Turning Over a New Leaf

I hope you’ve all had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas and New Year. We spent our time at home in London this year – it was very nice just relaxing at home and it certainly made dealing with my Christmas and New Year orders a lot easier!

Highlights included making Christmas decorations with the help of my mother, the writer Jocasta Innes, who has been doing crafting courses at her home and as a result had a lot of craft equipment we could use. My two boys and my nephew Max spent hours making gift tags and decorations to hang up on the Christmas tree. We had a delicious organic turkey on the day itself and I managed to do a lot of shopping at Spitalfieds market so I felt I was supporting local traders and designers. I hope you are all happy with your Christmas orders – Twisted Twee designs in particular were flying out of the shop!

Like everyone I’ve been making New Year’s Resolutions. For my business, it’s to be a better blogger – I’m aiming to do at least two posts per week here and on my personal blog. I’m also going to work on updating my business plan so that I can start the New Year with firm goals and targets. Finally – soon – I will launch a new website to make it easy for overseas customers to shop at Mimimyne! This will have lots of great new features to make the site easier to use and navigate for everyone. I can’t wait!

For myself personally, I’ve joined New Year New Body, a support group set up by Liz Jarvis to help women stay motivated to lose weight and get fit. I’m reasonably active (well, I walk the dogs every day and cycle and walk everywhere) but never find the time to go to the gym, so I’m going to make more time for that too.

My other resolution is to make my home more organised and clutter free. I’m planning to clear it out by the end of January so I can redecorate a couple of rooms. I found a great article on Decluttering with a Conscience over at Angels and Urchins – have a look!

And finally I’m going to make more time for creative writing. I’ve had one short story published recently but I used to write a lot more – screenplays, poetry and fiction – before I had children. I’m going to work at this as it’s something I find inspiring and challenging.

What are your resolutions for the New Year?

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How Green is Your Market

It was a wonderful surprise to find out this month that I had won the Greenest Trader Award 2011 as part of the How Green is Your Market competition run by the National Market Traders Federation. I regularly run a stall at the famous Old Spitalfields Market on Sundays where the old fruit and vegetable market used to be. I love trading there partly because I am a proud East Ender (my mother moved to Spitalfields in the late 70′s) and used to visit the fruit and veg market as well as Brick Lane market every Sunday. I also love it because it’s enclosed, bright and spacious, has wonderful food stalls and restaurants and makes a great retail space for small independent designers who want to reach customers directly. The other stallholders are great fun and sell all kinds of interesting products, especially handicrafts, jewellery and clothing – I bought several of my Christmas presents there this year. I won the Award because I sell organic, recycled and biodegradable products and because I transport my goods by bicycle – no carbon emissions there! I wasn’t able to go to the Awards Ceremony so the award judges visited my stall and presented it to me in person this December. I’m proud to be Greenest Trader 2011, thanks again to the NMTF!

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Pine Tree Dad and Baby T Shirt by Twisted twee

I know a lot of you will be rushing to get your online shopping finished in time for Christmas, so here are a few suggestions to make life easier! All our gifts are either recycled, recyclable, organic, sustainably sourced, Fair Trade or made in the UK so you can give presents with a clear conscience! Here are my top suggestions for dad and baby, for baby boys and girls, for toddlers, for stocking fillers for older kids and for mum – more ideas coming next week.

For a dad and baby we love Twisted Twee’s Pint and Half Pint Sets but hurry, these sell out fast! We also love the Pine Tree and Fir Cone Dad and Baby T-Shirts in organic cotton.

Baby girls will look super cute in these retro Film Buff T Shirts by Twisted Twee while these Moomin Babygrows by Green Eyed Monster are cute on baby boys and girls and are made of lovely thick organic cotton.

For a special gift for a toddler, how about these handmade Monkey slippers by Oromono as recently recommended in Hello? You can accessorise all the Oromono slippers with a matching Jungle playmat and Monkey cushion. A perfect gift set for any cheeky little monkeys you know!

Monkey Slippers by Oromono

Great stocking fillers available at Mimimyne include these cute Santa and Rudolf puppets by Crafty Kids – great for older kids to make some Christmas puppets on the big day while you get on with cooking the turkey! Mimimyne also recommends our story book and vegetable growing kits by Secret Seed Society – a real bargain at only £5.

