October Give-Away Announcement

Congratulations Miss BunnyKissd! Your pony comes over the ocean, your pony comes over the sea… And for everyone else: The next give-away will be up this week as we are charging ahead into a new month! So there is a new chance coming up for you. :)

Happy Halloween!
Hugs,

Mori Girl Monday: It´s In The Braids

Pretty side french braid tutorial by love Meagan

Hairdos are a big thing in the mori girl world. Sporting a beautiful hairstyle can take your whole outfit to a different level. Since my hair is starting to grow really long (finally!) I am more and more tempted to learn about braiding. The best resource I found on the web was this squidoo lense about 12 classic hair braids to try. So, let´s charge ahead with some more inspiration and tutorials!

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♥ Clever fishbraid tutorial by the beauty department. You´ll need to see the one sided braid too!

Field trip by Craig Owen via dustjacket

 ♥ Learn how to style lace braids in this tutorial by a beautiful mess.

Kim Noorda by Jamie Isaia at cartoon styles

♥ Easy braided do´ tutorial by Keiko Lynn.

so pretty by modelmayhem

I hope to have inspired you to try something new with your hair! I´m off to work now, trying out an easy hairbraid and post a picture here later on! Seeya!

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5 things I am grateful for today:

• waking up at 5am and falling right back into the illustration frenzy
• Mr.DomDom re-ogranized the bookshelf so Norman won´t dig his teeth into the book spines anymore when he wants me to get him breakfast. 
• bananas, mold cheese and apples for breakfast. I have quite some irritating taste. 
• looking forward to coming home and spending a day off tomorrow.
• sunshine on a cold last day of October.

Happy Halloween everyone!
XOXO,

Weekend Candy: Halloween Inpiration And DIY

おかちちょうらい？ by うさ乃＠イラリク浄化中さん

Halloween is not really THE thing here in Vienna. Yes, yes, there are some parties where girls dress up (or down? Because there mostly ain´t much left of what you could call a costume with all these zombie prostitutes running around... Sorry to be so blunt!) but it´s not like in the States. I have been there and it´s totally different. You can feel that people are really into it, whereas in Austria it´s only for the sake of marketing and selling stupid costumes or sweets. It´s not like kids are running around trick-or-treating. I really miss that. I miss all the sweets and the hilarious costume ideas, the pranks and the mood. I´m easily scared, so I´m mostly prey to those who know about this, but I don´t mind as long as I am with friends. To make up for my wanderlust, I collected some goodies that will serve as a compensation.

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♥  This is a supercute sewing pattern for little Halloween decorations by paper and string. Aren´t they sweet?

♥  Bored? Try the pumpkin mixer app for iPhone.

♥  Yummy and funny! Boiling cauldron cupcakes and monster cake recipe!

♥  Oh yes, I´m feeling witchy when I look at this illustration from crafts and such!

♥  Superduper cute stitch along template by feeling stitchy that could also serve as a coloring sheet if you need to keep your kids busy.

 ♥  You can get this cute print is from Coco Prints etsy store.

♥  These fabric balloons by a subtle revelry seem to be the perfect decoration for every entrance!

♥  Of course Martha Steward offers the best pumpkin carving inspiration ever.

♥  Make your own peek-a-boo pumpkins to give your home a bit of a Muppet Show touch.

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5 things I am grateful for today:

• Mr.DomDom´s parents invited us for lunch and it was incredibly yummy.
• working on the new homepage and doing mori girl scribbles makes me the happiest person in the world
• deciding after years that even if I can´t sing as well as other people, I might just as well do it anyway
• starting to make basic illustrations for my first ebook. Be still my heart! :D
• goosebumps that I get when listening to cimorelli.

Happy sunday to you!

