Miss Moussetache aka Mimimou

Urban Green A plant takes up space. Which is fine if you have space but more complicated if you live in a Harry Potter-style broom closet. But plants are even being used as purifiers by Nasa so it might be worth throwing a few pair of shoes away in favour of a green friend. Unless you are as lucky as I am to live near the just opened (and AMAZING) shop Urban Green . If they would serve coffee, I would move there. In this shop I have discovered something which they call string gardens . Small planets with grass growing all around except at the top where you have a different plant sprouting, like a cherry blossom or an olive tree. Apparently they are all over the web but I am thankful Urban Green showed them to me. Sometimes it's nicer to discover something yourself than have a blogger pointing it to you. The inspiration for these string gardens can be found in the kokedama , an ancient form of bonsai, and is fairly easy to reproduce: 1. Roll clay-heavy soil into balls; 2. Cover th...

Wednesday 1 September I had parked my bike next to someone else's when I noticed one thing missing: the other bike only had one pedal. 'How uncomfortable for the riders' right foot!' I thought. My grocery shop was across the street so I started walking towards it. I can never walk in one straight line so I was sort of zigzagging on the road when I noticed a familiar object lying on the tram rail: a bike pedal! It wasn't the right color nor the right size but it was a bike pedal. So I ran back and carefully pushed the pedal in the metal pin. It fitted! The cinderella bike had found its almost perfectly fitting shoe. I smiled and left. Little things can change the world too. The End.

Floods , another oil spill , giant hail , food riots ... OK. Yes. I understand. A lot of things are not going very well in the world and there are many reasons to be sad. But at the same time... should I be sad because I can't do much about it? A week ago I have decided to change the world and I am making one step a day towards my destination. At least. The great thing is that there are no rules and it's not really important where you start. Which means you could do ANYTHING, ANYTIME. For example, you could make a complete stranger smile, just by saying something nice or sharing a moment ('look at that rainbow'). Or you could make seed bombs and drop them in desolated areas of your city. Or you might embellish the street with a few crayons and the help of some children. Take a few things into consideration: it's important to stick to your believes as much as possible, to mean what you do and to act impulsively . Monday 30 August My boyfriend and I have named this...

At exactly 02.47 PM on 3rd October 2007 in Central Park, New York, I discovered poodles scare me. At that moment in time a perfectly trimmed, white poodle was walking majestically towards me and I swear the pavement cracked underneath his paws: he was so big, he was able to look me in the eye. I used to beg my parents to get me a poodle when I was a little girl, but from that day on, my conception of a 'poodle' had changed. All information in our mind is stored in little boxes, which we then label with a name and fill with a memory, a rough concept and an emotion. My poodle box said 'cuddly; small and fluffy; happiness' but when I saw the poodle mentioned previously, my mind and my senses conflicted with what I thought a poodle to be and I was forced to renew my information box. I changed that into 'scary; BIG and fluffy; fear'. Then I realized there was another box which information was very similar to the giant poodle's, its label read 'monster'. ...

It was rush hour at the Amsterdam railway station and I was on my way to Brussels. The train was running late and as a consequence everybody was walking up and down the platform impatiently, moving in coordinated blocks. That's how I saw her: at one point the mass left a huge gap right where she was standing. At first she seemed motionless like a statue: an elderly lady, somewhere in her eighties, with wavy hair, a soft suede coat, a mohair turtleneck sweater, wonderfully cut pants and lovely flats. All of which was in the purest shade of white. She looked as if she had stepped right out of a Vogue winter fairytale. But the lady was conscious of everybody staring at her: young girls with their mocking smiles, young boys rolling their eyes in disbelief. The white lady's hands clutched more and more to the bag she had pushed in front of her like a shield. I thought she looked amazing. I went up to her and said 'Madame, you look beautiful'. A lovely smile broke her face in...

I was born on an island shaped like a three-legged monster and rugged like an old fisherman's forehead. The sea has always been renowned for its abundance in marine life, especially sword fish and tuna. But the land was poor of animals, except from the usual fauna you can see anywhere: mice, swallows, pigeons, sparrows, lizards and many insects. When I hit the magical age of eight, a zoo opened its gates on our island. I loved animals and could spend hours reading my Animal Kingdom encyclopedia, so my parents took me there on a lovely Sunday morning. We were the first people entering. Trembling with excitement I walked around its cages. Unfortunately the zoo hadn't managed the funding to get enough animals to fill them so most of the structures were empty. Outside the cages mice, swallows, pigeons, sparrows and lizards seemed to prosper, just like on the rest of the island. The largest cage of all was situated next to the play area (one slider and two see-saws). At first glance...

