Dreams

There's no better place for lunch than a charming greenhouse filled with old furniture and pretty plants on a cloudy summer day.

Days like these I feel especially blessed to be running a company of my own, sharing the work load with my business partner who's been in the store on her own these past days so I get to spend time with my visitors. (Thank you Lotta!!)

Sure, being self-employed can be scary as hell. It takes a fair bit of discipline and a dash of naivety ...

& of course there are days when I second guess myself and wonder if I'm being stupid ...

but then I remember that I only have one life, 

and I really can't imagine wasting it working on someone else's dream!

Closing one door, opening another.

On the first of July I locked the door of my little red cottage behind me for the last time.

What started as a summertime housing solution in 2013 turned into 2 years of waking up to sea view in the middle of what I used to call my little paradise, where I took care of the gardens as well as the rental of a couple of summer cottages.

It was a dream come true. 

I had always wanted a little house of my own surrounded by nature.

I had 2 greenhouses at my disposal where I could grow my own food,  the beach at 50m from my doorstep, 

and I could go for walks in the nature reserve bordering the property without even meeting a single person.

It was a lot of work and took me a lot of time, but it was worth it.

But when the man who used to share my little paradise with me bought himself his own slice of paradise and gave me a key, my own paradise lost its glory and all of a sudden the reasons to hold on to it didn't outweigh the reasons to leave anymore.

I will miss the mulberry tree, the plum- and the apple trees, the blackberries and the figs,

I'll miss the early spring breakfasts & lunches in the greenhouse, soaking up the sun behind the glass before it's warm enough to sit outside.

I will miss the beautiful sunsets from my kitchen window and the sound of the waves ...

But nothing beats new-found freedom after letting go of too many responsibilities.

And there's nothing better than the energy boost a change always seems to bring along!

So now ...

Are there changes you know you need to make?

Isn't it time you let go of responsibilities that aren't yours to take?

Isn't it time to listen to your heart?

Why not today?

PS: That's really all it takes: "Why not today?" Lotta and I made posters and postcards with exactly that phrase on them (in Swedish though). So helpful to put up on your mirror or fridge as a reminder! 

Cardamom cookies by Vii - Varför inte idag?

This is the very first recipe to ever appear on this blog! 

I realise it's not the healthiest recipe to share for a nutritionist but since these are the cookies that won most votes during our cookie tasting this winter it only feels natural to share it with the world :)

You'll need:

150 g butter
150 g sugar
300 g flour
1 egg
1,5 tsp cardamom

• Mix butter, sugar and eggs until smooth & add the flour and the cardamom while stirring until you have a smooth dough.
• Let it rest in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes (cover the bowl with Bee's Wrap if you own one :D)
• Preheat the oven to 180°C, roll our the dough on a floured surface, cut out cookies & press with a cookie stamp (we had ours custom made by Average TP on Etsy - so cool!).
• Bake for about 10 minutes in the middle of the oven & let your cookies cool on a rack.

Done!

We gave away these cookies to everybody who promised to like us on Facebook during our opening weekend ... and of course we couldn't stop ourselves from eating the leftovers :) Otherwise they keep well in a closed container and even longer in the freezer.

Enjoy!

xxx Aina Maj

How an idea became reality

On the 6th of October last year the owner of the garden center I used to work at agreed to rent us some space in one of his barns, which is when things got real and we had a goal to work towards. 

We'd open the shop in the spring.

We had half a barn, but no door, and no wall to divide the garden center's storage space and what would be our store.

We had a lot of product ideas but no name, no real concept, and basically no clue :)

Super excited, Lotta and I met in Stockholm for our first official business meeting about a week later, drank loads of tea, coined a name, made huge to-do lists, drew plans ... and then life got in between until we met again in November.

Then, our logo, website, Facebook page and Instagram were created ... and life got in between again.

I like to think we've been super busy, actively planning and working on this business idea the whole winter, but in practice we procrastinated a whole lot when it came to searching for products and distributors and most of the "planning" actually happened during conversations with friends and family (and even complete strangers!) and time flew by nerve-rackingly quickly!

Originally we thought we'd start off with a little event with cookies and coffee inside one of the greenhouses at the garden center to offer a sneak peak to the people we knew and present a selection of our products to whoever was interested, but then, suddenly things started happening!

We got a door, a wall, shelves, made signs, started ordering our carefully selected products, printed postcards, posters & tote bags, baked cookies, invited our friends over for a cookie tasting, baked more cookies, and were generally feeling pretty good about things. 

Despite the fact that we definitely could have planned and procrastinated some more, we decided to put our motto to the test.

Why not today? Or rather, why not the 2nd of April?

We sent press releases to the local newspapers, prepared celebratory champagne, brewed loads of coffee to go with our cookies and hoped a lot of people would show up for our very first opening day!

Lifestyle changes

Last September me and my friend Lotta started brainstorming about how we could create for ourselves the lives we really wanted.
It's been clear since we met in 2010 that this would involve starting our own business ... so that's what we did.
On the 2nd of April, after months of dreaming, imagining, thinking, planning, ordering, organising, and quite a few freak-out moments we opened our lifestyle store called "Varför inte idag?" - Swedish for "Why not today?"

A name that became our motto, a daily reminder, and now also the name of my blog which till this day was called "Sustainability" a term that has become so vague over the years that it was time for an update.

Why not today?

Happy New Year!

It's the 2nd day of the year and so far I've kept all my January Resolutions*:

I got up at a reasonable time, didn't eat meat, didn't drink alcohol, did (some) yoga, didn't spend money on anything I didn't actually need (none at all today actually), and did more work than I'd planned to do.

Oh and on top of that I did all my dishes, so my kitchen was clean for at least one full hour!

I've also had time to watch a chick-flick while eating cookies.

Talking about a successful day ...

Now the movie's finished and so are the cookies and there's a really loud storm raging outside that makes it impossible to sleep, so I picked up my favourite gardening book at started planning/daydreaming about the spring.

Amongst all other exciting plans I have for this year, my vegetable patch will be bigger than ever!

I don't know about you, but I'm SO ready for this new beginning!

*to put a little less pressure on myself I'm dividing my new year's resolutions up into monthly ones ... You should try it, it feels so much more manageable :p

I'm planning a sugar-free February. Who's with me?!

Winter Jam

When the grass crunches under your feet you know winter is here.

It's definitely winter on Gotland,

but still there are things to be harvested!
The other day I took in the last of my kale (decorated with ice crystals!) to transform it into a pie,

and picked a bowl full of rosehip buds.

A word of caution (since most recipes don't stress this fact enough):
you need a LOT of patience to make rosehip jam.

I watched about a dozen TED talks during the process of cutting each of the rosehips in half and scooping out the seeds,
sighed a LOT,
was ready to give up about half way and toss out the rest,
but persisted & succeeded! 

The amount of struggle directly correlates to the appreciation of the result.