Author: Erika Pace

I don’t even know where to start. The binder clip. One of the most handy devices. If you have ever worked in an office you know you have taken many home with you over the years… purely on accident of course. Every single chip bag in our kitchen is currently closed with a binder clip. I have teeny tiny ones that clip my package of fast acting yeast closed. There are two giant sized clips that are holding together our pop-a-shot basketball net in the basement. Ahhh my collection of binder clips…. a walk down memory lane of every copy room I have ever been in.

Our Maple tree has a bumper crop of seeds this spring. The whirligigs, helicopters, whatever you want to call them are EVERYWHERE. I’ve seen the squirrels hanging out in the tree devouring them too. This little set of 3 made the perfect subject for today’s sketch. Speaking of squirrels, there’s one in our bird feeder right now so I am sending out the dog!

This is a key I found in the everything drawer. It’s matching lock is a mystery…. no markings of any sort to indicate it’s partner. So I drew it, and then placed it back in the everything drawer.

Nothing is better than a homemade chocolate chip cookie. I made them the other night and as I was using my cookie scoop to create uniformly sized cookies, I thought the scoop would make a good post. By the way… we are already down about 20 cookies in 36 hours.

My Aunt and Uncle hosted us for a lovely Easter meal and every time I go to their home I am in awe of the floral arrangements. The bathroom had 3 simple daffodils and there were yellow dogwood twigs in a vessel in the hallway. Virginia bluebells in a glass vase, dried hydrangea blossoms, and flowering branches in others. So today, I grabbed my pruners and headed into the neighboring yard to snip some branches from their apple tree. For the record, no one has lived in the house next door for over a decade and the yard is more like a prairie of weeds and unpruned shrubs. I now have a big mason jar of branches with apple blossoms in my living room and this little stem is in the bathroom.

For the record, I do not use these. They belong to my husband. I do not like wearing these because they just don’t stay in my ears. I have special ears.

I also wrote a whole opinion piece on these Airpods that then spiraled down a rabbit hole of phone etiquette and common courtesy where I basically ended up getting very upset and had to take a break so I deleted the paragraph. Too preachy.

Every time I ask the family, “what should I draw?”, my husband always says, “my Filson bag.” So here it is… finally… the Filson bag. It’s a chocolate brown heavy weight canvas bag/briefcase/satchel with dark brown leather handles and shoulder strap. All the grommets, zippers and clips are brass. He has had it FOREVER and it has held up incredibly well.

Is it just me, or do you see a face? Now that’s all I see….

We found this perfect pinecone on our walk with the dog yesterday. We carried it home so I could draw it and I put it outside in case it had bugs. It must have blown off the patio table because I go outside and to my horror, the dog is playing with it in the backyard. She is rolling on it, biting it, frolicking with it…. by offering a trade, I was able to get it back from her. It’s no longer perfect, but now it has a story.

And we’ve arrived back at salt…. This is the Morton Iodized Salt container that I use to refill my salt shaker. According to the package, this salt is “naturally evaporated from Utah’s Great Salt Lake”. I never even knew! The sea salt is harvested from the lake then washed, dried and packaged in the USA. Tariff immune!