If you have been with me since the beginning, you’ll remember that it was a conversation with Yvonka Hall, the executive director of Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition, that helped me bring TKB from an idea to a real project that is coming up on its 2nd birthday. (Yay!) So many organizations start with a single, good-hearted idea that just needs a little muscle behind it to become something magical, and our next featured organization is one of them. Project Outrun, an organization based in Northeast Ohio, has provided over 1000 custom shoes to kids undergoing cancer treatment, but the stor ..read more

The Tiny Kitchen Bakeshop featured organization for June and July is Seeds of Literacy. Now, you may be saying, “Didn’t you just feature a literacy organization a couple months ago?” And the answer to that is yes—but even if TKB featured organizations that tackle issues around literacy for every campaign this year, it wouldn’t be enough to accurately represent the significance of literacy and the impact that it has on breaking the cycle of poverty in our community. Seeds of Literacy is an organization that provides basic education and GED®, TASC and HiSET® preparation to adults in the Clevela ..read more

The Tiny Kitchen Bakeshop featured organization for the March/April campaign is FrontLine Service, an organization which takes a proactive approach to the mental health needs of our community. While organizations like FrontLine Service are deserving of support each and every month, it felt especially meaningful on a personal level to launch this campaign now because this month marks the one-year anniversary of me seeking help for my own mental health issues. I was very blessed to have an amazing and supportive family and group of friends to ensure I stayed safe before I was ready to seek help ..read more

Happy New Year, TKB friends and family. I will never turn down the opportunity for a fresh start, and so the beginning of a new year feels both promising and exciting. 2021 was a fun, busy and successful year, and I am looking forward to continued growth of the TKB mission and initiatives in the coming months. If you are like me, you might at least start off with a few resolutions or intentions for the new year—drink more water, start an exercise routine, decrease your screen time, order more cookies from TKB (ha), read more—you get the idea. For the next two months, we are going to focus on ..read more

Happy December! This month, TKB is taking it back to where it all started with Artists’ Open Studio (AOS), which was the first featured organization when TKB launched back in October 2020. AOS has been supporting artists with disabilities for many years, founded by Christie Lane teacher Lynda Stoneham in 2004, and opened a studio and gallery on Main Street in Norwalk, Ohio during the summer of 2020. The gallery features artwork of AOS and local artists and a collection of various items for sale including hand tie-dyed masks, greeting cards, and seasonal items. The purchase of these items prov ..read more

One year ago, tiny kitchen bakeshop launched its first campaign and–wow–what a ride it has been since then. In the last year, you have ordered almost 3,400 cookies (no judgement) and raised over $3,200 for several awesome organizations. A sincere thank you to everyone who has placed orders and made donations over the last year. When I started TKB, I wasn’t quite sure how things would go, but thanks to your generosity (and your sweet tooth), together we have been able to put at least a tiny–but meaningful–mark on our community. I hope you have enjoyed the journey as much as I have. For the mon ..read more

It was a couple years ago that I was standing at a gathering of friends, conversing with one of them about why so many people living in poverty battle chronic illnesses and obesity. “I just don’t get it,” he said. “It’s not like broccoli is that expensive.” For many people like him and me who grew up not having to think about where the food on our dinner plates came from, how it was paid for, or whether or not it was going to adequately nourish our growing bodies, this might seem like a comfortable position to take. But access to fresh foods is a complicated and often challenging barrier to m ..read more

For those of you who are familiar with tiny kitchen bakeshop and its beginnings, this may be old news, but as there are some new faces at the table, I thought revisiting the TKB story was worthwhile and appropriate as I introduce the next featured organization. While TKB officially opened for business in October 2020, the idea behind it was born much earlier than that—just about one year ago, to be exact. It was one afternoon, when I had my face in my phone, relentlessly scrolling through news story after news story of the world’s ugliness, that I stumbled upon the Bakers Against Racism proje ..read more

We may look back at 2020 with heavy hearts—a year of unrest, illness, isolation, and loss. We were forced to disengage from what we previously knew as our everyday lives, we were separated from family and friends, we learned to fear the embrace of strangers, and to distrust our leaders. Inequality, ignorance, violence, and hate flashed across our screens and ran through our streets, and we were finally forced to digest that which we already knew lingered beneath the surface of our nation for far too long. But, surely there was some good to come from the year as well. Confined to our homes, we ..read more

About an hour’s drive west of Cleveland will take you to my hometown, Norwalk, Ohio—its streets relatively unchanged since I lived there, providing a warming familiarity each time I visit. However, there is a new storefront along its Main Street with large windows covered with hand-painted flowers. Inside, the space opens with high ceilings—the walls, adorned by a collection of framed art, surround shelves of colorful, handcrafted pottery. This is Artists’ Open Studio—or AOS, as it is affectionately called by locals. While AOS has been supporting artists with disabilities for many years, foun ..read more