This contest is now closed.

Today kicks off the preliminary round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee—a.k.a. the annual competition starring kids who make us feel like our prepubescent years were filled with intellect and memory comparable to that of a tree branch.

Tell us your winning or losing word to enter to win your own deck of Big Word Flashcards!

Still, who isn’t a fan of all the obscure and irrelevant words the kids have to spell each year? These words tend to almost always relate to medieval garments or specific animal anatomy that Animal Planet would think sounds made-up.

But what can we say? We at Knock Knock love words, especially silly-sounding ones. And we created our own Big Word Flashcards to prove it.

Furthermore, it’s a wonder how all 278 young-adult participants don’t completely lose his or her cool in front of millions of viewers. Do you remember taking part in your own school spelling bee? Do you remember having the soft, sixth-grade limelight shine on you? Do you recall how hot your face felt while messing up the word “icicle” in front of your entire class, because you thought your teacher had initially asked you to spell “magazine”? (Or was that just me?)

A Big Word flashcard.

So, in honor of the Bee and its brave contestants, we are giving away one Big Word Flashcards deck to a friend of Knock Knock who shares his or her winning or losing word with us. Grade-school spelling bee winners can bask in nostalgia, while the rest of us can curse that losing word one last time.

To enter:

1. Please read this contest’s Official Rules page.
2. Tell us your grade-school spelling bee winning or losing word in this blog post’s comment area. You can comment using Facebook, Aol, Yahoo!, or a Hotmail account.

Note that we will choose the winner at random!

Contest starts today and ends Monday, June 4 at 11:59 p.m. Don’t d-e-l-a-y!

Meet Kate! (Photo courtesy of Kate Bingaman Burt.)

With a swish of a pen to paper, illustrator Kate Bingaman Burt creates bite-sized, black and white masterpieces on a daily basis. Her muse? Any item she purchases on that specific day. Her seven-year archive of drawings includes bargain Walgreens sunglasses, a copy of Steve Martin’s Let’s Get Small album, and most recently, a Hulu Plus subscription for $7.99 a month. Her daily purchase drawings, which fall under the umbrella of her Obsessive Consumption project, puts a refreshing twist on our society’s consumerist habitude—reinterpreted and documented with a whimsical and personable touch. And even before her Obsessive Consumption project came to fruition, Kate hand-drew her own credit card statements each month. (See how she easily stole our hearts?)

As fans of her work and multitasking skills (see question number four below), you can probably imagine how completely psyched we were to have Kate on board for our new Hand-Lettered line, available right now! Excited is an understatement.

Our new Hand-Lettered line, featuring some of our favorite Paper Mousepads, Knock Knock Pads, and sticky notes—all illustrated by the wonderful Kate Bingaman Burt.

To get to know the master behind the beautified squiggles, we asked Kate six questions. She kindly answered them in her signature style—completely by hand!

More to show and tell:

Kate's pup Maybelle. Such a curious cutie. (Photo courtesy of Kate Bingaman Burt.)

Hooray for art and office supplies! A print from Kate's Daily Purchase Drawings. (Photo courtesy of Kate Bingaman Burt.)

. . . And succulents! Another print from Kate's Daily Purchase Drawings. (Photo courtesy of Kate Bingaman Burt.)

Want to check out more of Kate’s projects? Visit her site to read the latest!

Lastly, we can’t really choose our favorite product from the new line, so tell us yours in a comment!

John Adams wants to remind you of our free shipping code* to use at check out: FLIPFLOPS. Offer lasts through Monday, 5/28.

Why is this cute calendar puppy named “John Adams”? Earlier this year, our graphic designer, Alexis, gave this dollar-store Dashund puppy calendar to Mel, our marketing and digital coordinator. Mel never really had a pet before (fish don’t count), so she uses this desk calendar to make up for the void. Alexis and Mel take turns naming the pictured pups. “John Adams” stemmed from Memorial Day—a huge stretch, we know.

But look into his sage eyes and allow your patriotic heart to melt.

*Free shipping offer excludes customers shipping to HI, AK, or outside the US.

“Knock Knocker Scribbles” is a column under our “In It for the Money” category, where you can get to know the Knock Knock team—from creative to sales to logistics to . . . everything! Each week, someone in the office fills out a questionnaire. They are given a day to complete it to their liking, with scrawls, scratch outs, doodles, and all.

Click the pic for an even closer look:

We applaud your stamped answers, Alexis (zombie Alexis?). And if we ever cross paths with Willie Nelson, we will shout your name. Also, please show us the Pat Benatar dance some time. Thank you.

We're teaming up with Paula, the List Producer, for our first Pinterest contest!

It’s nearly a month until the official start of summer (June 20th!), which means it’s time to finally shake off any remnants of procrastination. As in, finally spring-cleanifying your personal space!

To jump-start your efforts, we’ve teamed up with Paula, a longtime friend of Knock Knock whose compulsive list-making skills make us very, very happy. Paula’s site, List Producer, is chock full of helpful tips and tricks on how to make your to-do list work for you—lessening the stress and upping productivity. She’s also an Emmy Award-winning producer, so it’s safe to say she knows her stuff!

With our powers combined, we’re hosting a “Spring Organizing” contest on our new-favorite web time suck—Pinterest. We could easily spend all day on Pinterest, and you probably can too. So why not kill two birds with one stone and enter?

The prize is a “Spring Organizing Kit” to help assist in your tidying up. It includes:

1. Things to Do Around the House Pad
2. Utility Task Clips
3. Stuff/Docs/Bills File Folders

Enter and you could win this "Spring Organizing Kit!"

To enter: This contest is now closed.

