Ever since I discovered the Flickr photo group “What’s in your bag?” I’ve loved seeing what kinds of stuff people carry around with them. I do believe it’s how I came to buy a Lamy Safari as my 1st fountain pen – everyone seemed to own one so I had to get one too. This image was submitted by Ann Elkington for our photo page: “In Your Bag” where Rhodia fans can show off their goods. (Psst…. send me yours!)

Our friend Julie sent us this image to be shared on our “Favorite Pens” photo page and speaking of which,  have you sent me a photo of your favorite pen yet?

“Right now my favorite pen is the Pilot B2P (Bottle 2 Pen). I’ve been using it with my journals now for about three months. I came across them by chance one day when buying supplies. They are made from recycled water bottles, and are refillable, so, I feel a little more earth friendly & minimalist when using them. They also write pretty smoothly. The B2P’s don’t have the sleek look of the metal or aluminum, but they have their own unique look. The cool thing is, no one else carries them at my job, so if i misplace my pen, it always finds its way back to me. Same with my notebook, because no one at my job rocks Rhodia Webnotebooks, either!”

Like it or not, this man in a hoodie has made a permanent dent in the history books for (quite aggressively) changing the way we humans interact with one another.

He has worked to create a platform where we can create large networks of “friends” to interact with on a daily basis in ways that could not have been perceived a mere 10 years ago. Through these activities, we have pretty much given away a large chunk of our privacy through our “likes” our “check in’s” and via a multitude of third party sites sharing our activities to Facebook for our extended friend network to see. While we have the ability to control what we share, many users are not aware of how to put those controls into place and it is because of things like this that our beliefs about our privacy are being eroded.

Today Facebook becomes a publicly traded commodity and as much as I want to buy in, (because I do not believe FB is anywhere near its tipping point) I face a number of ethical dilemmas surrounding what this company is actually selling. In my mind, the whole Facebook concept as it continues to progress will either be completely genius or the biggest con of all time.

So…. are you going to buy some FB stock?

These days I work in lots of different kinds of art media but I still consider myself a doodler.

It was about 5 1/2 years ago that I first started doodling mandalas- a circular art form typically represented by concentric circular patterns radiating from the center outward. For the first 4 years I drew them almost constantly in sketchbooks, tablets, notebooks, etc., typically with a fountain pen or marker. Sometimes I’d draw up to ten in a single day just by sitting and doodling one after another… this became my meditation.

Do you doodle? Do you do it just to kill time/keep your hands occupied or do actually you make the time to do it?

I am a decent cook. Mom was a decent cook. Gram was a very good cook. (It was her job for 18 years to cook for the elderly at an extended care facility.) I watch lots and lots of Food Network programming and shows with Gorden Ramsey. I am not afraid to try new things and typically throw things together rather than follow recipes. I also tend to shop without a list which means that sometimes, things can fall by the wayside.

Growing up, Mom used to make Chicken Paprikash- a creamy chicken stew with gummy dumplings seasoned with paprika. The paprika she would buy came in a small tin and I remember it having a sweet taste. Nowadays, there are all kinds of paprika available at the supermarket. Sweet, spicy, smoked, Hungarian and Spanish. I don’t know what made me grab a container of the smoked paprika, (probably related to something Bobby Flay was cooking) but boy oh boy, am I glad I did. I first went through an inexpensive jar I found among the spices in the Spanish food aisle. I remember seasoning fish with it and sprinkling it on top of bowls of soup.

And then we ran out. Since I don’t write lists and make up my meals as I go, I forgot to buy another jar until last week. This time I grabbed a more expensive jar from McCormick’s gourmet line and when I opened the lid, I could immediately tell there was a HUGE difference in quality. I used it for the first time sprinkled on the skin side of some chicken thighs I was searing prior to popping them in the oven.

The smell when cooking? OH MY GOODNESS! The taste? Yahoo delicious! Last night I made some chicken soup w/ brown rice. Once again sprinkled the smoked paprika onto the chicken then seared it in olive oil- sprinkled more on each finished bowl. How have I managed to live this long without tasting this spice? I’m willing to bet that there are even better tasting brands out there… I will have to ask my friend Anne, who I know regularly hits the spice shops when visiting Philly and New York.

This single ingredient has inspired me to create a list to be taped inside a cupboard. It is to include tasty things (dishes, individual ingredients) that I don’t want to let fall by the wayside.  I mean, have you tried cooking with smoked paprika yet? You’ll see how it inspires you!

Image above courtesy of Mike from Chi-Town and is of his Danitrio Genkai and a Rhodia R Pad.

I believe in some cases, there may be more than one woman responsible for nurturing us and offering us their unconditional love. In recognition of Mother’s Day, here’s to all the amazing women who’ve helped to make us who we are, and also to those who continue to help us grow each and every day.

What would it mean to you to discover a notebook that your mother kept during her childhood? During yours?

