[Music] Oh. [Music] Hey everyone, it’s Nikki here. Um, I know it’s been a minute. We are actually filming at a different desk today because we are in St. Petersburg, Florida for the summer. And as a result, we have sort of minimal stationery happening. You know, I didn’t bring a ton, especially with a baby in tow. Um, ended up bringing a lot more baby things. Um, and yeah, I just wanted to do a quick catch up. I’ve been watching a lot of midyear troki videos. Um, I don’t think that this is going to be one of those videos. Um, but maybe inadvertently so because I will just kind of talk through what we’ve been doing, what we’ve been using. I also have a very exciting package to share with you guys. Um, and thus I think this will take up a bulk of the video. Um, and yeah, we’ll just see where it goes. I think it’s going to be a little loose, a little freestyle. I don’t have a list. I do have a mental note of what I want to cover, but otherwise, um, yeah, I’m excited to unbox this with you. I also, yeah, would love to share with everyone sort of what I’ve been reading, how we’ve been sort of packing with our stationary and dealing with our stationery. Um, and yeah, so here goes nothing. So, just so everyone knows, um, uh, we came to Florida earlier this year or earlier this summer, and all I brought with me stationary wise, actually, um, in terms of notebooks are this traveler’s notebook. I did bring my Hobonichi Weeks thinking that I’d be using it. Um, we’re in St. Petersburg. Turns out we really I haven’t really used this much at all. And what else? And I brought actually these two A5 Honichi notebooks because I didn’t want to bring my full Peggy journal and I thought this is the same size. I could just use this as a traveling summer journal to document uh some of her stuff. And yeah, this has actually been working out great. I’ll share that with you in a second. So, really super minimal. And um as you can see from the beginning of this, I’ve actually replaced kind of a week’s agenda, which I didn’t need for the summer anyways. It didn’t feel like I need it with um this monthly, which I do want to experiment with this monthly format a bit more because I actually love seeing things in a glance like this. the weeks format was good. I don’t know. I’m loving I’m liking this so far. And so, yeah, just having this. I haven’t really figured out what to do with the rest of it, but so far I have July and August set up here, which is great. Um, I also liked the fact that the free monthly could give me the full year, whereas um the well, I guess the the uh preset 2025 Travelers does also give you the full year. But in any case, I started that off this year with something else in mind. And yeah, I wanted to start fresh. So, here we are. Um, here’s this. And then, yeah, in my traveler’s notebook, um, the one that I brought with me, um, I just had one insert in here plus this. So, I thought that was really all that I needed, which has been true so far. We are 3 weeks into the trip. And yeah, it’s been working out really well. Uh, I have here a lightweight paper insert that I started actually earlier this year in January. Um, and as you can see, this is before um before I gave birth and so things were a lot more detailed and fun and decorated. Um, then there was the moment I actually I remember writing this down in the hospital. I didn’t want to forget what happened during my labor. And so that’s uh just pure writing down what happened. Um and then I actually took a pause on this and I’ve been updating as you know all know Peggy’s journal. Um and I really haven’t done anything until June 3rd here and then um yeah I’ve been treating this really as a catchall um in terms of what I’ve been writing about. anything from sort of just freewriting to to-do lists including reminder to shave. Um little drawings here and there. Um a a record of what I’ve been reading. And that’s really something I wanted to talk about with you all this video, too, is that I’ve really been amping up my reading recently, especially because there’s a tendency for me now to get nap trapped. And so I have books that I want to share with you here, but I also want you to know that I’ve been reading my Kindle a lot because when push comes to shove and I am trapped in a chair um and can’t move and or the lights are off and I can’t turn any lights on because the baby’s sleeping, this Kindle has been my savior. And this Kindle I’ve actually had since 2016 and still works is still amazing and I’ve just been borrowing books off Libby and thanks to thanks to uh you know Petia which shout out to you uh my new substack friend. I have really been on a Deborah Levy reading marathon. And so, yeah, right now I am on the first of her trilogy, sort of like autobiography series. I’ve actually read two and three already. And um the first Things I Don’t Want to Know is the one I’m currently reading. And I just love her writing. She writes, I don’t know, just in a way that is so easy to read, yet, you know, when you’re reading