Thank you all so much for entering the SMILE giveaway! Each single one of your comments made me smile so much!!! Thank you!! I think when I’m sad or upset, I will read all your comments again and so I can smile! :) Thank you!

I wish I could give everyone my SMILE print… but I have a winner…

I printed all your comments… (If you tweeted, blogged, etc. and you told me that in 1 comment, I typed your name again and made extra entries.)

Cut each in pieces…

and folded them tiny.

I mixed them well…

picked one…

and here is the winner! Congratulations, Lindsay!!!

Thank you, everyone, for all your smile!!! xoxo Hijiri

Posted under miscellaneous

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas time with your loved ones… I had an another great Christmas with my family in low in Massachusetts, we came home with tons of goodies (thank you so much!) and now, we are off to Japan! Just wanted to wish you all a very happy and exciting new year 2010! Thank you all so much for visiting Heart Fish, being with me and being here for me all this year, I will be getting lots of pictures, inspirations, ideas, cool and neat things while I’m in Japan, I can’t wait to share them all with you! I will be saying hi sometime in next year from Japan… until then, have a great holiday season and happy happy new year 2010!!!

*Picture is from my last day of letterpress printing — I printed business cards for Randy :)

p.s while I am traveling, I am having a winter vacation sale so make sure to check it out :)

Posted under letterpress, miscellaneous

Hello! It is Christmas eve here today. I am visiting my family in low here in Massachusetts — our traditions every year :) Just wanted to take time and wish you and yours a Merry Christmas!!! Hope you are having a peaceful time with your loved ones…

A couple of weeks ago, Randy brought home my first real mistletoe! (I knew what it was, never had one for myself or for the home!) And did you know why you kiss under the mistletoe (I didn’t know why…)? The box that my mistletoe came in had a little cute story behind it so I thought it’d be a perfect thing to share on a Christmas eve…

“Mistletoe Lore:

Mistletoe has been the subject of many legends and traditions for hundreds of years. Ancient Druids considered mistletoe sacred because it grew without roots in the ground and assumed that it must have been planted by the gods. Mistletoe was thought to ban evil spirits and bring good luck and great blessings. When warriors met beneath mistletoe, they had to lay down their weapons and call a truce. From this, it became a sign of peace and good will. But why do we kiss people under the mistletoe?

It all started with a goddess called Frigga. Her son, Balder, was shot with an arrow made of mistletoe. Frigga’s friends succeeded in conjuring up powers to save the boy. Balder lived anew and Frigga ordered that the mistletoe should never again be used to harm. Instead, she made it a symbol of love by kissing anyone who passed under it.”

Don’t forget to xxxxxx

:) :) :)

Merry Christmas!!!

Posted under miscellaneous

Thank you so much for your sweet comments on my blog birthday post! It was a small giveaway so I decided to do “Amida-kuji” — a Japanese ladder lottery. Growing up in Japan, we always played this lottery game and thought it’d be fun to share it here, too!

So this is how you play.

There were 8 contestants so draw 8 lines on a piece of paper.

Put the contestants’ names down under each line — I put down the names from the first one who commented to the last one. (yes, vertical here… Japanese way!)

and fold the paper a few times so you can’t see the names any more.

Now, you draw some “random” horizontal lines to connect pairs of adjacent vertical lines. Very randomly. You don’t think about anything, just draw lines as many as you want for as long as you’d like. Just make sure no two of the horizontal lines would touch each other.

I’m done with my rondom lines now.

Since the anniversary was on January 7th, I picked the 7th line. You can pick any line, randomly.

and you just follow the line towards the bottom of the paper, when you have the horizontal line, you make turns.

and….. the winner is…..

Kate from Look Book!!! Congratulations, Kate!!! You will be receiving the “I Blank You” card very soon!!

Thank you so much, everyone, I really appreciate all your support and nice comments!

Hope you all had a nice weekend.

