
A Lesson from our time in Greece
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This spring, Frido and I were able to carve out much-needed focused family time in Greece. Our mission for this trip was simple. To be present with our girls and...
Experience Builds Experience // Love Letter, June 2022
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Greetings from Topanga! After a few weeks in Europe, we are back in the canyon and mountains, building an extension of a chicken coop, planting native plants on the hill,...
What if everything we know… is wrong? // Love Letter, May 2022
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Greetings from Hamburg where spring feels very fresh in the air with full bloom of cherry trees and light green leaves peeking out of the various bushes and trees. This...
Thoughts of Becoming Whole // Love Letter, April 2022
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A few weeks ago, I came across an old baby photo of myself. What struck me in the image was how much space this 6-month-old baby filled up in the...
Excited to share our space with you again! // BK Opening Hours
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Greetings from Altadena!We are thrilled to share that we will start transitioning into offering brick & mortar opening hours again! I only have one word. Grateful! I am so grateful...
Lean into the Magic of Connection // Love Letter, February 2022
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Greetings from Topanga! Here is a big and open-ended question to start this love letter. Have you ever wondered about the infinite possibilities of the invisible networks that are interconnecting between...
Beyond What Meets Our Eyes // Wakako
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As you might already know, my relationship with the first Traveler’s Notebook started back in 2008. I still vividly remember when I stumbled upon the TN Brown at Itoya in...
Soaking up the Fullness of our Day // Love Letter, January 2022
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A new year greeting to you and your loved ones. I hope you enjoyed sailing through the holiday season. I like to take a moment to thank you for being...
"Trust the Process" in working with a 100 year old house
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Six months into the renovation, our house is slowly starting to take its shape. Inevitably, a project like “home renovation” has a definite ending, more or less. Yet, I found...
"Being Present" as Our Gift to the World // Love Letter, December 2021
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Happy Holidays! I hope your month of December is going well so far. At the BK studio, we celebrated the milestone of hosting holiday opening hours with a small group...
Weight of our Analogue Artifacts // Love Letter, November 2021
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Greetings from the autumn season in the canyon. This past month, we finally moved into our still-under-construction house. Rain was coming into the forecast, and we hectically moved everything out on the...
Nature Tells us to Play // Love Letter, October 2021
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If you have been around BK for a while, you probably know I become obsessive about running when I start gearing up for the annual Los Angeles marathon. After taking a year...
Turning Points // Love Letter, September 2021
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On rare occasions in our lives, we become keenly aware of past turning points, or even better, present turning points as we make “the” turn. It seems to me, right...
Belonging to This Moment // Wakako
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This might or might not be surprising to you, but I used to be in the spectrum of workaholics. Through design school years, working long hours late into the evening...
It's not about an organizer, a cactus, or a bathroom // Love Letter, August 2021
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It is hard "not" to draw a living metaphor with the mending of a hundred-year-old house. When we purchased the house in May, we studied an inspection report from the...
Getting Lost in Thoughts // Wakako
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I hope your summer months are going well. Ours has been interesting with full of twisty turns as we unearth our 100-year-old house. The unexpected changes of renovation plans can...
Dancing with past, present, and future // Love Letter, July 2021
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Earlier this year, our wise BK customer Tiffany shared an insight with me through an email exchange. She wrote, "2020 was a year that asked a lot of questions, and we’re hoping to live our way into some...
"Hello" from Baum-kuchen / June 2021
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Hello from Baum-kuchen. I hope you are doing well. At BK, we are moving through the season of many changes, so I am here to share some updates with you. First...
Join us to wish Ame the very best, as she journey onto her next adventure!
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Greetings from BK studio! This month, Ame has decided to depart from Baum-kuchen onto her next adventure. Though, we will most certainly miss her at the studio, I would love...
life is what happens after you make a plan // Love Letter, June 2021
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It feels as if we have been on a life’s roller coaster these past few weeks. Within the same weekend, we picked up a key to our new (old) house...
"Trust the Inner Process", our family's journey of becoming a homeowner once again
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I have been sharing some family updates on my Instagram about selling our home in Pasadena in February then purchasing our house in Topanga recently. Someone on Instagram asked how...
Trust the Building Block Days // Love Letter, May 2021
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Greetings from already summer like Southern California. Today, I dug a patch of my mom's backyard I have been tending since last December. When our family moved in here, the...
Start with a Dialogue // Love Letter, April 2021
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When was the last time when you shared your personal stories with others? Friends, families, strangers? I ask because it is one powerful superpower we have within each of us, no matter...
My Personal Story about being an Asian American
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Atalanta shooting on March 16th has left me with loaded feelings. Racism towards Asian community members has always been around but I personally started noticing more when I became fluent...
