Pint and Half Pint T Shirts for Dad and baby are great eco friendly gifts for Father’s Day! Please don’t forget to get your orders in by Wednesday 16th June at the very latest for these extremely popular Father’s Day presents which are currently flying out the door here at Mimimyne.

You might want to take note of the fact that Twisted Twee’s perennially popular Pint and Half Pint T shirts are now available in Mint Choc Chip – yum! The Pint T shirt for Dad is in tasty chocolate with mint lettering and the Half Pint T shirt for Baby is in refreshing mint with chocolate lettering in 100% organic cotton, suitable for a boy or girl. These gorgeous T shirts are perfect for a trip to the pub, park or just hanging around at home for Dad and Baby and both are printed in organic inks in the UK (the Baby T shirt is also 100% organic cotton). Also a great gift for a new dad and baby!

Half Pint T Shirt Set in Mint Choc Chip

Stuck for something stylish yet football-themed for the footie-mad boys (and girls) in your life during this World Cup? Your search is over, as we have some gorgeous and 100% organic cotton designer t shirts to keep your kids looking fabulous and ethical while supporting our lads this year! Football t-shirts will be the garment of choice for child fans of the beautiful game, none more so than in 2010 as World Cup fever hots up! So get ready for Mimimyne’s great range of T shirts for toddlers and children who are crazy about football – and fashion.

The fabulous Green Eyed Monster have created this ‘Footie 10′ World Cup 2010 organic cotton child’s t shirt. This bright red t-shirt pays homage to our national team in support for them but is such a great design that it will be a firm favourite long after the World Cup final has been played. So strike to win with your child and make this t-shirt top choice to avoid being shown the red card! This organic cotton World Cup 2010 football T shirt is available in sizes up to 10 years.

Organic Cotton Footie 10 World Cup 2010 Football Kids T Shirt

Secondly, Twisted Twee have created a fabulous range of “Eng-er-land” themed Bear T Shirts which make perfect “Toddlerwear for the Terraces”. These funky World Cup 2010 Toddler T shirts in 100% organic cotton would make a great gift for any toddler football fans!

Eng-er-land Football World Cup 2010 Toddler Organic Cotton T Shirt

Mimimyne is proud to announce that we are now the stockists of the gorgeous new Big Ben wall sticker and clock face from eco wallpaper design geniuses funky little darlings. This iconic UK landmark would be a striking focal point in any room just as a wall sticker, but with the working clock face incorporated it’s a winner. Designed and made with pride in the UK!

Big Ben Wall Sticker with Clock

If you’re looking for an original Easter gift or Easter decoration, how about Cosytot’s gorgeous Amigurumi organic knitted toy Chicks and organic knitted toy Hens? Mimimyne offers a 10% discount on the Chicks if you order the Hen first (just choose the option “Part of a set”) and the hens are on sale this month too!

Organic knitted toy Easter Chick

“Amigurumi” is the Japanese name for small crocheted or knitted toys: the word is derived from a combination of the Japanese words ami, meaning crocheted or knitted, and nuigurumi, meaning stuffed doll. They are typically cute animals, and I think you’ll agree these are no exception! Kathy from Cosytots’ kids, like mine, are crazy about Japanese style and designs so she has been busily knitting away and produced these wonderful, 100% organic toys in all kinds of colourways. These toys are character toys so NOT suitable for children under 4 years old.

In a bid to honour many celebrities environmental campaigns, the gift bags to be given to celebrities at this weekend’s Oscar ceremonies will have a strong organic and ethical focus.

Bright new British fashion brand Animal Tails, with its full organic and ethical status, and focus on protecting endangered species has been specially selected for inclusion in the celebrity gift bags.

Animal Tails, was founded by designer and artist Annette D’Oyly over two years ago. The collection is UK Soil Association certified under the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), which assures that the garments are, not only organic, including the dying process and silk screen inks, but also ethically manufactured.

Animal Tails takes a fresh approach to clothes for babies and children, and feature amazing silk screen images, developed from their own original artwork, of endangered species. Each garment has a unique story label telling fun and amazing facts about the endangered animals. Animal Tails gives 1% of its turnover to organisations that seek to protect endangered species.

The collection is available online and stocked in over 50 places across the UK and internationally, including Fenwick and the National Maritime Museum. You can find some of their range of clothes for children and babies here at Mimimyne or visit their site www.animaltails.co.uk for more information! Livia Firth, wife of Colin Firth, who writes about ethical fashion, has also blogged about Animal Tails on Vogue.com – you can read her article about ethical fashion in the Oscars goody bags here.

Animal Tails Cerulean Warbler T shirt

I’ve added a fabulous new energy saving gadget to the Mimimyne range, the Wattson designed by DIY Kyoto! This great little gizmo, as well as looking cool, will help you save money by calculating whether you are expending above your average energy use or below and turning red or blue accordingly. You can set it to your own particular energy company’s tariff and if you are lucky enough to be able to generate energy using a solar panel or a wind turbine, it will show you how much you are creating! The video from The Gadget Show (Five.tv) shows you how this works in practise. A great present for environmentally aware households or an investment buy, as this device is bound to save you money.