When we are little, grown-ups are always telling us off when we extend our drawing surface to anything that isn't paper: walls, human legs and let's not forget the living room's antique table. So we learn how to not use walls, human legs and antique tables as drawing paper. By the time we have restricted ourselves to a paper sheet, grown-ups our telling us off for coloring outside the 'lines'. Only a face should be pink and not its surrounding sky, dress, house, etc... So we learn how to stick our colored crayon in between the pre-drawn lines. But then WE become a grown-up too. And sometimes we go back to our instinct of coloring outside lines and using the world as a drawing sheet. When that happens... the world becomes a wonderful storyteller who we never want to stop telling its stories. Have you ever heard about knitgraffiti ? Small, usually rectangular, pieces from leftover yarns are knitted together and sawn around trees , abandoned gas stations , light poles ...

Something interrupted me while listening to music and writing away this morning. That something was flapping vigorously in my living room, making it impossible for me to go in. It was a lovely morning so I had opened all the windows and somehow a very fat pigeon had flown into the house. From the glass doors I saw this pompous pigeon flying around and sitting on almost every item of the room: the couch, the vintage piano, my collection of staplers, my boyfriend's selfmade lamps. The beast was also leaving a trace of its body dust on everything. You could easily trace its contours with a pencil and get featured in a biology book. After half an hour I knew something had to happen, it was me or the bird. So I went into the kitchen and broke off a delicious piece of bread. Things went really quickly afterwards. The pigeon immediately saw the bread and started flying in my direction but I was very quick and threw that piece of scrumptious bread outside the window. The pigeon u-turned an...

How are you feeling today? I woke up insanely happy and after my first coffee the melancholy swept me off my feet. Undoubtedly some other mood will knock me down soon. You know what I hate most about mood swings? I have to walk to my iPod and change the tracks every time. I simply can't listen to happy music when I am feeling sad. Probably you feel the same about this. But our sighs and moans have been heard... and inspired someone to create Stereomood , an extremely accurate playlist based on your moods. It's perfect and works amazingly well. My next wish? A genius playlist which automatically tags the moods on my iPod too... PS Talking about mood swings, did you ever hear about emotionally-activated lip gloss ? Yes, it does exist, it's called Mood Swing (really?) and it's an easy way to show the world whether you are feeling sassy, sexy or deliriously happy. Gosh, didn't we all need that? And if the gloss doesn't work - there is always the mood swing pin ...

I never thought I would end up liking this song. He doesn't need weird clothes, sexy moves and a million dollar budget: all Greyson Chance has is his talent and isn't that the only thing you are supposed to need?

'Confuzzled' is what happens to you when you are somewhere in the middle between confused and puzzled, I learnt from Max in the lovely claymation Mary & Max (without a doubt my favourite movie of all times). I have a friend who devours every self-help book written on this planet. Well, actually most of my friends read them. What I find most intriguing about these paper psychiatrists are their titles. They ignite my imagination beyond their actual content as I just don't get what they could possibly be about. Though somehow they always manage to leave me confuzzled: every aspect of my life seems to be utterly abnormal and in desperate need of change. Ok, take a sip of your coffee and get ready...

Shot at 50 different locations, it needed seven years to complete, including four years of photography, using a great team of adventurers and the latest high-tech camera equipment to capture state-of-the-art images. It is Disneynature's new movie Oceans .

Accessibilty of a world that used to be invisible, that is for me the greatest thing about the web. Like the launch of an Iranian online magazine for contemporary Iranian photographers: Dide Photography Magazine . The Persian word 'Dide' means eye, glance, being seen. Each issue of Dide will focus on displaying one project, along with words and texts by photographers and critics. This month' photographer is thirty-years old Mohammad Gazali and what I have seen so far has a Lomo feeling, with that typical yellow, orange, brown spectrum. I can see him wandering around Teheran with a Leica around his neck, capturing the quite life around him. Really interesting work and I can't wait till next month' issue. Big smile, MM

I am restless. The walls of my house are so pristine looking, every time I am drawing or cooking tomato sauce I am drawn to accidentally drop some color on them. Am I the only one who can't resist a white wall? No, not all. And you don't need to get yourself dirty with paint or buy expensive wallpaper to achieve the coolest interior in the world. There are tons of ideas how to DIY walls.