Transitioning or Living in the Moment? // Love Letter, March 2021
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Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how we might greet the one-year mark since the pandemic started in March 2020. A few of my friends told me that they...
Cultivating the Space Around my Immediate Self // Wakako
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Lately, I have been earnestly thinking about my relationship with my phone. How frequently I am reaching out for it with or without awareness. Based on a few months of...
Analogue Process // Wakako
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The idea of having a perfect Analogue System is perhaps a bit of dream chasing. I used to feel excited about imagining creative ways of using different planners. Like really...
The Duality in Life // Love Letter, February 2021
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Greetings from Orange County. How was your month of January? Ours had some highs and lows. The biggest milestone was being able to pass the torch of our house to...
Keeping the Center of Gravity Close to our Hearts // Wakako
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Hello BK friends. Greetings from our family to you. We are settled into our current home at my parents' house in Orange County, including our chickens, who experienced their very second...
In the Midst of Falling Cherry Blossom // Love Letter, January 2021
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Good day and hello 2021! I hope the transition of the year has been peaceful for you and your loved ones. Our family's transition looked and felt so starkly different...
Moving Forward with Light and Intention
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As some of you might know from my Instagram updates, our family is moving out of the Pasadena area, where we have lived for the last 11 years. When we...
Sending warm thoughts from our studio
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Today, I am sharing my thoughts from our studio in Altadena. Since March, our team members have been taking rotating shifts at the studio to continue to ship and fulfill online orders while staying safe. I've been...
One Year of Freedom with the BK JIYU
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I am thrilled to share that we are celebrating the 1st birthday of the BK Jiyu planner. I have used Jiyu as my monthly and weekly planner/journal platform for the...
This December as "Ichigo Ichie" // Love Letter, December 2020
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More than any other year, the conditions and challenges we faced this year have urged us to rethink the life we knew before. We have adjusted our habits and routines, including the way we...
In this imperfect zen monastery like moment, we introspect...
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Usually, the months of October, November, and December are an intense time for our family. We are constantly running around the city from one soccer game to another, figuring out...
Sharing the tactile analogue experience
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We just received a parcel with a lot of new BK original tapes and sticker sheets. I can't wait to share them with you. And I can't tell you how...
Let our story inspire our path forward...
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Would you believe me if I told you that about a year ago, on a crisp October morning, I fell apart on a kitchen floor crying with tears that welled from...
Camping Adventure in 2020 with Hipcamp!
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This year is nothing short of new experiences, for sure. Usually, we invest our spring and summer breaks to visit our families in Japan and Germany. These trips are important...
Writing Our Truth as it Unfolds.
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At the beginning of September, we took a 5-night camping trip to the Zion/Bryce region in Utah when the weather unexpectedly turned from 90F daytime temperature to 30F at night with 40...
Join us to Welcome [BKxTN] GRID Notebook!
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The original BK Grid Notebook was one of the first notebooks we produced at Baum-kuchen studio as an original notebook. From passionately talking to the BK community about our analogue experience, it was...
A color that bring a childhood memory
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Are there colors that remind you of a childhood? I have a few and one of them is Azuki bean color. When I was growing up in Japan, my grandmother...
Grace, Patience, and Stillness
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I hope your long weekend is starting off well. It's about to be very hot again here in Los Angeles!!! We will try to manage it by spending our time...
Camping with Kids in Humboldt State Park
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Our family just came back from a 4-nights camping trip up in northern California. We were there to live and sleep amongst Coastal Redwoods, one of the tallest trees in the...
Feeling the tide of the year 2020
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At Baum-kuchen, August and September are beginning of the planner season. Usually, it's an exciting time for all of us at BK to start thinking of what each team member might...
What are Your Big Rocks?
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The month of July felt distinctly different from the previous months for me. It was a kind of quiet turning point when I realized that this "situation" we are in is...
Sharing the thought on my "Homeschooling Diary"
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As we watched to the news of local schools shifting gears to all online education for the new school year, I thought of our homeschooling adventures. We have been homeschooling for a...
Fragile // Handle with Love
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First and foremost, I would love to share my sincere "thank you" for being a part of our 10th-anniversary celebration during the month of June. Our team and I soaked...
"BK // With You"
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We are delighted to share our third TSL x BK Brass Plate. This year, we have added “BK” and “WITH YOU” to celebrate BK’s special birthday. Though it is small,...
The Small Joys of Everyday with the Celebration Tote
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The BK team has talked about creating a perfectly sized analogue tote for as many years as I can remember. The simple design of this tote will compliment your style...
The Adventure of The Journey Bag
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The BK exclusive messenger bag has been a long-time design dream for Frido (like 5+ years?)! So when we were planning to design a bag that can be easily personalized...