Free Mori Girl Printables: Flower Tags

Tomorrow is daylight saving, so I´m up late, as I somehow think it gives me permission to stay up longer. Cats will want their food at the regular time though, I wonder how I can persuade them that they will need to wait for one more hour. They will kill me! :) Anyway, today I thought how "unmori-like" my flowers looked. I wanted them to be more special, cute and nice to look at, even when in winter they have no blossoms. So here is my solution: flower tags! I designed some for you and they are so easy to make. All you need is scissors, glue, a printer and probably a little help, depending on how old you are. I am 25 and I got me somebody to lend me a hand.
Or shall I say paw?

Norman Crystal was so nice! A real gentleman of a cat! Ok, so here we are with the template that you can download here. Print it out and lets get started!

And you are done! Congratulations, you have successfully "morified" your flowers! Please send me pictures of your finished project! Of course you may as well use them as cake toppers or for a small puppet theater. ;)

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5 things I am grateful for today:

• being able to sleep all afternoon. I think I might just managed not to get sick through excessive sleeping.
• working surrounded by sleeping cats
• nom nom Lindt chocolate confectionary
• green organic bananas. Yes, you are not supposed to eat them when they are still green, but I love them that way so much!
• dragon pearl jasmine tea. THE BEST of all jasmine teas.

Happy saturday to you !
XOXO,

"Am I Too Fat?" Weight Issues In The Mori Girl World

photos by Mr.DomDom, post processing by me

"I only happen to see girls that are etherally thin in Mori. As someone with curves I feel not only underrepresented but also a little bit left out. There are no real examples of women with some breasts and butts (sorry for being so frank) so I always fear to look utterly silly in this style. We definitely need some more curvy love here!"

This quote comes from a blogpost done by hedgefairy and I love her honest approach. Why is it that the media doesn´t offer a greater variety on body images? Even in Asia it can´t be true that every single girl is slim and slender. Looking through the magazines, tumblrs and youtubes you hardly get to see anything else but what society sees as "perfect". I can tell you: It makes me mad! This just shows that the media consists of cowards who are too afraid of jugdemental readers/viewers in order to bring more flavors into the show.

The whole thing is about making us feel insecure. Happy women don´t buy diet pills. (and you would be amazed how much money is made out of diet products!) The pharmacy wants you to buy their products. As well as the food industry does. Coke Zero? Cream cheese light? 1/3rd of sugar?


How often do you check your food for calories? There was a time when I was obsessed with it. Some years ago I thought my life would be perfect if I had 45kg/99,2 lbs. Which was hilarious of course.  I didn´t feel any better when I reached my "goal". The moment I was there, I found something else that I didn´t like. My hair, my face, whatever showed up in the mirror. I did not feel worthy. I thought life was for the beautiful and skinny and that I would never be part of that group, no matter how hard I tried. It took me years to realize and to really believe myself when I said that life is not about weight. It IS about food. It is about what you eat and how you treat yourself.
But it´s not about that number on your scale.

It is so important to look at your patterns. Who do you idolize? What do you think is good-looking? I think we mori girls have really hard time, harder than any other subculture because the clothes of this style are not exactly very tight fitting. They make you look bigger very easily if you are not watching for your body type and how to enhance your better features. The only references that we have come from tiny japanese girls and no matter how much weight I would try to lose, I would have to break my hips to get them smaller. I would have to squeeze myself into a corset for years and still: it would not be me.

My goal is to bring a bit more diversity into the scene. I do feel happy with the way I look. Mostly. Of course there are some bad days in between, but generally I´m ok. I look after my body. I watch out for what I eat. I can´t wear slim jeans and look like superwoman, that is never going to happen. But I do want to inspire girls with a similar figure as mine and I think everyone can be inspired by the combinations and colors and accessoires. Plus: it´s all about networking. I have a general interest in fashion blogging that is different (like Elsie Larson, Kaelah Bee or Kaylah). Looking at their photos I can dream of what the dress would look like on my body. I love real life people that did not spend hours on retouching their photos. My plan is to get statements and posts about this topic up here in the following weeks. If you want to find your opinion in a blogpost here or if you have a blogpost that deals with the same issue, please contact me under blumennelly(at)gmail(dot)com

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5 things I am grateful for today:

• eating nougat mousse at the delicious monster (the best!)
• waking up too early and realizing that I still have 2 more hours to sleep
• having Peter Legat from Count Basic posting funny illustrations on my facebook wall
• Mr.DomDom is really patient with me as I spend most of my evening in front of my Mac, posting. :D 
• the awesomeness of the character design in FFXIII. I love them all!