Each of us can do something the usual way or his own way. Arent't we different beings after all? Maybe we all have one name for the thing we do best, which could be kissing, fixing cars, drawing just as well as dancing, taking pictures or animating. But it's up to ourselves to look at what we do from a different angle and do it from that same different angle. Just like...

I once read a very sad story: in Germany, some nursing homes build imitation bus stops for patients who are suffering from dementia. The patients will sit at the bus stop waiting for a bus to take them to their imagined destination. After some time the nursing staff comes to escort them back into the nursing home. Every time I think of this story, the Hollies' Bus stop starts singing in my head. It's a slightly gloomy melody just as waiting for a bus usually is. Surprisingly something as ordinary as a bus stop has inspired many creative minds - just as those tiny plants sprouting from the arid sidewalk.

Today feels slightly boring, although I know the world is packed full with amazing things to do and see. If only I knew how to bake a take-me-anywhere-I-want cookie, all I would have to do is take a small bite each time I want to go somewhere. Today would then have looked something like this: 1} mmm, wake up after a long and lovely sleep in my soft bed of the cooler than cool Story Hotel in Stockholm. I have already taken a million pictures of its amazing interior before having... 2}... a 'kaffi' in Kaffismiðja Íslands, a small and cozy coffeeshop in the city center of Reykjavík. The Giesen coffee roaster they have in the shop (yes, inside!) is bright, Barbie pink. And the coffee is supposed to be really really good. To make... 3}... sure I won't get lost during my travel day, I have taken along my crumpled city map from designer Emanuele Pizzalorusso. How could I have ever lived without? It's printed on tyvek and designed to fit into the smallest of my bags. No more ...

Lace is an openwork fabric, patterned with open holes. It's an ancient craft which probably originated in Belgium, just around the corner from Holland. The materials used for lace-making are usually just as fragile as its patterns: linen, silk, gold. Think of lace and you immediately think of underwear, napkins, curtains and religious ceremonies such as in weddings, christenings and funerals. What would happen if you could combine its feminine, domestic element with something masculine and industrial? Just look at Cal Lane 's work and you will see how this marriage would look. This gifted artist uses her torch to cut baroque, lace-like patterns into ordinary things such as shovels, old oil drums, wheelbarrows, car doors, and other pieces of scrap metal.

As a child, I loved drawing little worlds inhabited by critters. It usually started with one creature living in a house made out of leaves and broken glass but this soon developed into a whole world on its own, with cableways between flowers for transporting honey and squirrels wearing glasses against the flying wood chips of a woodpecker. If my world didn't fit on the page anymore, I simply glued a new one on top and began building another layer on it, like in a pop-up book. Somehow that memory hit me while watching the amazing “I Own You”, a clip for Wax Tailor featuring Charlie Winston. French studio SoLab seems to have created a little world out of paper and glue just as I did. Uhm, oh, well, they might have done a better work than I have ever... but still! Wax Tailor feat. Charlie Winston " I Own You" from SoLab on Vimeo .

'Have you ever heard about Russian stray dogs?', asked my boyfriend the other day. No, I hadn't. So he began a unbelievable story about 35,000 stray dogs that roam Russia’s capital, especially its metro. These animals have evolved into a new and very intelligent breed. They are all medium-sized with thick fur, wedge-shaped heads and almond eyes. And they all behave in a strangely human way... If they need to be somewhere, they hop in the metro and when it's time to get out, they simply get out. They recognize their stop by smell and their sense of time. They always sit in the first or last wagons, as it's always less busy there. Oh, and when it's dinner time , they look at all the people with food in their hands and asses who is going to jump and drop their sandwich if they start barking madly. Most Muscovites love the street pack: there is even a website dedicated to them on which passengers post photos and video clips taken with their mobile phones. Everyone h...

One of my best friends is pregnant. We were supposed to meet for a lovely lunch so I had bought her and her love two small gifts: a vintage pinnard horn to listen to the baby's heart and a huge set of old-fashioned baby clothes hangers (like the one featured in Heather Bailey's blog ) with deer shapes. After wrapping everything carefully in some kraft paper I realized I was still missing something. A card to wish the future mum and dad all the smiles in the world! As I happen to be an Etsy card seller , this wasn't such a big thing to miss BUT I wanted to give them a bit more than just a card. So I wrapped one of my Ballerina designs around a matchbox cover, draw smiley faces on a bunch of matches, wrapped these smiling matches together with some japanese paper tape and addes a little note inside... et voilà! So easy and such a sweet result! Have a lovely weekend, MM