Posted under miscellaneous

I thought I saw this guy wearing this Mexican wrestler’s hoodie on the street the other day and thought it was so funny… and I found the store! Head Hoods! The hood part is hand-printed with a profile of the mask and so when you wear it, you look like… a Mexican wrestler!

They have many many more here.

It makes me laugh! I like the idea, though, it’s awesome.

I like that it’s all hand-printed. That makes it so special!

Posted under art, miscellaneous

I don’t know where it all started, but I got tagged by Sarah and Cheryln at no place to go (it’s a lovely fashion blog if you haven’t visited there, they post some fresh stuff) to write a list of 6 unimportant things that make me happy. The rules are as follows:

1. Mention the person that nominated you

2. List the six unimportant things that make you happy

3. Tag five blogs and let them know they have been tagged via comment section on their blogs

and I was thinking what makes me happy… and I kept thinking “wait, that’s important. I have to think about ‘unimportant’ things…” so here it is, 6 unimportant things that make me happy:

#1: When I look at the clock to see what time it is and when it says “2:23″: It’s my birthday number and this is happening to me ever since I was a little girl. It always makes me happy to see my number right at the moment!

*pictures are from Leo Reynolds – amazing!

#2: When I receive an email newsletter from Jonathan Adler: out of many many newsletters I receive, Jonathan Adler ones always make me happy. Fun, colorful and well-designed.

#3 Soy milk Latte from Starbucks in the afternoon. Ohh, I don’t know how many times it made me happy!

#4 Heart shape: it always makes me happy to see heart shape in anything. As I had to have heart shape on this blog logo, too, so I am happy here all the time!

Here are some “hearts” I have talked about before… (top 3)

Heart letterpress card:

Heart in SF:

Little hearts on letterpressed gift tag:

#5 When I see Christmas decorations: it really makes me happy! Anthropologie has a cute interactive ornament finder at their website. Yes, this makes me happy, too! Wait, is this important?! oh, well…

#6 When I get to sleep in… as long as I want! Yes, this is happiness.

——

OK so I would like to tag these amazing blogs/bloggers:

Maquette

Bliss

wonting

Brooklyn Nest

The Shiny Squirrel

Thank you for tagging me, Sarah and Cheryln, and thank you for getting tagged by me! Don’t feel obligated, though… I know you guys are busy….

Posted under miscellaneous

Visiting San Francisco has been so great! We are leaving tomorrow morning, it was too short to do everything I wanted to do, but I’m happy that we get to come back even for a short time.

Just wanted to quickly post my first fashion blog appearance at CLASSY SASSY – my pictures are bad… but oh well. I am so flattered! Thank you, Lily!

I’ll be back soon!!

Posted under miscellaneous

I always have 2 clocks in my mind – NY time and Japanese time.

This clock from Chiasso will make it easy to see what time it is for both at the same time… or is it?

Posted under miscellaneous

I have been looking around stuff for Maia, she still needs a few things as I learn more about her and being an owner and oh my god, so many things are available for dogs, I am so surprised and having fun looking at them!

There are some funny chewing toys out there, I wanna get them all!

iPaw and iBone:

Chewy Vuiton:

Sniffany:

Vera Wag Shoes:

For New Yorkers: Statue of Liberty

Empire State Building:

Yellow Cab:

NY Bagle with Cream Cheese

Posted under Maia, miscellaneous

I heard about this crazy Barneys warehouse sale before and it just happened on last Thursday the 14th to Sunday the 17th so I went there on Saturday… yup, it was too late. Everything was picked up already, cute ones were only in big size (for me), but still, there were soo many people just grabbing stuff left and right. It was the craziest sale I’ve ever been to! There were lots of bins, too, and when I picked up any one from the huge pile of clothes, it was like a Fendi sweater for $1250 on sale for like $500… (of course in large) I wasn’t sure if I really wanna buy stuff from the crazy bins with bunch of butt naked people on the corner trying things on. It was really crazy! I can’t imagine what it’s like on the first morning of the sale day..

Posted under miscellaneous