In my infamous “Book of Lists” I like to note my current favorite television shows as well as those from my past. Growing up in the 1970′s, that means Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Land of the Lost, Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. These days, it seems as though I like a lot of the edutainment reality shows like American Pickers and Out of the Wild. I’ve also recently caught up to the current season of Mad Men and well, I like it a lot even though many of the social situations portrayed on that show tend to rub me the wrong way.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, (I just watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol last night & loved it. Who would ever think to pair Simon Pegg with Tom Cruise? Brilliant…) is to put pen to paper and make your own list of favorite TV shows from both your past & present.

But for right now, would you mind sharing with us at least one of your childhood favorites, and what made it so special?

In the last few years I’ve been working hard to make better choices about bringing more “things” into our tiny house. I will think long and hard on an item’s practical use, how much space it will take up and the amount of maintenance it may need. I’ve sent dozens of boxes filled w/ stuff to the local thrift shop and gone through my clothes at least twice a year to fill the give-a-way bag.

You can imagine my surprise when my friend called me an e-hoarder. Ok, fine. So I have a hard time deleting things. Images, videos, songs… Hard drives can hold a ton so why should I delete? I know I have an issue with photos – it’s all too easy to shoot 500 digital images and then tuck them away… But it does become a challenge to sort and categorize all those photos and my brain tends to go numb when I sit down to tag and sort  my images in Lightroom.

Do you have a strategy for maintaining your e-clutter?

Now please excuse me as I try to go delete some photos….

I started to regularly use Rhodia and Clairefontaine products after discovering years ago that the waterbased inks in my (at that time) new favorite writing tool, (a fountain pen) did not play well with the paper in my then favorite notebook. I then started upon a mission to seek out the perfect pen/ink/notebook combination and documented many of my findings along the way on my personal blog Spiritual Evolution of the Bean.

What I would come to discover is that while some papers worked some of the time, (because some manufacturers buy their paper from various sources)  Rhodia/Clairefontaine was always consistent in the quality and functionality of their paper because they themselves manufactured it. I could always use their paper without having to worry if my new red/blue/purple/green ink would bleed or feather when I touched nib to page.

And why a fountain pen? Smoother ride, less fatigue – they make writing pleasurable.

Have you tried one yet? Lamy Safari’s are an inexpensive way to start and still one of my favorite FP’s. (I have 6 Safari’s in different colors and varying nib widths.)

We know that some of you use our products every day, and we know that some of you reserve our products for special occasions. Obviously, we’d love everyone to be using as much Rhodia as humanly possible so we were wondering if those of you who use our products on a daily basis might lend us a hand. Sometimes all it takes is giving someone permission to make a mess, to make mistakes, and to use our quality paper for the most mundane tasks imaginable. (Grocery lists, pet goat feeding schedules, hubcap bearing replacement appointments and the like.)

Might you share with us, some of the most seemingly uninteresting ways you use our paper as to alleviate the “fancy paper syndrome” that sometimes is associated with a new pad of our glorious paper?

We’d sure appreciate it.

While we are not affiliated with Timbuk2, the San Fransisco bag manufacturer founded in 1989, we do want you to know that it is possible to customize a bag to hold your most favorite orange and black stationery products….

7 Ways to Turn Your Journal from Whiny to Empowering at Kaizen Journaling

Julie’s Gadget Diary 04-18-12 at The Gadgeteer

12 Ways to Attack Any Challenge at Inc.

Up and Down at Flickr Blog

Courage and Creating at Creativity for Life

7 Tips For Increasing Your Writing Productivity at Business 2 Community

20 Ways to Kill Your Writer’s Block Forever at Lifehack

Getting messy at nordljus

Travel Week: Flying With Fountain Pens (and other options) at The Well-Appointed Desk

My Collection at Plannerisms

How Cartoons Can Jolt You Into Being Creative at Thoughts on Theater

What exactly happens when you send a letter to the L.W.A. P.O. Box at Missive Maven

Altered Book: Things I Collect at Daisy Yellow

graphite archive at La Vie Graphite

Note: Journal Addict has become Kaizen Journaling

Image up top courtesy of Bonnie Jean Woogler. It shows off her new favorite pen from Chance Pens.

I have a Garmin GPS unit that needs to be updated  – $65 for lifetime updates. I have two different map applications on my iPhone although the Google application is always telling me that it somehow doesn’t have permission to know my current location. I also think there might be a 10 or 12-year-old map of Pennsylvania in my car that I probably don’t even remember how to read because it’s been so long since I’ve looked at a paper map to get me from point A to point B.

A friend from western Pennsylvania recently came to visit. She arrived with paper directions printed from the internet and I looked at them as if they were leftover relics from the ice age because it seems as though everyone is relying on something electronic to get them from one place to another.

Admittedly, I feel more comfortable driving to, in, or around unknown destinations with a GPS. (And a phone) How about you? Do you require electronic assistance to get you where you are going or are you happier following your own directions?

Since participating in the Lehigh Valley Art Wars last year, (a local live art competition) I’ve met and have become inspired by dozens of amazing local artists including Joey Gourniak, shown here in his Easton, PA art studio.