it, you’re like, “Yes, you’re just nodding your head, highlighting, sending it all to, you know, sending screen caps to your WhatsApp groups.” And this is just a good um good uh Yeah. Sorry, I just got momentarily interrupted, so I lost my train of thought. But highly recommend Deborah Levy if um you are into writers like Susan Santag, Annie Arno, um and things, you know, writers of that sort. Uh totally recommend. And yeah, so that’s that. Um, but to the meat of today’s sort of uh video, what I wanted to share with you all is I got this package yesterday and yes um before you uh sort of judge me on this. I have been influenced by I guess book substack if that’s a thing both by Petia and Grandpa’s book club. um on getting this Paper Republic new notebook. And Paper Republic is just a funny thing because I feel like I’ve known about them for a very long time. In fact, I almost visited their store when I went to Vienna uh last year. Um but just didn’t have the time to squeeze it in and now here we are. Um, it seems like everyone is on this sort of Paper Republic Louise Carmen train and I was just curious. Um, I don’t know if this is something I necessarily want to keep, but uh, after sort of kind of hearing reviews and kind of seeing people with it, um, I got to be honest, I was influenced and, you know, we here, stationary lovers, we love trying new things and I wanted a sort of a reason also to make a new video again. So, I’m curious. I got the XL. I also wanted to maybe do a quick comparison for those who have questions on how it compares to the Traveler’s Notebook. Um, sorry, there’s a dog outside that’s really mad barking. Uh, Traveler’s Notebook here. And what I was most curious about actually was uh for myself is I’ve been wanting to um use this happier notebook maybe to track my uh books and reading. The only thing is is this Grand Voyager XL is a random size that I’ve done some research on. There’s already like some videos that have covered this. Uh, but I personally wanted to know how this 85 notebook size and I here I have a Stalogy and also Midori and I guess I do have my uh undated uh A5 pads here. So, these are all A5 size notebooks. I really wanted to know how they fit into this. Um, and you know, perhaps I just I just wanted to explore to see what it looked like. I didn’t have a lot of stationary items with me this year this summer, so I thought why not? I also wanted just something where if I was going to use this as a book book journal or just a catch all journal that I could slip this into really easily. Um I guess I could sort of slip this in. Um but I wanted to be able to Oh, there you go. But I wanted something that um could lay flat. And that’s one thing that I’ve noticed over time actually working with and and journaling with this travelers is how, you know, if I’m journaling on a new page, how this kind of just like flips over a lot and it’s Yeah, it’s it’s it’s not too cumbersome, but the fact that like I always think, oh, I need the clip in order for it to lay flat is yeah, something I think about sometimes. And so all in all, I’m blabbering here, but I am just excited to receive this package. I am going to unbox it now. So maybe I will fast forward this bit. Maybe not. But let’s see. Oops. I may have to actually cover that now. Um, see if I cut this so you don’t see my Okay, I’m excited. All right, so I’m going to put this aside and share with you this. All right. Okay. Oh, it feels so nice to hold these in person. All right, so what do we have here? I also, not going to lie, though, this notebook is one of the main reasons I got it because I mean, just look how cute this fish notebook is. It’s It’s just calling out to me like how cute. I also got this one. And yeah, let’s let’s do a little unboxing of this. Um, so Paper Republic is a leather notebook company based out of Vienna in Austria. And I actually ordered this on Sunday and yesterday was Thursday and I got the sort of the fastest delivery option which was only $9 more than the regular option. So it was 1 to 3 days or 2 weeks. And because I didn’t know whether or not I’d still be here in 2 weeks or you know I didn’t know how quickly the package would arrive and just in case it couldn’t make it in time I was like okay I’m going to select the faster option the fastest option which came here very quickly and thus we are unboxing it today and kind of just on opening so far I now can see the comparison. So, this is the A5 size and this, I guess, is a proprietary XL size. And holding this in person right now, this looks much smaller than I imagined it to look, but in a way that is interestingly kind of not too big and not too small, manageable size. And um I think one of the things about these notebooks is because they are bound in this way, they can lay super flat, which I am excited about. And I think I’m not too sure, but maybe this is 60 pages each. And I got to say, they’re not that cheap. Um I think these are $30 each. This is a plain notebook. And this is the dot grid. But