Bianca from Germany joined our team this week. She just moved from Cologne to Hong Kong a couple of days ago and is very excited to be here. We welcomed her by taking her out for some Dim Sum, a very typical style of Chinese Food. You order a lot of different dishes that are served in small portions and everybody can help himself. As you can see, there was a lot of food on the table. Bianca really enjoyed that Chinese experience and tried as much as she could, although she didn’t always know what she was eating. The only thing she refused to try was a serve of chicken feet, a dish you can find a lot in Hong Kong. She promised to try at one point though, we will see if she actually does .

From now on Bianca will be helping us to support our shop and write a lot of texts for our website in German and English.

Bianca and I eating Dim Sum in the Chinese Restaurant

we really ordered a lot of food

The whole modes4u.com team in front of the Chinese restaurant

It was party time at the office, because we celebrated two birthdays today… And what do you think must not be missing when celebrating at modes4u? Cute stuff of course. That’s why our Managing Director Sandra and our packing fairy Lok got an adorable Sesame Street cake for their birthdays. It had lovely Elmo and cookie monster on it. Not only did it look super delicious, but tasted very sweet and yummy as well. The whole staff enjoyed a piece. Happy Birthday Sandra and Lok!

Our Delicious Sesame Street Birthday Cake

Birthday Girls Sandra and Lok with their Cake

Otogicco is a name you might not have heard in our shop that much – so far. But surely you have seen some of the adorable Little Red Riding Hood products that we added to our shop within the last weeks. Lots of new stuff just went online. Otogicco by Decole is a Japanese brand that is still pretty new at modes4u.com. Little Red Riding Hood and Big Bad Wolf are the main characters in the collection and just adorably cute. We got a lot of stationery items and accessories such as cute shopping bags, bookmarks, cups, but also extraordinary stuff that you don’t find too often such as umbrella charms, coasters or card holders.

cute Little Red Riding Hood coaster Otogicco from Japan

reflective Little Red Riding Hood umbrella charm

cute Little Red Riding Hood card holder Otogicco Japan

cute Little Red Riding Hood coat hook Otogicco Japan

Little Red Riding Hood cup wolf Otogicco Japan

Little Red Riding Hood Post-it bookmark stickers

cute Little Red Riding Hood shopping bag wolf pouch

We draw 30 random winners for our giveaway:

1) carmel: carmelita@xxx

2) Angelika: s_angelika3@xxx

3) Jingle: jinglesells@xxx

4) Ivonne: ivonne.h@xxx

5) Ionie Thomas: ionie_thomas@xxx

6) emily: emilyfinch32@xxx

7) Simone Münstermann: mone@xxx

8 ) HoopBunny: hoopbunny@xxx

9) Sonia: sonia.solci@xxx

10) Paw-paw: paugalang@xxx

11) Aliyah: aliyahhr@xxx

12) janita: janitalatifa@xxx

13) Alexa Thun und Hohenstein: alexakuepper@xxx

14) SuperLuna: decoradarling@xxx

15) Sarah: sarahzevenbergen@xxx

16) samira yussuf: superstarsammy@xxx

17) Marina: isollea@xxx

18) Amira Savoy: hellosaranghae@xxx

19) Felicity: tvr28lz@xxx

20) trixx: trixpixel@xxx

21) chuchoo: dboulette@xxx

22) Tania: tania.enokibara@xxx

23) Juli Drappeldrey: morgaine1999@xxx

24) Tiffany: aozora.sanpo@xxx

25) Kasia Kawczynski: princess.rei@xxx

26) steph: jrseniors@xxx

27) hiiime: pandaboer@xxx

28) Frances: mirrorandmoon@xxx

29) Ruriyuki: ruriyuki@xxx

30) Ingrid: homocore@xxx

We removed the end of every email address, to protect their privacy. We will contact everyone by email directly.

Congrats to the 30 lucky winners!

A typhoon swept past Hong Kong today. Especially in the summertime this happens quite frequently over here, but this one was pretty powerful. All offices, schools and many shops are closed today. Many ferries and some buses can’t go, as it’s just too stormy and dangerous. Oh yes, and as all post offices are closed, we can’t ship any orders today either. We’re really sorry about that, but our hands are just tied here. Most of our staff stayed at home too, but our 2 bosses came in to enjoy the silent working atmosphere. All the streets, highways and public transportation are really empty, which is so unusual for Hong Kong.
Typhoon Nesat has been on the news a lot, as it already hit the Philippines, where a lot of people died. Fortunately nothing that bad happened over here, but still a couple of people were injured. We found some videos and articles about it, that we want to share with you guys. For us it’s kind of strange to watch, because it looks a lot more dramatic than we experienced it. It was mainly a stormy day with a lot of rain .