A zillion things happened today in the world. Out of this zillion, there were a few I happened to stumble upon: {1} A striking image about prejudice, by French studio La Souris sur le Gateau (Didier Rossigneux and Knapik Bridenne). It screams at you without words. {2} A fox got into the Helsinki zoo and killed 16 flamingos. Would this have been a news item if the flamingos had been roaming in the wild? I am still unsure about zoo's. Are they the good guy or the bad guy? {3} This love filled latte made by my boyfriend in one my greatgrandmother's tea cups. With home roasted beans ! {4} The Porteur , A mostly handmade gentleman's bike, designed by Nicolas Yvars. The blue-gray color scheme, the leather details, the vintage liquor flask under the saddle... Nicolas found many components thanks to the help he got from the French bike community . I love craftmanship, people who want to deliver perfection by putting their soul in it, AND everyone who encourages that. {5} Apparentl...

The fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood is a well known one. But did you know that there are many versions of this story? It's not just storytellers and writers who have adapted the story about the little girl who, on her way to her Grandmother, is attacked by a wolf. Illustrators have depicted her in many different ways as well. She can be... ... childish and angry, Andrea Zuill ... unaware and bubbly, Raquel Aparicio (have a look at her site, this artist is amazing!) ... graphical like a twenties Vogue model, Kenneth Whitley (is that wolf wearing glasses like mine?) ...dark and sinister, Tyler Garrisson (his work is really really good) ... surprisingly complicated after the first sight, Noma Bar (if you ever get the chance to see an exposition, go) ... cheerful and unafraid, SkoLzki Very inspiring for every artist to see it's the hand that makes something unique, even when you are using a zillion times told tale. It's all about finding your own thing and describing i...

Well, as a boy, people called him Jeff and apparently he was born on a lake inhabited by a giant mythical serpent, somewhere in Canada. And then one day, he had become a world acclaimed shadow puppeteer and people called him Mr Bunk . Mr Bunk creates amazing creatures with wigged buckets, giant puppets, a screen, a lamp and of course his hands. Oh, and he can sing. Oh, yes, he can sing. I love Mr Bunk’s 'handmade' version of Ne Me Quitte Pas even more than Jacques Brel’s: Have a happy day, MM (via It's Nice That )

Camera's are synonymous for traveling, success, creativity. They symbolize your lifestyle. Well, at least if you own the right one. How does the perfect camera look? Retro, cool and classy. Oh, and easy to use... {1} Polaroid SX70 original , legendary camera packed with style. Picture this: a Paris cafe', you dressed for success with huge glasses, a leather bag from hardgraft and coffee. On the table this camera and a french newspaper... {2} Blackbird Fly 35mm , beautiful 35mm toy twin-lens reflex {3} Ricoh 500 G , adorable camera - just imagine walking around with her wrapped around your neck! {4} Lomograpy Fisheye Print Ryan Camera , Rob Ryan has that gift of making people happy instantly, like a polaroid. I saw a girl a few weeks ago with this camera and I couldn't keep my eyes off it! {5} MINOX DCC Leica M3 5MP Digital Camera , everything miniaturized makes me want to want it. I just can't resist mini-things. {6} Olympus E-P1 , gosh, she is pretty, isn't she? Ha...

Make yourself a coffee and listen to this wonderful acoustic version of Back to Back by British artist Wolf Gang .

The sun is shining, the weather is nice and you are feeling happy, right? Great, then it's time to say I love you 100 times to the love of your life. It's Love Day! But there are at least six other ways to celebrate Love Day... {1} A personalized love letter on a pillow, by Olive {2} Good Time Ring for your cutest kissing picture, by Yellowgoat {3} Mr and Mrs Scatter Pillows, by Idotakeu {4} Not a paper cup + a black marker for porcelain and just diy that love note yourself, by ThinkGeek {5} Custom silhouette prints of both of you (and your pet), by Ellothere {6} My favourite: a personalized and handmade lunch bag for your sweetheart, tutorial by DesignSponge Or you could cook his or her favourite meal tonight... put up a love note under his or her pillow... buy a bright yellow balloon and attach it to his or her bike/car... or... or... ...Happy love Day! PS: Each of these gifts would make a lovely wedding present as well.

Don't you find it extremely annoying to get cold arms when you are reading (or browsing) in bed? I HATE IT. Every time I end up with blue arms full of goose bumps. Not a nice sight. A few seconds ago I was looking for a solution online and there it was. The Solution. A blanket with sleeves . They named this slightly weird invention 'Happiness in bed'. I haven't tried it yet as it will be on sale soon but I think the name is totally appropriate. Sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite...