The woman that birthed you deserves much more than dry macaroni art and her favorite perfume for the third year in a row. Instead, get her something that encapsulates eons of practicality. We’re sure these items would fit any type of mother in your life.

1. In My Humble Opinion Mini Inner-Truth Journal. We know you love mommy dearest even if she tends to constantly criticize you. How about giving her another medium to channel her judgments—a journal, perhaps? This handy, fits-in-your-purse journal is perfect for those summer days relaxing by the water. If she slides on the optimistic side, our I’m A Parent? Guided Journal helps too.

2. Coupons Receiptables. What would we do without mothers who still send their now-adult children coupons for items that can easily be purchased at the dollar store, like minted toothpaste or cans of albacore tuna? How wonderfully sweet are these types of moms? Surprise her in return with Coupons Receiptables, so she can keep track of her own savvy-saving stash.

3. 5 Days A Week Paper Mousepad. Everyone needs at least a dab of organization in his or her life. The on-the-go mom needs a boatload. This mousepad can help her systematize her crazy schedule and free up some time for much-needed mother and child bonding. Be sure to pencil in a dinner and ice cream get-together!

4. What to Eat Pad or Pack This! Pad. Both of these pads take planning to the next level, and god knows your sister or sister-in-law is in dire need of R and R. (Have you seen her without the tykes around? Didn’t think so.) Let her plan family meals ahead of time with the What to Eat Pad or give her the Pack This! Pad to prep for those oh-so-fun family trips. (Or, offer to babysit your nieces and nephews? Eh.)

5. How to Traumatize Your Children. For added effect, tell her you can’t believe Knock Knock created a book based on her solid parenting skills.

And if all fails, get her an Office Speak Rotating Stamp. Why? Because Real Simple said it’s one of the “best gifts” for mom. And they seem to know their stuff.

Phew—we’re happy tax season is officially over.

As our head honcho wrote in a comment, all of your Tax Day haikus were excellent. We’re not sure if you put in extra effort because it’s National Poetry Writing Month, you’re all wordsmiths, or you all just really wanted free stuff. Consequently, it was so hard to choose just five. So hard. Yet, we had to do what we had to do and decided to choose the winners at random.

Congrats to these poets:

1. Michelle Franklin

2. Carol Alexander Horton

3. Adam Cargioli

4. Klara Kross

5. Mona Alshorah

You’ll receive a direct message shortly, peeps. We hope you enjoy the Money Receiptables!

And thank you to all the FOKKers who participated. Stay tuned for May’s blog contest!

“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:

Hey you, now that’s a solid self-portrait!

Scattered across thirty-four states and seventeen countries are over 200 handmade wooden “boxes.” Small in stature but mighty in practicality, each one can be easily mistaken for a birdhouse at first glance. But these quaint structures, perched in front yards and in residential neighborhoods, contain books, novels, and magazines—all free to share.

Little Free Library’s motto is “Give a book, return a book.” The project, started by two Wisconsinites, encourages each community to browse their local Little Free Library and borrow or donate books for others to explore. They also emphasize to leave notes in the books for future readers. Perks of this miniature-literature haven are that it requires no card and no fines. Hooray for no more overdue books!

There are only three Little Free Libraries in SoCal, and lucky enough, one was within walking distance from my apartment. So, of course I had to check it out:

It was very much picture-perfect: a welcoming Little Free Library, sandwiched between two stone benches, in case you wanted to relax while you read.

Attached to the library was a pamphlet detailing how the whole Little Free Library system works. This was so helpful, considering it’s rare to stumble upon a random array of books so conveniently arranged.

This library had an eclectic collection—from A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin to an issue of Garden Design magazine. I didn’t take any books this time around, but I’ll be sure to drop a few titles off next time I’m on a stroll. I may throw in a Personal Library Kit too!

Either way, you FOKKers should definitely check to see if there’s a Little Free Library nearby. To find the closest Little Free Library in your area, click here. Or if you want to learn more about how to build or donate toward your own Little Free Library for your neighborhood, click here.

And finally, a big thank you to our managing editor, Erin, for the scoop!

“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:

“Literal dancing,” Mel? This we must see.

You’re familiar with our mighty signature line, but did you know we also create custom goods, too? Since 2007, we’ve worked ever-so closely with a variety of brands to design products that fit a retailer’s specific customer need and overall style. Of course, all our custom stuff is sprinkled with Knock Knock flair, as well as our distinct design sensibility and wit. We’re excited to share these products with you FOKKers, and hope you like them just the same!

Wear It Well Apparel Tags

Paying homage to the traditional garment label, Wear It Well Apparel Tags are a perfect accessory to manage your finery. These hangtags organize your outfits to a tee—highlighting when the article of clothing was last worn and what accessories it’s best paired with. As we bid adieu to winter, these babies are especially helpful when revamping your closet for the new season!

A Call For You Telephone Pad

With its minimalist design and retro colors, this handy telephone pad is the choice vintage accent for your desk or home office. It’s indeed “more charming than a text message,” as so appropriately noted at the bottom of each sheet.

The Wear It Well Apparel Tags and A Call For You Telephone Pad are available exclusively at Anthropologie stores and Anthropologie.com.

