My Story

Read about how Notebooks & Honey started with strong opinions from a stubborn and practical person.

This is a story all about how ...

a modern diaper/laptop bag for multi-tasking mommies (which are all moms, of course) was developed.  This has been a passion project of mine since the birth of my second child and in 2017, this vision became reality. 

 

First let's back up to how the this idea first came about... Above is an old photo of my first born/ daughter, whom I call "Honey", when she was a toddler.  She is now a full on kid and has two younger brothers. When I was pregnant with her and then, subsequently, with her brothers, I was desperately looking for a diaper bag that can easily transition into a laptop bag/big purse. Take the laptop out, pop in the diapers/wipes and sippy cups and off we go.  I looked for hours and hours online with not luck.  All the diapers bags LOOK like diaper bags; I'm not into that. I tried converting my large purses and totes into diaper bags, not really working either because the baby bottles kept tipping over and causing messy leaks and there were not enough perfect compartments.  Also, what about my laptop?! I need that for work, where do I put that?! I refused to carry two bags. I'm a freelance commercial interior designer and with three little kids and being a full time chauffeur and personal assistant to them, I constantly have my laptop with me so I can find the closest coffeeshop to work out of in between school and activity pick up and drop offs. And so here we are today... hence, NOTEBOOKS & HONEY. "Notebooks" referring to laptops, tablets, agendas, planners, actual notebooks and "honey" referring to the babies, kids, adult kids and  fur babies. 

 I'm so thrilled that this project has finally come to life.  It's truly a product that I wanted to make for myself, because I thought there was a gap in the market. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel... it's a bag and it has pockets. But I needed the right pockets with the right material choices and size to make it the absolute versatile bag. Although I have many bags, cause I love bags, I needed one that I can use for everything day to day... take to work, take to the store, to lunch, to the playground, to drinks, on a date night.  I want a bag that is modern and stylish enough to want to carry all the time but has sturdiness, functionality and is a bit rough and edgy.  I absolutely indulged and made the bag to suit me, so you will see that a lot of the thoughts and engineering of the bag is based on how I would use it and I just hope that people who think the same way will enjoy it too!

 I don't know how far this journey will go, but as a designer, I want to create a beautiful and functional (because I'm a practical gal) product that is out there and available to the world.  At the moment, this is a small batch production but believe me, I already have dreams for more color combos and even more versions of bags that are almost perfect but not quite there yet.

 

Let's see where this adventure takes us.

~ Cheryl