You better be quick if you want one of these. We just added those really adorable new Rilakkuma plush toys with different themes to our shop. There are brown bear Rilakkuma, white bear Korrilakuma and yellow chick Kiiroitori dressed up as sweet honey bees for example. Of course this is from the ‘Rilakkuma meets honey’ collection. We also got really cute plushies of Rilakkuma and Kiiroitori dressed as strawberries and Korilakkuma dressed as Little Red Riding Hood carrying a strawberry basket. We only got 20 items of each plush toys, so they might sell out fast.

Rilakkuma plush toy yellow chick as honey bee

Rilakkuma plush toy brown bear as honey bee

Rilakkuma plush toy white bear as honey bee

Rilakkuma plush toy yellow chick as strawberry

Rilakkuma plush toy brown bear as strawberry

Rilakkuma plush toy white bear Little Red Riding Hood

To celebrate our 17,400 fans on our Facebook Fansite we finally have a new giveaway here on our blog. We chose 30 awesome cute prizes for you guys.

You can win one of these kawaii prizes:

cutlery, tissues, tapes and more

1 green frog chopsticks + box

1 yellow bear chopsticks + box

1 pink/purple Hello Kitty tissue (4 prizes available)

1 cute deco tape (4 prizes available)

1 penguin jewelry holder

1 Rilakkuma travel tag for suitcase

1 blue bear cutlery set (2 prizes available)

1 ChooChoo cat tissue (2 prizes available)

1 deer memo pad

Re-Ments and cute jewelry

1 out of 6 Re-Ments (6 prizes available)

1 matryoshka-flower earring set (3 earrings included)

1 cherry earrings set

1 giraffe earrings set

1 pink cloverleaf ring

1 cute golden grandpad wristband

cute backpack and bag

1 Tenshi Neko backpack

1 cute black handbag with golden ribbon

For a chance to win one of the 30 prizes, you must:

1) Go to our kawaii shop modes4u, and comment below this blog post what would be your favorite Christmas gift from our shop! (1 entry)

For additional chances to win (leave a separate comment for each entry):

2) “Like” modes4u’s Facebook page. Leave FB name with comment. (1 extra entry)

3) Follow us on Twitter here. Leave Twitter name with comment. (1 extra entry)

4) Add one of our banners to your blog, website etc. You can find the banners here. Post a link to your blog in the comments below. (5 extra entries!!!)

5) Tweet about this giveaway and post your tweet URL in the comments below. You can tweet once a day until the deadline! Just copy the words below and paste it on your twitter. (1 extra entry)

WIN cute goodies from @modes4u! HUGE kawaii Giveaway with 30 prizes! Enter here -> http://tinyurl.com/3sutgnq #giveaway www.modes4u.com

6) Blog about this giveaway and post a link to your blog post in the comments below. (2 extra entries)

7) Subscribe to our blog via Google Friend Connector on the right sidebar. (2 extra entries)

Entries will be accepted until Monday, September 26, 2011, Midnight GMT. We will notify the winners the following day! You will have 48 hours to claim your prize or we will have to pick another winner.

OPEN WORLDWIDE!

Winners will be chosen through random.org, so the more entries you have, the more chances of winning!

Today we got a really huge San-X delivery from Japan. It was very big, as you can see on the pictures. We had a little fun with it before unpacking. For example Lok – one of  our packing fairies – could just hide perfectly behind it. Okay, we have to admit that she is rather short anyway, but still the size of the delivery was impressive. Even for us and we get deliveries all the time. So what was in the boxes you want to know? Cute stuff of course. Especially tons of memo pads, notebooks and stationery with all our good friends from Rilakkuma to Kamonohashikamo and Kireizukin. We’ll add the new stuff to our online shop as soon as possible, but it will take a few days. Here’s already a glimpse of what you will find.

New San-X delivery arrived today

Lok hiding behind the boxes

a first look of what was in the boxes

cute memo pads and notebooks with Rilakkuma

stationery in different sizes, formats and designs

also new stuff from the'Rilakkuma meets Honey' collection

It’s still almost 4 months until Christmas, but those plushies definitely put you in the right mood for it. San-X just announced those super cute Rilakkuma plush toys for Christmas. We immediately fell in love with them. Unfortunately they are not for sale outside of Japan, so we can’t get them ourselves. That’s really too bad. Especially Rilakkuma as Santa looks incredibly cute and the yellow chick on the Christmas tree is just hilarious.

Adorable Rilakkuma Christmas Plushies

This is some Bling-Bling Re-Ment news. Re-Ment just announced the new set Hello Kitty Jewel Mascot. It will be relased on the 26th of September and has three different super cute Hello Kitty charms: Happy red, Cutie black and Pure pink. They sparkle and shine really pretty, don’t you think?

Re-Ment news: Hello Kitty Jewel Mascot to be released in September

these are the different 3 designs