Tax season is almost at a close, however we’re sure a handful of you are still scurrying to submit your returns. It’s a snore dealing with the paper work, but we’ve heard tax evasion isn’t “in” these days.

Those of you calculating deductions last minute should take a break, wind down, and channel your aggravation into a haiku.

For April’s blog contest, we want you to write a Tax Day haiku about anything relevant to this dreaded day—whether it’s your frustrations, what you’d rather be doing with your time, or even what you would do with your returns. The sky really is the limit.

We’ll reward five of you with a free Knock Knock Money Receiptables—so you can prep for next year’s federal “tax party” ahead of time!

Write a Tax Day haiku and you could win a Money Receiptables to track your spending!

To enter:

1. In the comments section of this blog post, write a haiku on anything relevant to Tax Day. Contest ends 4/17. It was appropriate.

We will choose the top five haikus that strike our fancy and announce the winners on Thursday, 4/19.

And for the love of anything and everything that’s more enticing than filing tax returns, have fun with this, FOKKers!

“Knock Knocker Scribbles” is a new 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:

There are just so many questions we’d like to ask about your self-portrait, Chels. Where do we even start?

This study by Chemistry.com named our locale the top city where sex is valued the most.

Note that eight out of the ten cities listed are all in California, and seven of those are in SoCal. The blog post also states that valuing sex may correlate with a higher dopamine level. (Interpret that how you will.)

No wonder we have our own stash of products for lovers. Use them as catalysts if you want:

Check off reasons using our Why I Must Have Sex With You Pad.

Or sound like a sexpert with Sex Chic-chat for All Occasions book.

Nevertheless, if you’re in the Golden State, don’t feel bad about having spring flings—it’s in our geographic blood after all.

Every once in a while, the time comes when nothing but a paradigm shift will suffice in charting the future of a company. For Knock Knock, I’m excited to say, that time has come. For ten years now we’ve been toiling in the salt mines of wit and clean, contemporary design (of course, sometimes with a retro flair). When I launched Knock Knock, in 2002, I was motivated in part by the fact that the commercial world had grown increasingly homogenized. Everything was designed for the lowest common denominator and it appeared to be illegal to have one’s own voice, especially in something for sale in the marketplace.

How gorgeous is this sky, and the sense of accomplishment one gets from standing on a not-quite-summit? Plus a simile about icebergs. I don’t know if we can achieve this kind of excellence, but we’re certainly going to try.

A thought that drove me in starting Knock Knock (other than not to suffer any clients) was that there had to be enough smart people in the world to support a small paper products company founded on the strength of the written word and good design. I was right, and it’s been an amazing run of blood, sweat, paper cuts, and success.

Now, however, when I look around at tradeshows, in boutiques, at Target, on Hallmark.com, all I see is voice. I see snark, I see humor, I see self-referentialism. A clean, bold contemporary design sensibility is almost the default setting now. I’d like for Knock Knock to take credit for this sea shift, and perhaps we are a small part of it (I am certain, for example, that the proliferation of multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank humor was inspired by us), but responsibility doesn’t matter here. What matters is staying ahead of the game and distinguishing ourselves from crowd.

We don’t know who Brandon is, but we also miss his morning snuggles. How sweet are those hearts?

Today that means something very different from what it meant in 2002. It means a return to bunnies, bows, and cursive. It means swallowing our pride and using Papyrus, Comic Sans, and Remedy. It means being earnest and sometimes rhyming. It means poor typesetting. It means writing “everyday” when what we really mean is “every day.” But most of all, it means very little.

I have to say, I’m slightly relieved that we’ll be making this shift. It’s exhausting being smart and funny all the time. It’s eye-strain inducing to be kerning letters to set them just so. It’s frustrating having brainstorms and coming up with so little with which to continue making our mark.

I would like all of you to know how proud I am of what we’ve done over these years, when what we were doing was still original and unique (in our future incarnation, we will say “very unique”). We are most grateful to you, our FOKKers, for embracing us in all of our experimentation. But just because we’re changing doesn’t mean we won’t still be thinking of you. It just means we’ll be thinking of you in shades of purple, embossed cursive, and maybe a dash of glitter.

We would also like to make a return to the handcrafted. This blue dog, hand modeled from dog hair, lint, and old phonebooks, is eco-friendly as well as cute. Such an inspiration!

OMG, so kewt.

We still plan to keep the fun in functional, as with this rainbow of sand pails. They tote and they put a smile on your face!

As you know, we’ve tended to shy away from photography in favor of vector art and illustration. What a missed opportunity! Our twist will be in the context and substrate, like this photo on an actual tapestry!

Affluent people tend to spend more money on products. Affluent people are more likely to have second homes. What does that mean? Signage! Plus cute embroider pillows and golf paraphernalia.

I can’t wait to spray some perfume on this stationary and write to my BFF.

Speaking of cute embroidered pillows . . . We’ve always loved a good pun, but now we’re going to embrace bad, trite puns as well. We’re inside ourselves with joy!

Finally, nothing we do in the future would be complete without the Bible. Did you know it’s the bestselling book of all time? Bible + affirmations + cursive + huge = the new Knock Knock.

What a great segue. With our new identity, it’s only fitting that we should end with a biblical reference: “And on the first day of the fourth month, God created April Fools.”