Mini treasures 5th advent calendar opened today

A christmas tree by Redrickshaw

We opened our 5th advent calendar on Mini treasures wiki today.

The new thing is that we are encouraging people to contribute during the calendar, e.g. today we are asking people if they have mini villages as Christmas decoration in their home.

Come and see it now! :)

How to fill our advent calendar pages

I have been busy with my several projects and have not been hanging around on Mini treasures wiki for awhile.  Now I saw that only 8 calendar pages have been reserved so far. Haven´t you got any Christmas projects to share with us? If you don't I do :).

Just a warning: in the end of this month I am going to reserve all the remaining pages and fill them with stuff I find, e.g. from our Flickr pool or some nice YouTube videos about (e.g.
about miniature villages) and so on. So think creatively: you can use also stuff created by other people. Do you have a favorite miniaturist artisan you would like to interview or whose minis you would like to showcase for us? Or maybe you have a favorite Christmas poem (or story) you could write and use other people's mini pictures in it?

So if you now got a new idea, go and reserve your page before I take them all ;).

Time to reserve your page on our advent calendar

We are starting to reserve the pages of our traditional advent calendar. 

It is a fun way to promote your miniature projects - for free.

Last year some of the people also organized a lottery. One of the people who had left a comment on their page won the mini on that page. Hopefully this tradition continues this year too :). 

If you need help with reserving, we have a Yahoo group for giving support to each others.

Basically you need to 

1. log in to Pbworks (for that you need a PBworks account)
2. choose one of the days from  http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/w/page/62245469/advent_calendar_2013
3. open the page with that date 
4. press edit
5. write your name on that page
6. wait until Linda or I hide the page from others (change the security of the page)
7. fill your page
8. wait that Linda or I open the page for others again just before your own date
9. enjoy the comments and link traffic you are getting :)

Why I have been away from you...

You might have noticed that I have not been with you for a long time but now I am back. What was I doing then?

First I was planning my research exchange time and then doing it: me and my family spent 6 weeks in Graz, Austria to study social media in automotive industry. Boy was it interesting! It is always to work in foreign country and learn about new cultures. The visit was in November-December so me, an old Christmas fan, was been spoiled by different goodies Graz has to offer, e.g. Christmas fairs. :) Loved it! During the Christmas time I was promoting our advent calendar but the main work was done by Linda, thank heavens we have her onboard!

After we came back to Finland we had of course plenty to do, e.g. meeting the family we had not met during Christmas. But I was busy with other things too.

The loveliest dollhouse blog in Finnish, Nukkekoti Väinölä

Source: maria-malmstrom.blogspot.fi via Johanna on Pinterest

Before I started Mini treasures wiki I had another wiki, Nukkekotiwiki, a wiki about dollhouses in Finnish. After all the time I spend with you the first wiki was lacking my attention so last year I decided to give some love for it too. My idea was to host a contest: the cutest dollhouse blog in Finnish. First I planned to run it after the summer but something happened: a major Finnish blog service called Vuodatus crashed. And it deleted the photos of its users from several years! Many dollhouse bloggers were using Vuodatus so to give them more time to recover I postponed the contest till the end of the year. The deadline for voting was 15th January and since then I have been telling the results day by day. The top ten bloggers are found on a Pinterest board.

Aamulehti interviewed me for CMAD, I am the lady on the right

Source: twitter.com via Johanna on Pinterest

But this is still not all! I am not only the community manager of Mini treasures and Nukkekotiwiki but I run other communities as well. Being a community manager is one of my passions - I want to learn how to do it well and how to get the most out of you. This is the reason I brought Community Manager Appreciation Day to Finland last year. Last year we were about 15 persons in that event but this year we were 150! And I was still one of the main organizers of the event. So you can guess I was busy with that event, I was thinking that it was almost like my wedding (we had the same amount of visitors back in 2000): I had been inviting a big group of people to celebrate a day (party) with me and to hear the speaches we had chosen for them. I WAS nervous but luckily everything went quite well.

So now my life is back to so called "normal mode". Of course I still have a business to run and a family to mother but nothing so special so should be able to spend some weekly hours with you from now on. :) I just wanted you to know why I stayed away from you for such a long time - hope you understand now better.