I had the opportunity to visit Joey in studio last weekend when he opened it to the public as part of the 14th annual Easton Open Studio Arts Tour. This was my 1st studio tour and I had a great time walking around downtown Easton with map in hand, talking to some of my favorite local artists in their studios and galleries. If you are a fan of the tv show American Pickers, you might recognize the series of images at the back of Joey’s studio, as they at one time had been installed in the fun house of the currently defunct Bushkill Amusement Park that the Pickers picked back in 2010.

Aware of an art walk/studio tour in your area or one you might be traveling to? Do it! You never know who you might meet and what treasures you might uncover!

We love hearing your feedback as it allows us to tweak our products and expand our offerings to you. It is because of your comments and feedback that we have specifically improved upon the quality and expanded the variety of options on the Webnotebook. Your enthusiasm for our dot grid format has allowed us to offer the dotPad in additional sizes and we’ve even added an additional cover option in Rhodia’s signature orange.

I am fortunate for the opportunity to learn about and try new products from Exaclair before the general public and I always tell Karen my thoughts on each item. Not every item is suitable for the needs of every person but if there is a feature that could be in some way improved upon which might make an item more useful to you, we want to hear about that.

I myself would like to see more spiral bound offerings in the 5×8″ size, with perhaps a blank or dot option.

What features or options would you like to see updated/ added to the Rhodia line, or to any of Exaclair’s other brands?

I love to see Rhodia pads appear in unexpected places.

Lori and I sat down for a post-Easter dinner snack at the Hellenic Snack Bar in East Marion, NY.  A young woman came over to take our order and pulled out a black No. 12 Rhodia pad!

“Is that a Rhodia?” I asked her.  She pulled out the pad for a look.  “No one claimed it from the Lost & Found,” she said. “I love the smooth paper.”

There isn’t any place to buy Rhodia out on the North Fork of Long Island (yet) so I promised to bring along a few Rhodia notebooks for her chemistry classes.

Hey, who lost their Rhodia?

If you get to the Hellenic Kitchen (as we locals call it) – don’t miss the lemonade.  It’s the best!

Bifocals. I need them but don’t want them- I work closely at varying distances so I usually just take my glasses off to see. (Sort of) I’ve been wearing glasses to correct nearsightedness and an astigmatism since I was 4 years old. 39 years of wearing glasses – I don’t know a life without them. I’d always hoped for surgery to correct my vision but I’ve learned several unfortunate things about me and RK surgery. The first is that I’m a risky candidate due to the shape of my eyes, second is that the surgery wouldn’t make my vision any better than my eyes currently see. Third is that I would possibly still need to wear glasses and fourth is that the surgical procedure isn’t permanent. Not to mention that the surgery isn’t covered by health insurance. Insert big frowny face here -> :o(

I write, draw, paint, work on a computer, and love to read – all things that are somewhat dependent on having clearish vision to do them and it’s frustrating to not be able to see like I once did. Not to mention the struggle with trying to see labels, small print, etc. I used to think that older folks were just being difficult when they said they couldn’t read fine print.

I seem to have heard more horror stories about bifocals than success stories. Can you help me out? Did you finally give in and find that they were a godsend?

It can be so easy to delegate many of our daily tasks and responsibilities to one of our electronic devices, but I believe there are some things that are just always going to be better on paper- like a handwritten note on your birthday or your great grandmother’s meatball recipe on a well-worn index card.

In what ways will you always use paper? Prefer using paper?

Working for yourself, income tax preparation requires additional efforts which I seem to hold off until the very last possible minute. I’ve been trying (but not my hardest) to keep up with things though I somehow don’t think it’s enough to simply cram receipts into an envelope until the 1st week in April.

I may kid, but only a little. I’ve heard of these new fangled accounting softwares on the interwebs but my fear is that even if I choose go that route with the belief that it will make my life easier, I will still be sitting and sweating next year in this same place, same bat channel, holding a pile of receipts and cursing while the software updates…

Last year I set down part of this load by finally hiring a CPA (certified public accountant) to prepare my taxes which seemed to give me more piece of mind than hitting the “submit” button on Turbo Tax ever did.

I feel that I’m a good mix of left/right brain when it comes to balancing the business side of my creative life, so I never really understand what’s up with all this procrastination.

Did you file your taxes yet? Or are you more like me?

Painting of Luca Pacioli shown above. Pacioli wrote “Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità” a 27-page treatise on bookkeeping which was first printed and published in Venice in 1494. It contained the first known published work on that topic, and is said to have laid the foundation for double-entry bookkeeping as it is practiced today.

I’m sure that it’s no surprise to many of you that I use doodling as a way to increase productivity- my sense is that it helps to engage my brain and give it focus. Listening to music also helps, but it has to be the right kind of music or I find it distracting. Sometimes I simply prefer silence to focus on what I need to get done.

For me, I also find the time of day I do certain things plays a part in how well I am able to focus on them.

This article lists 21 different ways to help increase productivity – which are your favorites?