Family

This year, be sure to honor your mom with a Mother's Day gift that she will treasure for years to come. But, what do you get the woman who gave you everything? It's tough to nail down the perfect gift, but not impossible. Our handcrafted leather goods are a great way to add a personal touch to this Mother's Day.

Our range of traditional bags and purses handcrafted by skilled artisans are the perfect Mother's Day gift. In our family-run leather business, our firsthand knowledge, dexterity, and dedication have been honed for the finest results. Each bag is a symbol of endless love and devotion.

By buying with us at Pad & Quill, you can give mom a beautiful gift and feel good about supporting local artisans. Every item of ours is handmade, unique, and backed by an incredible warranty.  We dedicate this gift guide to all the incredible, chic, amazing women that enrich our lives every day.

The holidays are upon us. From the turkey filled tryptophan haze of Thanksgiving to the sugar-fueled month long experience that is Christmas, it’s a time for reunions, food and memories made. Having the best entertainment for any big holiday party or dinner is essential to being a perfect host. From music to applications to make your holidays a little saner, we’ve rounded up our favorite tech products for a tech-friendly holiday season.

We at Pad & Quill and the Bindery Blog want to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving this year. 2016 has been quite a year for us, growing and adapting to new iPhones and MacBooks and trying to understand the Air Pods. It’s been a crazy year but we wouldn’t be where we are today without you!

We’ve grown from a little company in Mr. and Mrs. PQ’s basement to a full-fledged small business that works hard to make crafted art. When we started those many years ago, we were just a little company with big dreams. With

Mr. PQ and I wish for the Quills to be well rounded and to neither hold back nor be held back from exploring all the facets of their personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. At times this has called for a little Mrs. PQ “mom nudge”, like signing the 5th grader up for tackle football league, knowing that linemen don't need so much coordination and team sports shouldn’t be defined by the ball hogs and the hyper-athletes who rule the soccer field at recess.

Being a neighbor is somewhat inevitable; unless you are the Unabomber holed up in a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere. I think we can all agree that there are some neighbors we like to have close enough to wave to, but not so close that you need to actually talk to them, and some neighbors you would donate a kidney to, even if it’s for their 3rd cousin twice removed.

Be it the post-WWII tiny boxes neighborhoods or the post Y2K cubicle office spaces or the annoying people who insist you maintain them as a Facebook “friend”, you are going to have neighbors.

Here at Pad & Quill we make cases and bookbindery covers for iPads, iPhones etc, so we want you to judge our books by their cover. This is not an adage to live one’s life by though, as has often been admonished in our collective history. So, when a young, black, highly tattooed, youth approached me this morning, asking if there was any work he could do for me for pay, quickly demonstrating his willingness to pull weeds or mow, I pushed aside my little mama bear radar that perks up in every stranger situation.

I turned 48 last week and a particularly kind friend of mine was insistent that I celebrate another year, in spite of my routine and annual desire to pretend that day does not exist.

As the daughter of entrepreneurs, I’ve grown up surrounded by Pad & Quill and the highs and lows that come with running an e-commerce business. I was there in the beginning when bumpers had to be cut by hand and Mr. PQ (aka my old man) finished cases in our backyard.

I also have gotten to watch the company grow into the success it has become today. Looking back, I never would have expected that my dad would have built a company with fine leather bags , gorgeous Baltic birch wooden iPad cases, and a standard of crafted excellence. It’s enough to want to treat yo' self!

However, the best part of being a member of the family that has grown out of Pad & Quill is the constant emphasis on seeing and hearing the worker. No idea is too small nor too big to be

I don’t know that I’ll ever appreciate receiving jewelry for the holidays, Fruit Loop necklaces notwithstanding, as I tend to be an accessory minimalist. One might think this makes for a happy Mr. PQ because he would be walking around with more money and all, but that would be wrong. Mrs. PQ has a sturdy handful of hobbies for which expensive and fancy accessories are indispensable (i.e. the Smartfind Plus or Globalfix GPS beacons). This has absolutely nothing to do with a young Quill leaving the bow of the canoe in the lake, not understanding that the waves softly lapping against said canoe will continue lapping until they have pulled the canoe out into the lake and sunk

In one of my personal training sessions this morning, I had to chastise a client with Parkinson's disease to continue diligence in his exercises. While my primary challenge is to help him retain his strength, balance and coordination, his vocal exercises are equally important. Regrettably, Parkinson's excels at something the noise of the universe constantly