Mini treasures is not part of my business (yet) but just a hobby. I got the bill from the Pbworks again, 499$ a year. An expensive hobby I have, don't I? If I want to make my living out of Mini treasures we would need to get 100 times as much as visitors than we currently (14 000 montly visitors) have or to get our visitors to buy 100 times more from Amazon using our affiliate links (e.g. Mini treasures store). The combination would be easiest to achieve: 10 times more visitors and 10 times more Amazon shopping. So the next time you are thinking to buy something from Amazon, use one of our links. Consider also if you can promote MTW to your mini friends - it will encourage me to pay the Pbworks bill again next year.

Till later friends, I have been missing you!

Miniature advent calendar for this year open for registration

We have a nice tradition with advent calendars in Mini treasures wiki, we have done it already three times and every year we are getting more and more followers. Linda asked to create the page for this year as there are already people asking her when they can reserve their date.

If you want also to contribute to our advent calendar go and reserve a day for yourself. This year we are filling the dates well before the due date in order to avoid the hassle (it has been quite exciting for me to wait if the pages are filled in time, sometimes they werent and then I needed to invent something fast). So we are filling the pages in advance but the secret is safe - the pages are opened to public on a due date only.

What can you add to your page then? Something related to Christmas of course. You can share your project, you can make a video, printables, instructions. Use your imagination and start counting days for 1st of December when we open the first window of the Advent calendar! :)

If you have anything you want to ask about the calendar, leave a comment below and I answer you as soon as I can. :)

Happy new year mini friends

Click the photo to see the details

Hi friends!

We had such a wonderful mini year :). The year 2011 ended with our popular advent calendar, every day we saw a mini surprise. Managing the calendar together with my personal rush hours (with kids, Christmas & my own business) took the juice out of me so I decided to keep some distance with MTW: I was away about 2 weeks. I guess that is the longest time ever since I started almost 3 years ago. But now I am back and soon I am going to introduce you a brand new activity. It will be lots of fun, be prepared.

Now I wish we will have another great year together with lots of shared mini treasures. :)

Yours, Johanna

Merry Christmas

I wish all my mini friends a very merry Christmas (or what ever seasonal holiday you are celabrating)!

If you have a mini related seasonal greeting, you are welcome to share it with other Mini treasures people in Facebook or Flickr.

And remember to check all the windows from our advent calendar (no peeking allowed;).

I have also a Christmas gift for you: The Mini Treasures Daily newspaper :)

MTW Advent calendar starting - help us!

Hi bloggers, Facebookers, Tweeps and other social media users!

I need your help! The second MTW Advent Calendar starts in two days and I need all the help I can get in promoting it. So please add a button to your blog, share the link in Facebook or tweet about it.

I do not want any miniaturist to be unaware about the fun that is about to start :). I already filled my page (no peeking allowed, I can see if you do and so will the Santa) and can't wait to see what others come up with. :)

How to embed Flickr photos in Pbworks

I was sure I had shared this presentation in this blog earlier but could not find it. :( So now that the advent calendar time is very near it is time refresh our memory and see how easy it is to add Flickr pictures to our wiki. There are still some pages available so go and reserve yours before it is too late :).

How to embed flickr photos in pbworks

View more presentations from jjanhone.

Advent calendar starts tomorrow!!!

One more night and then we go, bookmark http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/advent_calendar_2009 or add a button to your blog or web page - and enjoy the Christmas time. :)

9 nights before the advent calendar starts!

This is getting exciting - only 9 nights before we can start opening our Christmas calendar filled with Christmas themed projects and dollhouse miniatures. This is something sensational as we have people contributing from very many places: from Asia, Northern Europe and Northern America. Can we still get someone in from Central or South Europe or from Australia or Africa (I have noticed there are wiki users there also)? There is still room for 10 people - so be quick and reserve your window now from here and start countind the nights with me :).

23 nights until the advent calendar starts!

My kids have already started counting days until they can open their advent calendars. Maybe I should do the same. There are still some windows available in the calendar, go and claim yours, it will be fun to see what you come up with. :)

I am promoting the calendar with pictures that I picked from Mini treasures Flickr group - we have 113 members and 935 pictures already - wow!

1. Gingerbread Pet Shop Detail-Roof, 2. Miniature Holiday Harvest Tree, dollhouse christmas tree ooak, 3. Gingerbread House Pendant, 4. Santa 1:12 Scale Miniature Doll, 5. Advent calendar, 6. TOYNBEE - angel, 7. Puesto Navideño, 8. dollhouse for a dollhouse rooms, 9. Christmas Decorating Underway at the Enchanted Cottage