A few of weeks ago our friends Laura and Jason at Mystik in Retford organised a charity fire walk to raise money for the wonderful work done by the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Although we weren’t brave enough to expose our tootsies to hot coals, we did send up a big bundle of Momiji goodies for those heroic folks that were. Laura just sent us over a few pictures of the event which looked amazing and raised heaps of money for vital equipment and services for local MS patients. They rounded things off with a party and music by one of their favourite bands Digging for Elvis.

Nice work, Laura and Jason! There’s a little video of the action here.

As you probably know by now, we’ve just opened our lovemomiji shop up to our friends down under.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, we spent an afternoon in the office pretending it was sunny and making a lot of mess with chocolate biscuits and tea. Click here to read all about our Tim Tam Slam adventures.

On the other side of the world, our friend Fiona was enjoying some decidedly British things with her friends as they had an English picnic at Studio Pounce.

Fiona is the designer of the very special Christmas Momiji dolls for 2010 which we’ll be revealing soon.

We sent them some mugs for English tea, a (slightly rubbish) Henley-in-Arden ruler, some postcards, our favourite teatime treat – Tunnock’s Tea Cakes and, of course, a picture of her Majesty.

The Teacakes caused a little bit of confusion when they arrived in Australia.

It took them a couple of attempts to get the hang of them.

But they all agreed that they were very tasty

Fiona and the rest of the Studio Pounce guys had a great time at their British Picnic. I think we’re going to have to send them some more teacakes soon…

Drumroll please. Actually this deserves more than a drumroll, bring on the dancing girls, fireworks, kangaroos and maybe even the All Blacks performing the Haka. The Australasia webshop is now live!

It’s taken a little while but we got there in the end. So here’s the deal:

• We will now be shipping to Australia and New Zealand (from Australia)
• We’ve reworked our database so that Momiji fans Australasia can now join The Collective under their correct country.
• If you live in the Australasia region and had previously joined The Collective under another country or continent (because yours wasn’t listed as an option) then it would be great if you could reregister under the correct location (then we’ll remove any duplication from our database so you won’t get stuff twice.) This will mean if there are any specific offers or bits of news for the Australasia continent then you won’t miss out.
• The first 100 Australasian customers will receive a free mystery gift (worth over $20) with their order. Yep, that’s right; if you get in quick there are some fabulous freebies to be had.
• For the first 7 days we’ll be running an extravaganza on some of our Celebrations dolls. Choose any 2 of the dolls pictured here (All Generation 3 Celebrations dolls) and we’ll add in a third doll free. (Offer is only available in the new Australasia shop)

• To begin with there may be some differences in what’s available in the different lovemomiji.com webshops around the world. This is a temporary thing and we’re working to get everyone in line for the New Year.

Happy shopping, people. Make sure you’re one of the first 100 to get your hands on your free gift!

To celebrate going live we devoted a day at Momiji HQ to all things Australasian. You’ll have to excuse the abundance of clichés and stereotypes here as we attempted to create our own little sunny paradise in the corner of the office. Kangaroos? Check. Koala bears? Check. Kylie and Jason on the stereo? Erm...check. Charlie and Charlotte created an abundance of bunting with Aussie and New Zealand flags as well as pictures of shrimps, sheep and Bret & Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords.

We thought it would be fitting to devote an afternoon to one of our favourite Aussie traditions; The Tim Tam Slam. For those of you unfamiliar with the TTS here’s a definition from Wikipedia:

“Opposite corners of the Tim Tam are bitten off, one end is submerged in the drink, and the drink sucked through the biscuit. The crisp inside biscuit is softened and the outer chocolate coating begins to melt.
Ideally, the inside of the biscuit should collapse but the outside should remain intact long enough for the liquid to reach the mouth.”

So basically you have to use the biscuit like a straw for your coffee and then shove it in your mouth before the entire thing melts into a big mess in your hands. Despite a fair bit of searching we couldn’t find Tim Tams anywhere so we had to make do with the very British McVitie’s Penguin substitute. With hindsight we think they were a bit too sturdy for the job as they didn’t melt quite as dramatically as a Tim Tam, but nevertheless we enjoyed conducting the experiment.

Cameron embraced The Slam...and the dressing up.

Deb was the best. Excellent technique.

Gemma took a while to get to grips with the whole thing.

Dr Karl and Deb stood by in awe as Kat broke with ‘Slam’ convention by using minty green tea.

Rich was rubbish. He did too much eating and not enough dunking. Nicole was putting him off.

If you heard a mysterious high pitched squeal last week, we ought to apologise. Most likely it was the sound that escaped from Momiji HQ as we read the email below from Adam.

Dear Momiji,

I have a story I would to share with you:

Around 4 years ago I met someone very special (Lisa), we started dating and had been dating for around 4 months when Christmas came, and for christmas I had a gift that i did not expect, it was a Momiji, her name was "promise" and inside there was a message, the message as it turns out was written in code, and took me a little while to decode!! I loved it, it was very japanese like which fitted with my interests and I loved the idea of a hidden message. So when valentines comes around I decide I know what I can get for Lisa, I will get her a Momiji!! So many to choose from!! but I bought one and put in place my secret message!!