Mega-hugs and pink cupcakes, 

DIY Cozy Crochet Cup Warmer

Who says that cups don´t freeze? I like to make my daily life a little more special and since I am addicted to all kinds of laces and crochet stuff, I also want my cups to have that touch of mori girl style. When you tuck your hands under that cozy warmer and take a sip from that green-honey-tea-latte and look at the raindrops outside, you feel the silence and calm growing from inside and spreading over your whole body. I am reminded of The Little Prince and how the fox told him that one is always responsible for the things one has tamed. To me this means that I need to be aware of the little things that life offers me. They have a special place in your heart and even so through that little "dress" that I made for this cup, it became more important to me. It´s not just a regular cup anymore. Everything can be special with a little effort. Now let me show you how to make the cup warmer:

The first row is made out of chain stitches.

And you are ready! Please download the crochet pattern here. I hope you are having fun with this little project! I experienced that so many mori girls out there have a hard time getting into the crochet world. But don´t fear!

If you don´t know how to crochet by now, there will be something here for you by the end of November: a mori girl beginners crochet e-book with cute projects and basic lessons for you to learn along with downloadable videos, patterns and printable content. Sounds good?

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5 things I am grateful for today:

• having a good night´s sleep. Luxury!
• national holiday means time to learn some japanese
• making wonderful contacts through this blog. So so very grateful for this!
• Wednesday is PS Profis day. Never thought I would be fascinated by cars.
• getting kitty kisses. With wet nose and all.

Many many hugs and happy wednesday!

Mori Girl Monday: October Etsy Finds

Happy Monday, Mori Girls! I decided to dedicate one Mori Girl Monday of each month to etsy finds that are super cute and interesting. There are so many cute accessoires that make the mori girl style so unique and I feel like I´m going to have the biggest wishlist for this year´s birthday and christmas, haha!

My love for animal items is never-ending. (But I would NEVER wear fur! It might be part of some mori girl style, but not mine. I like my forest friends to be alive.) Let me know what your favorites are so I can go from there to pick the items for the next etsy finds. Wohooo, happy procrastinating! :)

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5 things I am grateful for today:

• growing to be a (basic) html master with the help of Mr.DomDom
• listening to Galadarling´s podcasts in the morning under the shower gives the whole day a totally different attitude. I wish to be as inspiring as her someday.
• knowing that I will never be bored. Never.
• being fascinated that Norman Crystal will turn on the PC in the morning, just to get me out of bed. (*sneaks away from PC and runs to me innocently* "Oh, you´re up! How wonderful! Now honey, since you are already standing there...would you mind bringing me some breakfast?")
• Best of dialogs between Mr.DomDom and me during a session of Assassin´s Creed. Me: "Isn´t word going around that there is an assassin killing everyone after he retrieved the information he´s been wanting to hear?" Mr.DomDom: "Well, who should pass it on when they all pass away?"

 Happy monday to all of my forest girls (and boys, hehe)

Redesign

Untitled by katie.reynolds

Doing a redesign again, since I felt there was still a lack of mori-girl-feeling going on here. Everything is still under construction. So, I am sorry, there is no Weekend Candy today, but I have some really nice acapella music that I found yesterday. The band is called cimorelli and these girls are simply amazing! Enjoy!

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5 things I am grateful for today:

• Mr.DomDom helping me AGAIN to do all the html stuff for the changes.
• being able to phone my mother at 9pm to ask her what she thinks about the redesign and receive an honest answer.
• finding out that Valerie Chua from Quiet Girl set me onto her blog link list! EEEEP!
• so looking forward to that holiday on wednesday
• having my eyes on a golden siberian kitten. Drool!

Happy happy weekend!