For mums we recommend the practical and beautiful Mum’s Bag – this is always a winner and is so handy for shopping and the school run!

I hope you enjoy these suggestions and have a wonderful Christmas!

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Kirsty will be winning a £20 E-voucher from Mimimyne just in time for Christmas! Congratulations, Kirsty – I wonder what you’ll buy? Mimimyne has over eighty eco friendly gifts for £20 and under so it’s a great place to pick up eco friendly clothes, toys and stocking fillers for babies, kids and mums and dads too…..

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Just to let readers of this blog know, I am running a competition on Mimimyne’s Facebook Page to win an e-voucher for £20. All you need to do is go over to Mimimyne’s Facebook Page, become a Fan of the page if you aren’t already and visit the Promos tab to enter the competition and see the terms and conditions. The winner is being chosen randomly and will be emailed an e-voucher as soon as the competition ends! You can redeem your coupon online and buy anything you like for £20 (including p&p) at Mimimyne, for example the organic and Fair Trade Siberian Tiger T Shirt shown in the picture is only £18.95 including delivery.

Siberian Tiger T Shirt by An

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It’s FSC Friday this Friday 30th September! What is FSC Friday, I hear you ask? Many of you who shop regularly on Mimimyne will have noticed that some of our products are FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified. This means that they are sustainably sourced from certified forests. FSC products are not always made of wood but can include paper, charcoal and decking – even venison according to the FSC’s website! If I am considering stocking a paper or wood product, ideally I will want it to be either FSC or recycled. Similarly, when you are shopping, looking for FSC certification means that you are helping the environment and helping save our natural resources for future generations.

If you need more convincing, have a read of their 10 Good Reasons to Choose FSC

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While I was away on my family holiday I received two wonderful emails from Mimimyne customers who had bought Fairbourn Furniture’s wooden words with photographs that I’m really looking forward to sharing with you. One was from Charlotte, a newly-wed who bought the words ‘Thank You’ when she was planning her wedding. She wanted to have a photograph of her and her husband taken on their wedding day holding the words so the photograph could be sent to all their wedding guests afterwards. I think you’ll agree that this is a lovely gesture which must have been much appreciated by the wedding guests and made a perfect souvenir of the day. Congratulations to the beautiful bride and her very dashing husband!

Wedding photo with wooden words

Another email came from Louise Jones, a wedding planner who runs Veils and Vows and wanted her company name made in wood for wedding fayres and events where she appears. She says in her email “Here is a photo of the beautiful wooden words you did for me. I think they look great on the brown tablecloth.” Apparently the wooden words were a real hit with other exhibitors too, with several asking her where they were from! It’s always lovely to hear from happy customers so this was a real treat for me. Here’s a photo of Veils and Vows’ very attractive stand.

Fayre Stand for Veils and Vows

The wooden words are hand carved from FSC wood with the combination of letters and words that you choose and can be painted in Fairbourn Furniture’s favourite colourways cream, pale blue, pale pink and pale green. Although the designer recommends them for children’s nurseries and bedrooms, as you can see the only limits to their use is your own imagination!

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I’ve been running a competition exclusively for Facebook fans of Mimimyne and today I’m happy to announce we have a winner selected with the help of Random.org. The winner is Kohtrad Silk! Congratulations and I’ll be in touch to arrange your £15 voucher. There’ll be another competition soon!

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Hi, sorry it’s taken me such a while to post, I usually try and keep my blog bang up to date but have been very busy! Mimimyne has been on the road at the Vintage Festival run by Wayne Hemingway – it was a special festival held at the South Bank celebrating British culture, style and design. I was in the Upcycled marquee along with two other fabulous companies, Paperpom, who hand-make beautiful paper pom poms from FSC tissue paper, and Sparrowkids, who make fantastic felt craft kits for children (and adults). Our section of the marquee was full of colourful paper pom poms, beautiful craft kits and colourful baby clothes, so we got lots of visitors! I was very impressed by all the period outfits on display, we were encouraged to wear 50′s, 60′s, 70′s and 80′s gear and some people wore unbelievably complex, creative and unique outfits, I saw one women with two toy chicks woven into her beehive and another wearing cherries on her head. Hairdressers were on hand to give us makeovers so I had a 50′s hairdo to match my 50′s style dress. If I hadn’t been running my stall, I’d probably have had 50′s makeup done as well!