in this first order, I did get um 20% off since it’s my first order. So here you can see this is a little note from I think Ole maybe um from the Paper Republic team. So, I’m going to set these aside really quickly and show you the cream of today’s crop, which is this um oops, this paper republic journal. Um, this is, like I said, the Grand Voyager XL. And yeah, a super nice fox. It’s actually um stapled this box. Very nice. Very nice card stock, I would say. And let’s see what color I have here. Yes, it is the black. And you know, I kind of debated a long time on whether or not I should get the black color, but I thought about it and I actually don’t have a travelers in black and black was always like a color that I thought I wanted to get and so I thought why not? Um, one thing about the black is it probably won’t patina sort of super obviously over time, but really I’m just um, you know, kind of looking forward it to getting looking forward to seeing it and feeling it get soft over time. So, yeah, just uh, on first view, let’s see, in comparison, this is a little shorter by um, height with the travelers. Um, so you can see them side by side here. A little shorter by height. Um, which interestingly enough, I wonder I was hoping that some of the traveler inserts I could like sort of cross use. Um, let’s see. They kind of just fit perfectly. And so, yeah, this could be I’m just I will I’m gonna show you what this looks like, but I’ll obviously probably film another video to show you how I actually set this up because I don’t think I’m going to set it up during this video. But size-wise, I wanted to kind of show everyone here what fits, what doesn’t. Um, and kind of on first feeling in terms of the leather, this is a camel. This is the Ace Hotel camel. It’s my only camel, so I can’t compare it to other camel colors, but um the feel of this leather is quite different than my other travelers. It’s kind of more um whatchamacallit uh I don’t know. I don’t know how to how to describe it, but it’s not like my other leather covers. This feels more like the other leather covers. Um, so just on like kind of first review, uh, Traveler notebooks have rounded corners and this, uh, Grand Voyager has a sharp corner. I think for the, um, portfolio or no, the custom customized covers, you can choose whether or not to get your covers rounded or sharp. Um, and just so everyone knows, the Grand Voyager is the um, Paper Republic proprietary size. Uh they do have a portfolio version that has sort of these leather pockets and everything in the A5 size, but I just couldn’t justify the price, especially for something I’m testing out. You will also notice that I did not emboss mine. This is because I just don’t know if I’m keeping this notebook. Um, I just really just wanted to get it to experiment with it and, you know, if anything, um, I, you know, if push comes to shove, I really needed to sell it. Um, that maybe I could, but sort of on first feel, I really like it. Um, the all of these notebooks do fit into here. But here’s the question. Do the will the other will my A5 notebooks fit? And the answer is they will but they will stick out. So, um, one of the things that is different, I guess, about the guess it’s not quite different, but I think I guess Travelers does has have um two they have two bands as well, but I rarely use this band cuz it’s so much shorter. This, on the other hand, it feels like you could fit a second one into it. So, um I’m going to do that. The other thing also I noticed is their um their band is stuck right here, which is actually much better in terms of I don’t know why Travelers doesn’t do this, but Travelers has their um their elastic on the back. And so often when your book is either too bulky or you’re writing on this side, like you can feel it. It’s like, you know, Princess and the Pee. You can feel that there’s like a lump here. And so, um, one thing that I think Paper Republic does well here is they you sort of as you’re writing, this will not bother you. So, let’s get started. I think this is the insert I really wanted to kind of get started with. So, let me find the middle point. I think this is the middle point. Um, So, all right. This is the Okay, here’s what I’m going to do to try out the things. First of all, I am going to I guess I will use this, but I will move this to the other band. Okay. Okay, that works. And then I will show you this then slide into here. And this lays completely flat. So this now has two books. Lays completely fat flat. And then I also did get the card and wallet. What is this what it’s called? Yeah, it has some funny name. It’s called the card and cash holder. And so I guess what I would want to do with this one maybe is I could put it right here. And so it’s kind of framing this. And then I did get some extra ribbons. And so this is red already. I guess I want to play around maybe with the Okay, let’s do blue or orange. Okay, I just wanted to So, let’s see if this elastic is enough. So, there’s two things I want to