Sit Down

Seating for Kids

V&A Museum of Childhood

6 February – 5 September 2010

Free admission

When is a seat not just for sitting on? When it’s a plaything, for eating, for transport or for a quick snooze. Sit Down: Seating for Kids, the V&A Museum of Childhood’s next big exhibition on design for kids, will explore the vast array of seating used by children in their everyday lives. Taking the children’s classic tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears as a starting point, the exhibition will invite the visitor, as Goldilocks did, to consider what makes a successful seat. Is it comfort? Is it style? Is it ease of use?

Sit Down will delve into the world of children’s seating with classic and more unusual examples. After centuries of traditional seating forms following accepted design conventions, the 20^th century witnessed an explosion of creative solutions to the idea of seating, including those for children. This exploration of new forms, materials, and production methods, as well as technological developments, resulted in more colourful and innovative seating designs for children. Designs by Charles Eames, Vitra and El Ultimo Grito will be on display, as well as the Modernist high chair by Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld and Spotty, a 1960s paper chair designed by Peter Murdoch.

The exhibition will use the term ‘seating’ in its broadest sense, encompassing a wide range of functional and playful objects designed to be used primarily for sitting upon. This will include chairs, benches, sofas, bean bags, ride-on toys, potties, highchairs and play equipment.

Sit Down will be set out in three main sections, each asking a question for visitors to consider: What is a seat? Who is the seat for? and How is a seat made? The first room, entered through a large, medium or small doorway, recreates the feel of the Three Bears’ cottage, with an interactive dinner table where visitors can vote for their favourite chair by placing a coloured spoon in different porridge bowls. Different examples of kids’ seating will be on display.

In the next room, the exhibition looks at how seating has been adapted for wellbeing, learning, play, resting and transport, again with the objects on open display. Visitors will see how these objects have developed and modernised over time, in particular developmental furniture such as highchairs and potties, where safety and hygiene have influenced new designs. Here visitors will be able to try out different seat types to work out their function and match the seats to the different room settings that will be illustrated on the exhibition wall. The exhibition closes with a timeline from 1600 to the eco-friendly designs of the present day and the opportunity for visitors to build their own seat.

Changes in the notion of ‘childhood’ have effected design for children throughout history. The exhibition will draw from the Museum of Childhood collection of furniture as well as selected loans to explore the range of seating made for or used by children. Issues including social context, how and why styles have changed and the growing popularity of designer seating specifically created to meet children’s needs are also considered.

The exhibition experience will be engaging and multi-sensory with images and hands-on activities and interpretation for a family audience. In addition, a group of students from Bucks New University’s Furniture Design course will look at how best to reinvent the school chair, which has barely changed from its Robin Day-inspired design. And Ercol’s school chair arch, unveiled for the London Design Fair, will be on display in the Museum’s central hall.

Events

Musical Chairs Marathon – Saturday 6 February

How quick can you sit?  Celebrate the opening of Sit Down with a hilarious musical chair challenge. In the afternoon, design a miniature chair to take home.

Sit on it!  February half-term activities – Monday 15-Friday 19 February

Enjoy stories, trails and crafts about Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Plus Three Bears Storytrail

Who’s been sitting in my chair?  Search for clues in a Three Bears Storytrail for a chance to win a goody bag.  Make a bear mask and bear chair in a free, fun, drop-in arts session.

Notes to editors

The exhibition has been designed by architects Wells Mackereth. www.wellsmackereth.com

Sit Down: Seating for Kids opens on Saturday 6 February and closes on Sunday 13 June 2010. Admission to the exhibition is FREE. V&A Museum of Childhood, Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9PA. Admission to the Museum is free. Nearest tube: Bethnal Green. Open daily: 10.00 – 17.45, last admission 17.30. Switchboard: 020 8983 5200 Website: www.museumofchildhood.org.uk

The V&A Museum of Childhood aims to encourage everyone to explore the themes of childhood past and present and develop an appreciation of creative design through its inspirational collections and programmes. The Museum is part of the V&A, housing the national childhood collection. The galleries are designed to show the collections in a way which is accessible to adults and children of all ages.

For further PRESS information or images please contact Rebecca Ward on 020 7613 3306 or email press@rebeccaward.co.uk.

ENDS

Image below provided by Mimimyne

Splat Eco Friendly Child's Chair by Spinifex available at Mimimyne

Announcing a new competition – I am ordering 500 eco friendly shopping bags from the fabulous Smartbags for Mimimyne shoppers either to buy online or as giveaways for events etc. I haven’t come up with a great slogan yet and am running a competition to see if you, my lovely blog readers, Twitter followers and Facebook fans can come up with one! I will put down all the suggestions I’ve had here and will have a poll by the end of January to find out whose slogan wins. The copyright for all these slogans remains with the people who suggested them until I announce the winner, at which point Mimimyne will have copyright in the winning slogan. The competition winner will get 10 reusable bags with their slogan to keep for free plus a free gift from Mimimyne! Competition will end by January 25th.

