the license plate including the word “YES”. Once again, not kidding! We seem to have a thing with taking advice from license plates.

After this miraculous happening things just fell into place. My dad who works as an IT Consultant managed to get permission to home-work from the island (after going through almost all the levels of management), my parents found our first house and despite the housing market at that time forcing properties to be sold up to 40% over the asking price, they managed to buy the one we wanted for less than the asking price. Another cool coincidence (or as we like to think, a nudge from God) was that as me and my sisters were only just beginning school we’d need to find a suitable one on the island and even though my parents visited one during the Easter holidays, the moment they arrived the Head Teacher walked out and so she could answer their questions there and then. This is the primary me and my sisters ended up attending and led us to find some really amazing friends who we’re still close to.

We like to think that us moving to Arran wasn’t just a coincidence or good timing, but that God intended for us to live here. And I’m so glad He did! 10 years on and I love the Island just as much as when I first saw that go-kart track. It’s strange to think that I’m now in my last year of high school and will soon be leaving here. I couldn’t have asked for a better place to live. One thing is for sure though, when birthdays and Christmas’ arrive I will have no hesitations in returning to this humble little beautiful island.

Mollie

♥

Nice To Meet You.

Hello all.

My name is Mollie and I am definitely new here.

Blogging is foreign territory to me but has always been something I've been desperate to try. I always feel that I’ll never have enough to say. Anyway, I have decided enough is enough and I must give it a go, after all that is going to be the motto for my gap year which I am about to begin.

 As a newbie to the blogging world I feel I should properly introduce myself so I shall do my best to fill you in with the essentials.

I am 17 years old, I have very red hair, a positive outlook on life and am in my last year of highschool (only two weeks left-eek). I live on the beautiful Isle of Arran on the west coast of Scotland and have done since I was 7 years old. As a teenager on an often quiet island it can be challenging finding things to fill your weekend with. Starved of Primark and MacDonald’s it can leave me thinking it would be great to live on the mainland sometimes, but really there is nowhere else I would rather be. As a budding film-maker it’s the perfect place to live. With its breath-taking views and changing landscape around every corner Arran certainly lives up to its name of “Scotland in miniature”.

I’m sure many of you will have heard of the Isle of Arran on the news recently due to our terrible power cuts. It has been quite a unique experience to put it one way and has inspired me to make a video about my experience of it for my YouTube channel to allow people to see the situation from and Arran-er’s point of view.

Film-production being a keen interest of mine and something I hope to pursue as a career I jumped at the chance to start my own YouTube channel and after a few first-video attempts Normollieee was born. I have loved filming since I was little and used to make sketches with my family and friends on the family camera and would pretend I was a professional by the age of 6. I've loved it ever since.

In the nine videos I have uploaded so far on my channel I have tried to experiment with different techniques and concepts including stopmotion, video in time with music, fast-cut reversed footage and a basic sit-down vlog. I’ve become very fond of my humble little channel and I hope it will grow and blossom as I learn more about editing and film. I have so many ideas and hopes for it’s future and cannot wait to make these ideas a reality in my coming gap year. I appreciate every single view and “thumbs up” I receive and can’t help but give a little squeak of joy when I see I have a new subscriber. It’s really exciting for me to know that I can dedicate my time and effort towards it this year and I would love if you joined me along the way!

I think this will do for a short introduction so far as I hope you will learn the rest through my future blogs. See you soon.

Mollie♥

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