1. Please read our contest’s Official Rules page.
2. Follow @KnockKnockStuff Pinterest boards, or go to pinterest.com/knockknockstuff and click the “follow all” button.
3. Create a pinboard and title it, “Spring Organizing.”
4. Pin the following to this board.
• At least 5 product images from Knock Knock
• At least 5 post images from List Producer
• Anything else that’s under the “organizing for Spring” theme
5. You must pin at least 15 items.
6. Hashtag each of your pins with #springorganizing, so your entries are searchable.
7. Send an email to paula@listproducer.com with your first name, email address, and link to your pinboard.

The contest starts tonight at midnight (Tuesday, 5/22) and will close 11:59 p.m. PST on Tuesday, May 29th.

Paula will judge the winner based on creativity, composition, and unique/assortment of pins. She’ll announce the winner on her site on Tuesday, June 5th.

Postpone the cleaning no more! Get a head start and happy pinning.

First off, we want to congratulate the graduating class of 2012! Drink champagne (sparkling apple cider for the underage), and reminisce about the past four years. Make sure to play Baz Luhrmann’s “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” on repeat.

For the gift-givers: finding an original present for new graduates can be as tough as the current job market. We get it. Sure, you can slap a cap and tassel on a teddy bear and call it a day, but that cuteness will wear off.

Instead, how about reassuring him or her that life after crossing the stage isn’t so bad? It can actually be pretty great. (However, the amount of douchebags you encounter daily is much more apparent.)

Here are a few items to assist in his or her solace:

1. Deal With This Stamp. This stamp shows who’s boss, especially when its owner’s timid ‘tude is in need of a boost of confidence.

2. Hey Asshole Pad. A pad for the workplace. He or she will soon understand the true meaning of “asshole.”

3. Travel Log and Pack This! Pad. Life after graduation is all about backpacking through new places and confronting new endeavors. These aids won’t assist in “finding” oneself, but at least he or she can make detailed notes on the trip and won’t forget to pack an extra pair of underwear.

4. Pro/Con Journal. Now is the time for him or her to make meaningful decisions. Present this to the giftee with a welcome sign pointing to the real world.

5. Corporate Flashcards. To prep for the white-collar worker’s first day on the job. Huzzah!

For more ideas, check out our “Grads” section on our site!

It’s that time of the year again, when the Knock Knock office is filled to the brim with cardboard boxes and the lingering scent of packaging tape. What’s caused this pleasant ruckus?

Our amazing customer services and operations team is sending lovely Fall 2012 product samples to over eighty reps across the nation. Exciting indeed.

Our customer service rockstar, Jazzlyn, with the new catalogs. Cheesin' for the cam.

Gil and Paul, team operations!

Carboard boxes Instagrammed. That makes it instantly intimately beautiful, right?

The digital girls, moi on the left and our e-commerce manager, Sara, on the right. They barracaded our space with wheelable chairs, so we made it into a half-assed fort. Secret password required!

If you’re a Real Simple fan (much like us), be sure to check out “The Guide” section, featuring our Money Receiptables in their June issue, on newsstands now!

It’s their “Organizing the Small Stuff” issue, and one you probably won’t want to miss out on. People overuse the cliché, “don’t sweat the small stuff,” as if it’s oh-so easy. But these insignificancies inevitably add up to colossal proportions—and who wants to deal with all of that?

Issues of "Slake" for sale.

As you know, we at Knock Knock are passionate lovers of pencils, paper, and printing presses. I was therefore thrilled last Friday to attend a party for Slake, a new Los Angeles literary quarterly that proudly exists only in paper form. That is, it exists only in real life.

Slake started in summer 2010, and is currently on its fourth issue (“The Dirt”). The journal is new, but has already won several awards (and hit the Los Angeles Times’ bestseller list) for its content—which combines visual art, photography, poetry, long-form journalism, fiction, oral history, and memoir. Its founders, Laurie Ochoa and Joe Donnelly, were formerly the editors of LA Weekly. (On a personal note, I worked with Joe and Laurie for years as a writer and editor for the Weekly, so the party was a homecoming for me.)

"Slake" founder Laurie Ochoa, taking a picture of me while I take a picture of her, because it's just so fucking meta.

Slake is all about fostering a community of writers and artists who are deeply rooted and in—and in love with—Los Angeles, and it’s also about staking a claim for paper as a beautiful and viable medium. As their website proclaims, “Slake sets a new template for the next generation of print publications—collectible, not disposable; destined for the bedside table instead of the recycling bin.”

As previously mentioned, paper is something that exists only in real life. You know something else that only exists in real life? Free beer.

Quantities of free beer were available at this party; the evidence of this is in the blurry, slurry photos I managed to either take or pose for. It may or may not be worth mentioning that free pie was also served by Suicide Girls.

A blurry, blinky shot of Joe and me.

Besides live music and dance performances, other stuff on offer included an exhibition of beautiful photographs of the Occupy L.A. encampment; video footage from the LA riots; and a station where people could create album art for the new vinyl LP by Detective (a musical project from Guided By Voices member James Greer, who is also a Slake contributor).

Laurie Ochoa says that Slake is meant to be enjoyed slowly, in bed or otherwise in a state of repose—and then kept. It should be noted, another advantage to the print-only format is that after inevitable disaster strikes, taking down the “grid,” and we are all shivering in our homes with candles and limited water, Slake will remain to provide us survivors with hours of meaningful, thought-provoking, mind-enriching entertainment. Hey, it’s L.A. Anything could happen.

People making album covers for Detective, the musical project from "Slake" contributor (and ex-Guided By Voices member) James Greer.

Free-pie porn.

Only a few days left to find a gift she’ll actually use.

Check out our Mother’s Day section, or read gift ideas for every type of mother in your life.

Get to shoppin’, peeps and procrastinators!