Typical Smartbag Eco Friendly Shopping Bag

Entries so far!

Twitter @londonsue Green bag lady
@mumstheboss How about “Caution. May contain cake, wine or chocolate” about 19 hours ago from web in reply to mimimyne
mumstheboss

@mimimyne Or “I may look like an old bag but inside I still feel sixteen”
From Facebook

Sarah Keery
Go green – eat more peas
Love me? love my shopping addiction!
Remember, wine counts as one of your 5-a-day
I love the internet because my friends live there.
Helen Lindop
‘It IS easy being green!’

To enter competition in the blog: post comment below this entry!
To enter competition on Twitter: tweet @mimimyne using hashtag #mimimynecomp in your tweet!
To enter competition on Facebook simply add a comment with your suggestion to the Wall

It’s been such a busy time in the run up to Christmas that I’ve had little chance to update my blog and let you all know Mimimyne’s news! First of all, I’m happy to say that it has been a good Christmas for my customers with nearly every single order getting to customers on time. I still have a little further to go to be 100% perfect, and there are sometimes problems with mail – couriers or Royal Mail – which are out of my control. For these glitches, I do apologise to any customers who have been affected. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work on customer service and make some much-needed improvements to the website, as you requested in the customer survey, to make it easier and more convenient to use.

Secondly, Mimimyne’s Mumpreneurs meetup has been going great guns and I’m happy to say that BTTradespace have offered to sponsor this informal networking lunch for mums and women in business, or looking to start a business, for all of next year! Setting up a Tradespace has been a great help to me in terms of publicity, sales and traffic, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for their offer to sponsor this event in 2010. I hope plenty of you will be able to come! It’s been a great opportunity to meet in person and chat with some of my favourite bloggers, ‘mumpreneurs’ and business owners and a chance to give back to the online community of businesswomen that has been so welcoming to me. Thank you everyone for being part of this event!

If you’d like to see some of our brilliant speakers at the last event, Dr Nicola Thomas of eco style blog The Ginlady, Natalie Lue of contemporary kids design review site Bambinogoodies and Birgit Medele of Clear of Clutter, visit Mimimyne’s Youtube Channel to watch their videos!

Mimimyne also benefited from some great publicity in November and December, including a fabulous article in the Sunday Times just after Christmas! The boys modelled some beautiful t shirts by Green Eyed Monster (shortly to be available on Mimimyne) and the cushions we are holding are limited edition ones by another company we love, Minimoderns.

Tabitha Potts of Mimimyne with sons Felix and Rufus

I was also featured with my puppy Dexter on BT Tradespace‘s mini site with an article and a video interview with me about what inspired me to set up Mimimyne.

So with a successful – if challenging – 2009 under Mimimyne’s belt, what does the future hold? As I said, I’m hoping to make the changes requested by my customers such as enabling customer reviews, shipping to Europe and maybe the US as well, offering free shipping in the UK and so on. What’s really been holding me back is time and money, those old barriers, and I’m hoping for more of each in 2010!

I’ve also been lucky enough to win 500 bags from Smartbags and am trying to think of the perfect slogan for them: if anyone can come up with one for me, I will give them 10 bags for free! These eco friendly reusable shopping bags will be a great addition to my range.

I’m also planning to add some great new designs and eco friendly products to the Mimimyne range next year. I’m particularly excited about the Wattson, a very cool-looking device that helps families monitor their energy usage. I will be using it myself in my new home office. Because – at last! – I am moving house in January and will have a ‘room of my own’ rather than a corner of the kitchen to run things from. Don’t worry, your orders will all be processed as usual, though I might be a little slower than usual to respond to emails!

Finally, as a member of 10:10 I will be working hard on energy saving in my new office. I hope to save 10% of my carbon footprint in 2010 – like all the other 10:10 companies and individuals – and have had a detailed assessment of my energy usage from LCRN which offers small businesses in London a free energy audit. I hope to reduce my carbon footprint as a business and my family’s as a household and will keep you updated on how this is going. I think most of us who care about the environment were disappointed by the Copenhagen summit and the failure of our leaders to reach a truly binding agreement on carbon emissions. Let’s hope that by continuing to do our bit as businesses and individuals we can make the difference that our governments have been too timid to make on our behalf. I think that’s the most important New Year’s resolution any of us can make!

Happy New Year to all customers, readers and friends of Mimimyne!

We were thrilled to get a lovely write-up from thegreenfamilia, the light green shopping blog for families, with her suggestions for the best gifts from Mimimyne! Check it out below:

Christmas Gifts from Mimimyne.

The Green Familia

The Ginlady (Green, Independent and Natural) blog also mentioned two of our fabulous products in her round ups of the best gifts for boys and girls:

The Ginlady’s Eco friendly gift guide for little boys

The Ginlady’s Eco friendly gift guide for little girls.

Finally, we also made Greenmystyle‘s Christmas list with a mention on their Top 10 Eco Board Games: Family Christmas Fun!