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.

Our friend Bill thought he was buying a new Webbie for himself but alas, Meow B seems to have taken full custody of it.

Yep. This one seems pretty much spoken for. Two big thumbs up for brand loyalty! (although cats don’t have opposable thumbs…)

Question to ponder: Do cats use fountain pens?

New to the game? Here’s a detailed review of the Webbie .

Much thanks to all who entered our recent contest! The 20 winners are listed below. Be sure to stay tuned for our next Rhodia giveaway!

Bearcat
Dragan Todorovski
Erin from Dallas
Rita K.
Cynthia from Sydney
David Neves
Abe Lugioyo
KenMc
Gino from MA
pds
marianne richmond
Jonathan from Monroe
D. Harris
Davmoco
Mike Clemens
Alejandro C
Bart N
Curtis B
Monophoto
Eric C. from IL

Imagine if you will for just a moment, a Rhodia Reverse filled with dot grid paper. Leather bound Rhodia Webbies. A 250pg spiral Rhodia notebook. Isometric graph paper. 6-packs of Rhodia pencils…

Knowing how much you love your Rhodia, I know that there is probably a product configuration that you would like to see that doesn’t currently exist. So what is it? Please share! From our recent question on our dotGrid format, I know you’d like to see some spiral bound dot products- me too.

Maybe YOU can inspire a whole new Rhodia product!

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.

This contest is now closed – thank you for your entries!

The other day when I asked what you thought about our dotPads and dotWebbies, we heard you loud and clear that you loved using them! Many of you shared with us your reasons for liking this format by way of how you use it. One suggestion was to use the dots as a guide for pasting things onto the pages. As in Halstead’s image above, “no more crooked tape!”

I keep a special blank book (glue book?) for pasting images which I use for art inspiration – colors, textures and the like. I’m not too particular with how I paste them in, but I can imagine that it would look even better and become more of a work of art in itself if I were using dot paper.

Do you tape/paste things into your journals?

This video shows an inspiration book similar to what I make:

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!

The dot grid format is still somewhat new to Rhodia and we are wondering if you might tell us your experiences with it. I typically  prefer a completely blank page, but I find the dot format subtle enough to provide structure to the page without being constricting. We offer the dots in two different formats – gray dots on the off-white paper in the Webbie and violet on white in the staple-bound pads.

Are you looking to try the dot format in the future? Any specific ideas on how you will use it?

See how our Swappers are creating in the Journal Swap

For some of our faithful fountain pen fans, a change of season means swapping out ink colors. Which colors say “Spring” to you? Maybe the delicate blue of J Herbin’s Blue Myosotis or the subtle pink of Rose Tendresse?

Sometimes I get in a funk of using black and blue with the occasional purple tossed in for variety. It’s not like I don’t have a plethora of inks to choose from, but I think I can get somewhat lazy with flushing and cleaning my pens. I think now might be a good time for a thorough spring pen cleaning and an even better time to try filling them with a variety of bright spring influenced colors.

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?

Have you ever tried writing, drawing or doodling with a colored pencil? There are several different kinds with the non-erasable wax based ones being the most common. Erasable ones do exist, though I’ve never had reason to want to try them. Watercolor pencils are probably my favorite because they can be used in many different ways. You can draw with them then wash over the drawing with a wet brush for watercolor paint like results. You can touch a wet brush to the lead and then paint with the brush – which makes for a nifty portable paint kit. You can also draw on wet paper which can create some pretty interesting results.

If you have access to an art supply store,  you can often buy what’s known as “open stock” meaning that you can select individual pencils instead of buying a whole set. This is a great and inexpensive way to try different kinds of colored pencils (in your favorite colors) to find the ones you like the most.

I’m personally a fan of the Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils which are a little on the pricey side but in my opinion, well worth it. If you buy some, make sure to have a sharpener on hand that can accept pencils wider than standard width.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to try something new this weekend!

We’ve got 12 people from all over the US writing, drawing, and creating collages dedicated to their “Favorite Things” in our first ever Rhodia Journal Swap. The dozen members of this project are all working in large Rhodia dotWebbies and are documenting their creations on the group Tumblr blog that we set up for the swappers. Each person is working on several pages in each book before sending it on to the next person.

Would you be interested in participating in a future swap? We are considering starting a second round midway through the first.

More recent creations from the swap:

From Sandra Strait

From Andrea

From Tammy

Top image by Kristina.