Remembering and sharing the wisdom...

My friend Jane (of Snugattack) celebrated her birthday few weeks ago. She is one of a few friends who have known me more than a decade now... She and I have known each other through multiple phases of life stages (the joy - and some frustration - of going through the design school, working in the real world of design, running our own business... and of course growing our family...). Especially now our kids are BFF..., we see each other quite frequently despite the distance (she lives on the opposite side of LA) and have been exchanging a lot of life insights as parents, designers... and simply as individuals.

As her birthday got closer, Frido and I brainstormed on the gift...
Our thoughts evolved around something priceless..., something functional, something she won't be able to get by herself..., and something truly meaningful.

As we talked about the gift over dinner, we stumbled upon the idea of a custom made charm for Traveler's Notebook... with a quote "today is the only day" that reminded me of many conversations we have had with Jane in past few years. When we looked up the quote to see who have mentioned it historically..., it turned out to be Ernest Hemingway...

Over the following weeks, we went through a few versions of prototype to make a leather charm with a quote that will become a part of her Traveler's Notebook's elastic band... with a hope that every time she opens her notebook, it will be there to make her smile.

We typed the quote from Hemingway (though I excluded the last sentence from the original paragraph) with our favorite Baum-kuchen office equipment (hello, vintage typewriter:) and packaged it with the leather charm! We mailed the gift so I wasn't there to see her face when she opened it... but I think she likes it as the charm is proudly attached to her Traveler's Notebook now.

The joy of gift giving:) 

p.s. Frido and I had so much fun making this charm... we are thinking of sharing some of them at Baum-kuchen.