Me with 50's style updo at the Vintage Festival

Mimimyne's Stall at the Vintage Festival

Another view of the Mimimyne Stall

There’s a fantastic slideshow of images by street photographer Scott Hortop which shows the glamour and vintage style of the festival better than my photos could! I sold several of my beautiful upcycled Mimimyne romper suits which have been a huge hit at festivals and market stalls, as well as some Moomin baby clothes by Green Eyed Monster and lots of Pint and Half Pint T Shirts by Twisted Twee. It was a very hot weekend but we were under a marquee and had lots of delicious food stalls nearby, always very important for me as I am rarely organised enough to bring lunch. All in all it was a great three days and though it’s always hard taking such a lot of time out during the school holidays, I got a visit from my husband and lovely boys and spent some time with my sister who helped out on the stall. I really enjoyed this festival, there was a great party atmosphere and it’s reminded me what fun dressing up, trying out different outfits and being thoroughly girly is occasionally!

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It’s Recycle Week in the UK and it’s a great time to revisit ways to help the environment and put a bit less strain on it by reducing, reusing and recycling. I wanted to share with you some of the things that I’ve been doing and plan to do this week, and some tips and ideas to help you cut down on waste.

I’ve been recycling batteries at my local Tesco; there are so many more places where you can do this now and it’s only a five minute walk for me to drop them off! The other thing I could do is cut down on the amount of batteries I use in the first place, I am thinking about buying a battery recharger and rechargeable batteries to reduce my impact on the environment.

I’m going to make a final decision about whether to get a wormery or a composter this week and buy one. My local council subsidises both so it’s really a question of whether I can face up to wriggly worms or whether it’s better to have a composter, even though my garden is very small. The council used to pick up my food waste from my previous address, but sadly does not provide this service where I live now.

I am going to recycle some clothes (too knackered for the charity shop) and a broken electric kettle. RecycleNow has a great list of retailers who will recycle old small electrical appliances but none of them are near me so I will be making a trip to my local recycling centre.

I recently recycled two mobile phones and was paid £45 for them – it’s so worthwhile. Mobile phones that go into landfill are toxic and are also a waste of the expensive hi-tech components that are used to make them. Recycle yours, donate them to charity or get money for them – it’s a really good idea! There are plenty of sites out there which will help you get your old mobile phones recycled, try this tool from Money Saving Expert to compare them.

I’m also using a Kindle to read books. This is great for the book club I attend as I don’t have to run around book stores looking for books at the last minute, I’m finding it hard to kick my newspaper habit though, even if I can read a newspaper online it doesn’t feel quite the same. If I do buy a paper, I recycle it (of course!) but cutting down on my newspaper and magazine purchasing is going to be hard. I’m also going to donate some books to a local charity to clear some space.

I’m also looking into ways my company can help out. I’ve been looking at ways of reusing materials when creating products and am about to launch a new line of children’s clothing, made with talented childrenswear designer Sally Hemphill (who I met on the school run!) which uses recycled fabrics (offcuts from interior design projects which would otherwise have gone to landfill). The clothes are hand made in the UK by Heba Women’s Project, a unique training & enterprise project based in Brick Lane providing women from diverse cultural backgrounds with a safe and welcoming place in which to make new friends, learn new skills and engage in enterprise activities to suit their particular needs and family commitments. Heba’s a fantastic place which has helped many women with their sewing, English and IT courses, work spaces for designers and creche, so I’m proud to be working with them.

Mimimyne uses recycled printing paper, envelopes and reuses packaging, so that’s taken care of: in fact I do almost everything electronically and don’t generate much paper. I also recycle all my print cartridges by donating them to charity or getting them refilled. I am interested in finding out more about green packaging however, a designer I met recently at Pulse uses biodegradable plastic to package her products and I think there is more that I could do in terms of sourcing green packaging materials. I currently use recycled paper bags and Mimimyne recyclable and reusable Smartbags for selling goods at shows but am going to research things like bubble wrap to see if there are greener alternatives I could be using.

There is lots more information about how you can help the environment during Recycle Week at their website Recycle Now. You can also use the widget below to find out more tips about recycling in your area!

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