Kombucha Dreaming

I'm quite new to the whole Kombucha brewing thing but I'm hooked already!

My neighbour gave me a piece of her Scoby* a few weeks ago and with her recommendations (and those on this funky website) I got going.

It's a bit hard to believe that brewing 2 liters of extra strong tea,

adding 1 dl of organic sugar,

and letting it sit in a big glass jar for 8 to 14 days together with a "*symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast" (yum!) and about 10-20% starter tea would produce a drink with numerous health benefits ... 

but it's fizzy and tasty and a pretty cool way to transform tea into a refreshing drink for hot days so who's complaining?

So far I've tried brewing kombucha with Joe's tea co's English Breakfast and Løv Organic's Sencha. 

I alternate the two since I've read somewhere that the Scoby needs at least a little black tea to feed on which is maybe why the green tea one was a lot milder in taste ... 

but my guess is as good as yours :p
(do leave a comment if you know something I don't!)

More experiments are very likely to follow!

Gotlanders who want to join me on this kombucha adventure - let me know! 

I also happen to sell both Løv Organic & Joe's Tea so drop me a line if you want some :)

aina@vii.nu

Now we have a sourdough starter and a kombucha culture going, kefir next? 

Why not today? ;)

Mittemot

Going on road trips is by far my most favourite thing to do here on the island.

Taking the bike only gets you so far in one day ... and it so happened that last Sunday was the most perfect day for one of those semi-spontaneous let's jump in the car and see where we end up kind of outings.

This time I sort of knew where I wanted to end up though. We were going East!

Mittemot, (Swedish for "opposite") is a new store opposite the quite well known restaurant & hotel Smakrike only a few meters away from the sea, in Ljugarn, Gotland.

They also happen to be the first store to contact me with the request to sell Ljusbringare* , which obviously made me one happy girl :)

*the awesome little eco-candles of which I'm distributor on Gotland. Contact me for shipping outside Sweden! I can make exceptions for these babies!

Even if you can resist the urge to buy absolutely everything you won't be able to resist the selection of cakes they have across the road.

I had the most delicious lemon tart but I think I probably enjoyed the setting even more :)

Oh Gotland,

you keep on seducing me ... ♥

My 2 cents on Collaboration

From the very start our business has been built on collaboration. 

Had we not asked for help from others we wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

We would probably still be dreaming out loud :)

If I could give any advice to aspiring business owners it would be this:

Open up your eyes and mind to the possibilities that working together bring.

As a small business owner you can simply not figure out or do everything by yourself.

Many with more experience are willing to give you their 2 cents. Even on very specific questions.

Just ask!

Sure, you can get burnt. 

We've learned to be careful working together with businesses without a well thought through concept.

When the lines are blurred you might see them get a little too inspired by the products or services you offer.

That said, businesses who have to steal ideas from others won't be much of a match for entrepreneurs who come up with their own in the long run anyway,

and to be honest, working together with others is too much fun not to take the risk.

 Vii collaborates with businesses with similar values.

Concepts may not always overlap on all fronts but as long as you can find common ground you have something to work with.

We wouldn't have been a part of Visby Fashion Weekend had The Body Shop not been looking for a collaboration.

They stand for vegetarian and cruelty free beauty products, we sell (among other things ;)) beautiful handmade leather bracelets.

We are drawn to the organic, the natural and the plastic-free, they choose synthetic materials for their brush bristles as animal materials are out of the question for them. 

Even though their product choices and ours might not always fit together,

The Body Shop's mission is to make a difference in their customers' lives, and there we've found our common ground!

We all make our own choices, as businesses and as customers.

The important thing (for me personally at least) is that there is a thought behind what we choose. 

Caribbean Inspiration

"Life is lived forward but understood backwards"

That was my mum's reaction to the changes I've had to make in the way I'm running my business.

Something that initially pissed me off and turned my plans upside down actually turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. 

Before we left to Guadeloupe I made the decision to leave the store space I had just moved into a few months earlier.

I left Sweden knowing that everything would be different when I came back.

After my initial anger dissipated all I felt was relief.

I felt relieved and maybe even a little proud that I was strong enough to jump into the unknown in order to get out of a situation where I wasn't allowed to grow.

The anger that had kicked me into action made room for inspiration. 

And what better place to get inspired than the Caribbean!

Golden Day

 Fårö, Gotland.

Perfection.

Celebrate the little things

Vii - Celebrate the little things from Three Stops Below on Vimeo.

This little clip was made a little while a go by some of our friends who came by for cake.
Right now I feel like I have a lot of little things to celebrate so it fits quite nicely with my mood :)
That's my hands wrapping one of our watches in the video :) Check them out here!
Why not today?
#varförinteidag?
;)

A place to call home

How nice to come home after a day out in the snow,

to open the door and put your suitcase down after a trip abroad,

to have a sofa to crash into after a long day at work.

I wish we lived in a world where everybody could relate to that feeling,

a world where everybody had a place to call home.

How lucky we are ...