From here a trend started, each time it was an important event, Christmas, Easter, Birthday, Valentines, Buying our first house a momiji was bought to mark the occasion. This went on for about 3 years. After dating for nearly 3 years, I decided something BIG, I was going to ask Lisa to marry me, but how? What i wanted to do was propose in a way that was very true to us, and what better way could I think of than in a Momiji!! All i needed to do now was pick the right momiji, after searching, I found it!! One that said it all, her name was "Love". Along came our 3 year anniversary I gave Lisa a very special Momiji, to which after the shock and excitement she said yes in a rather high pitched voice.

So a year and a bit later (that’s about now) and around 35 Momiji's we still continue to get momijis to mark the occasion, I especially loved the new set, "Snuggle" was very suitable for Lisa as she loves Toadstools and fairies.

But this not the end of the story, next year in August 2011 we are getting married!! and this is why I am contacting you. We tried to decide what should take the place on top of our cake and the most appropriate thing we could think of was infact a wedding pair of Momiji!! Unfortunately these do not exist and this is our request, please can you make a set of wedding Momiji so we can complete our story.

Kind Regards,

Adam



What a perfect tale of romance and loveliness. Big thanks to Adam and Lisa for sharing their story and photos. (We’ve had quite a few requests for wedding cake toppers so perhaps 2011 will be the year, as long as we get slices of cake in return. Watch this space.) Until then, keep spreading the love. xx

Wow, the pictures in the Flickr pool keep getting better each month. It’s getting harder and harder to pick a winner.

This month’s grand prize goes to Esmereldes for this magical photograph of Snuggle.

We love the lighting in this photo as well as snuggle's 2 mushroom friends.

Congratulations, Esmereldes, your Momiji goodies are on their way.

If you would like to be in with a chance of winning next month, you'll find all you need to know here.

Presenting Chèrie, Ted and Purrl: the new, very limited edition Arts & Crafts dolls designed by Esther Chaye.

Esther is the newest designer to be welcomed into the Momiji family and her dolls are inspired by the art of making beautiful handmade and heartfelt items from scratch. Hailing from Vancouver in Canada, Esther is an active crafter and we love her quirky-cute designs.

The dolls instantly bring back fond memories of your grandmother’s tomato pincushion, that teddy bear you made in school and the cat playing with your wool while you’re trying to make a jumper. Each one is packaged with an inflatable pillow in a luxury letterpress-style box.

There are only 500 of each limited edition, hand-numbered doll and they’ve been distributed to some of our favourite retailers across the world. There are a limited number available in the Momiji shop or you can track them down by looking up your nearest retailer here.

If you’re one of our friends from down under, you’ll be happy to hear that you can get your hands on them exclusively through a special Aussie retailer from November 1st – details to follow soon

There are a couple of sets here at Momiji HQ that we’re going to give away, so in true crafty style we want to know what you’re knitting.

Either tweet what you’re knitting using the hashtag #MomijiCraft or ‘Like’ us on Facebook and tell us on the wall.

Don’t worry if you can’t knit we won’t ask you for proof. We’re just looking for fantastic, creative, funny or far-fetched ideas. Our favourite will be picked on Monday, 4th October, you have until midnight on Sunday 3rd October to enter. We’ll send the lucky winner, a set of Arts & Crafts dolls.

Sorry we’ve been a bit quiet on the news front. Here’s what’s been happening at Momiji HQ over the last few weeks.

We got a huge new clock from our lovely friends at Newgate Clocks. (Thanks guys!)

The Momiji logo turned up and we got some big burly blokes from next door to put it up for us. It took ages...actually it’s a teeny bit wonky but we didn’t like to say anything...

Charlotte climbed a ladder for a bit of cutting and sticking.

Charlie packed a box of Tunnock’s Teacakes (our favourites) for a mystery parcel.

Our Momiji models went to check out the delicious new cafe down the road.

T-Rex (or Tetrapanax papyrifer Rex, to give him his full name ) is our rice paper plant. It’s grown two massive new leaves. We are very proud.



We also heard rumours that our new office is haunted. We have no photographic evidence of this and we’d like it to stay that way.

Momiji HQ was transformed into a busy studio on Monday morning as models, photographers and a camera crew descended on us for our photoshoot.

You might remember a little while back, we asked if you’d like to be a model for Momiji. There was a great response to this and it was brilliant to have some of you along for the day.

9 models arrived at Momiji HQ and divided into 2 teams each with a photographer, creative director and assistant. We got loads of great shots and showcased all our new and upcoming Momiji releases.

It was a long, busy day but thanks to Hannah, our guest photographer, Laura & Charlotte whose help on the day was top notch, our fabulous models, a ma-hoosive backdrop build by Matt & Ray and a large number of special Momiji cupcakes donated by the wonderful Bakeology, the shoot was a total success and It was all captured on video by the wonderful people from Ark Media.

We can’t wait to see all the photos and start using them on the site.

It’s Friday so we’re getting our party shoes on here at Momiji HQ.

So, since you all like a bit of a Momiji competition, here’s a corker for the weekend.

If you make an order between now and midnight on Sunday (UK time) through the LoveMomiji shop you’ll immediately go into a prize draw where we could slip some extra Momiji goodness into your order. You could get a Momiji Doll and T-Shirt of your choice as well as some extra Momiji things.

So if you were thinking of getting your hands on some of the new Momiji dolls & Keyrings or if you were going to treat yourself to an old favourite before they
retire, now is most definitely the time to do it.

We’ll announce the lucky order on Monday so happy ordering and good luck.

Have a great weekend everyone.