try. I’m probably not going to keep this, but I just wanted to see how this would fair. If is there a middle point in these stall cheese? No idea. Yep. So, this is what it would look like if I try to force an A5 book into here. So, you can see the A5 is significantly larger. And to be honest, I would not mind. Um, I mean, this is probably because there’s way too many books in here. So, I mean, one thing maybe to experiment with is I’ll take this out and then I’ll take this out. And what would happen then if this were instead to go directly into here. So, this were the sort of main book in here. So yeah, you’d still get a a bulk, but like not that much to be honest. And so I’m actually maybe I’ll start with this first because I have been wanting really wanting to use this for a long time now. So that’s interesting. And then maybe what I’ll do with this is experimenting with this monthly. Maybe I’ll do and I wonder if Okay. So, but one thing is if I use this Dollar one, it does not lay flat, which is not what my intention was for this book. So, yeah, I might take that back and just just use use the Paper Republic system for now since I did get it. And I’m excited to kind of give that a run. I also wanted to test the paper obviously. And I’m wondering if this paper is the same as this paper. No, they’re actually quite different. This is much This is thinner and this is definitely thicker. Okay. Okay. So, I’ll do a pen test perhaps um on my on my Instagram once I have that ready. And then I wanted to let’s see where would I put this if I wanted to include it. Maybe here. This feels like a nice spot actually. Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to leave the traveler system. I just wanted to experiment with something new and you know this is kind of what it would look like if we did a pseudo traveler. So I have the monthly here. I have this card and cash pocket here and I have the this one notebook here. And I did get additional um plain paper notebooks. So the same thing. And then and then I had a main sort of book here. I’m wondering though if I should swap these spots cuz I do want maybe this one to lay a bit more flat in the middle. So that’s what I’m going to do. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Let’s do my here and then put this in the center stage. So if I start writing this, it’ll be a lot more flat, which is my intention for a book like this. Right. So, this is my very quick and um ad hoc setup. Obviously, there’s a lot more that I can do and play around with, but I really just wanted to show everyone sort of what it would look like. I feel like this question has been burning in my mind. Um and so I really wanted to, you know, hope this video is helpful for someone else. Um again, this is pure experimentation only. Uh, one of the things is the portfolio obviously has these like pockets on the side that are super helpful. And again, it’s an A5 size. I probably I’m going to buy an extra set of these um I don’t know what they’re called, but they’re from Travelers Company. Um, these slots and kind of stick one here and probably stick one at the back just to kind of mimic what I’m doing here. And so, um, potentially, let me see. my BTS stickers. So, potentially I could well for right now probably put these here. I have to do probably some um some cleaning up of this area. But let’s say I moved this system over completely and used this as my main notebook for a while. I would Oh, these are a bit I guess these come out. These stick out. So, this is Oh, yeah. They kind of stick out but kind of I don’t hate it like the way you know this needs to look used and you know can’t be perfect but sort of these tabs sticking out and these like little stickers sticking out. I I kind of like how that looks. Okay, we’re getting there. We’re getting there. Um, so this monthly, uh, and I guess what I had in mind is these are the main journals I’m really using. This is just something I’d probably slip in here and not like, you know, and not have to be bound. And like my idea was that let’s go thick. Let’s Let’s have this be the entire setup. So, one thing I guess I’m really missing here is a pen holder of sorts. Um, so got to figure that out. Um, but yeah, I’m kind of liking how this feels so far. I guess in terms of a pen I holder, I didn’t feel like getting the Leoop pen holder. Actually, one thing to mention is I kind of like that this does not have, you know, travelers has this um sort of oops, I dropped this. This included in the travelers and I guess it’s easy to is it easy to take out? I don’t love these um bookmark things. So, kind of glad this is not included. Um I’ve been making these little notes also. I’m trying to sleep train Peggy. Don’t judge me. Um, but I’m kind of losing hope on this, but it is a cheat sheet that I have and I will carry this as well. What’s in here? Um, I’ve yet to decide how to use these notebooks. I think in the meantime, I will also probably move this over. I don’t want to waste the rest of these pages. So, yeah, this will probably be a little book sick. I’ll probably take this out uh for a while um and use this later. Um let’s see. I kind of I like how this looks. It’s very It’s very It’s getting chunky and like lived in already without me doing much. Um it’s a cheeky sink piece. I’ll probably put this slot this here once I have or maybe I’ll just like stick this here temporarily. I might do that. Let’s do that. Why not? There are no rules. There are no rules. Let me just do that. Cheekies is a St. Pete. It’s a neighborhood seafood bar that we discovered recently that we love. And so here, giving this some love. Okay. Maybe accenting it a bit with a dot sticker potentially. I love accenting things like this. No. Okay. Let’s see. Yeah. All right. Looking limp already. In fact, I also want to carry this around. These are the manatee. These are the Nope. Doesn’t Okay, I think Peggy is waking me up. But um yeah, this is my new Paper Republic journal. Very excited to use this. Um, and yeah, I guess we didn’t have that much time to go over some other things like this Daiso pouch, makeup pouch that I finally got at Daiso here in St. Pete. I actually could not find this anywhere in Asia. And so, yeah, it’s like the perfect stationary pouch that I’m carrying around. has like my stickers in it. Has all my tabs and then it has this really great pen case. I also only brought one fountain pen with me um and a bunch of Mild Liners. But yeah, this is really all I bought, guys. And or brought and it’s been it’s been nice. Turns out you don’t need that much. And that’s sort of why I wanted to figure out how to fit as much as I could in here, including my Kindle and sort of Peggy’s Peggy’s journal, because this is something that kind of never made sense. And so this I’m hoping would just like, you know, it it has a has like a has a vibe to it that I’m excited to excited to explore and experiment with. And yeah, let me know if Paper Republic is something you are currently exploring or wanting to to to [Music] kind of figure out yourself or if you have any questions about this setup, what I can answer for you in this new with this new Paper Republic. I might just want to kind of move this over for old time sake. And yeah, again, I’m not abandoning my traveler systems. I love my traveler notebooks. Um, but I just wanted to yeah, see and and um play around with how this felt. So, thank you, Petia, for influencing me. Um, I will also be um, you know, doing a lot more book journaling, maybe talking about books a little bit more. Um, I didn’t even get a chance to go into these, but um, I have been, just so you know, these are the books I’m currently reading. Uh, I am almost done with this, so I this should really be on my list to finish this week. Uh, my Year of Rest and Relaxation, uh, Swanseway by um, Boost, but the Lydia Davis translation. um much more much easier at least for me to read. I know it’s not the classic one, but the Lydia Davis translation is my jam. Uh so there’s that. And then there is I’m just I’ve picked this up again because I had this in my um St. Pete library. Like library as in my bookshelf here. Um, I actually love when I travel between the two houses because I always discover books on the bookshelf that I want to pick up again. So, yeah, I was just reading through the Joan Ddian um interview at the back of this and yeah, the the one by the um the TS Elliott and the Ernest Hemingway interviews are really good too. And I am also just whenever I can flipping through the this Helen Garner how to end a story book. This is actually a collection of her diaries and I don’t know it’s you know when you’re journaling and writing your own journals. It is always a bit more I guess easier when you know I can flip through this and see how other people write about their lives. makes it easier to write about my own and offers me a new perspective on how to write about my life. Um, that’s more than just here’s what I ate for breakfast. Um, you know, there are so many things you can notice, go deep into, and that’s sort of what this is helping me do. Helen Garner is an Australian uh, writer and her diaries are just super emotionally honest and actually really funny. So, highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in just kind of adding a little bit more flare to your own journaling. Um, and reading other people’s diaries and how they write about their lives. Um, and yeah, I think that’s really it. Uh, I can’t believe I got a chance to uh film this for 30 or so minutes. Um, I hope everyone is doing well. Uh, I’m sorry if I haven’t replied to your comment or, you know, I haven’t just had a chance to really catch a breath these days, but um, I have some time now. And I think, yeah, I’m excited to dive back into things and, uh, let you all know how that’s going. And, yeah, I hope to give you all an update soon. and let me know if you have any questions and how I can really help to debunk or share any experiences with this newspaper or public journal. All right, bye guys.