Well, it has been a busy week!  It’s a busy week for us anyway because this weekend is the annual woodworking show in Indianapolis.  We have gone now for several years and always find neat products to help us with our  projects or hobbies, or new project ideas.

Our three oldest girls also help with a very cool joint/router system demo.  Today, my husband and oldest daughter went over and she demoed the tool some, and took the award-winning box that she recently made out of leopardwood to display at their booth.  Below are pictures of her demoing their router joint system, and the box she took that she made using their system (and some other power tools).

K's really good at woodworking. I think the new demo guy was scared.

See how cool those joints are!

Leopard wood with Heart dovetails

Wayne Sutter and K with her Leopard wood box

This is Wayne Sutter, the man that owns the Woodline USA company.  My girls just love him.  He is a very friendly, helpful man.  Here’s the website just in case anyone is interested.  We love their Route-R-Joint system among several of their other products.

http://www.woodline.com

And here is a link to the system that my girls like to make beautiful wood joints.  It’s quite simple and they are so beautiful!

http://www.woodline.com/p-1825-route-r-joint-precision-dovetail-joinery-system.aspx

I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

LRae

We woke up pretty much snowed in.  But, it was an opportunity to get out the snow blower. We bought it at an estate auction about 2 years ago for $10 or $15 and I don’t even remember plugging it in to see if it worked. :(

We pulled out three 50-100′ extension cords (the snow blower’s electric) and got busy.

"Digging" Out

It still took several hours to clear things out. But we got it and were even able to reach both neighbors.  The southern neighbor works for a prison and had to get picked up since the prisons don’t have snow days. :(  The northern neighbor is a widow and could have been stuck in until the snow melted.

After this we got word that friends were gathering at a local park to sled.  By the time we headed out there were NO sleds left in town. We did manage to find some blow up water devices on clearance at Menards for 5 bucks.  The older children had them inflated by the time we reached the hill.

Sledding is fun, but I wish we had Escher hills. You know, no matter which way you go you’re always going downhill!

Ellen will post a contest update today. Thank you all so very much for helping!

ZMac

 Good luck!  LRae

This week is a special carnival of giveaways at many blogs all over the world! We have decided to participate and it will be so much fun to be able to give something away as a prize as well as enter others’ giveaways. You may see the full list of giveaways at bloggygiveaways.com.

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UPDATE: THANK YOU ALL FOR VOTING! Ellen’s design has won! It’s official:

http://www.craftstylish.com/ultimate-sewing-room-contest/winner

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We are giving away three items this week: a Nature’s Garden 8X8 scrapbook kit, a plumeria fragrance candle set, and the 1st volume of Jonathan Park on CD.

Please read the rules below before leaving your comment(s)!

You can enter as many times as you have email addresses, just leave a comment with each of the email addresses you use.

LRae made it into the finalists in the CraftStylish Ultimate Sewing Room contest with her design titled “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding Dresses.” And since the contest is mostly a popularity contest relying on the contestants to drive traffic to the website, we’re trying to do just that! :)

We’re asking that you go vote for her design “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding Dresses” and then come back here and leave a comment letting us know you voted for her.  You must be 18 years old or older to vote.

CraftStylish and Fabric.com are giving away a $500 fabric.com gift card to one of the voters when the contest ends. It could be YOU!

So here are the rules to follow:

a- Go to http://tinyurl.com/6dresses and vote for the “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding Dresses” design.

b- Return here and leave a comment that you voted for us.

c- You can vote with each email you have for each person in your house over 18. Just leave us a comment for each one.

d- The voting contest ends Tuesday night Jan 27th at midnight.

e- We’ll randomly select three (3) winners before Saturday Jan 31st, email them and post the results!

f- International votes are ok here, but cannot qualify for the $500 fabric.com prize.

Thanks so much and HAVE FUN this week!

ZMac & LRae

*of course you don’t HAVE to vote to enter.
But we’d really like it if you did!

And… don’t forget to vote (see below for details). :-)
Blessings,
LRae

http://reg.taunton.com/webapps/ultimate_sewing_room_voting.html

vote for this one –> “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding dresses by LRae”
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Well, we were at another birthday party tonight.  But, surprisingly it wasn’t one of ours!

I know, I know, it’s a shock. We do have A LOT of birthday parties around here.

So many, in fact, that the little ones learn to sing happy birthday by the time they are one!

The sewing contest is rough going this week. We just can’t seem to close the gap on 1st place.

Thank you to all who have voted for us, if you have additional email addresses you can vote with those too!
Their rules state one vote per person per email address.

Also, if you have a way to spread the word, let us know!

Thanks a bunch,
ZMac & LRae

They are enjoying it, and we plan to build a second one some time this year (it’s not as urgent). Now to redorate their room… lol. We bought an old house that was a frat house right before we bought it and so we have been slowly restoring it. Lots of fun, but quite a bit of work. :-)

One of our daughters helping Dad built the triple bunk

Thanks for stopping by and if you haven’t voted for our sewing room “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding Dresses”, please do so now! Here’s the link:
http://reg.taunton.com/webapps/ultimate_sewing_room_voting.html
LRae

Well, sometimes it’s like this:

I have 5 sisters...

LOL a picture is worth a thousand words!

We’re still fighting for first place in the CraftStylish.com Sewing room contest. It’s really hard to catch the first place spot. But with 5 days left and your help we can make it!

Please vote for us if you haven’t!

http://reg.taunton.com/webapps/ultimate_sewing_room_voting.html
be sure to vote for “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding dresses” by LRae

If you have voted, thank you.

You could help us out even more by emailing all of your friends to come vote for us!
It’ll make you feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. :-)

Thanks,

ZMac

A sweet girl in a funny wig

The girls really like to do crafts and sew and are at various skill levels in regards to both. They would love to continue their learning and expand their opportunities with the prizes from the CraftStylish contest.

If you don’t know about it, you can read earlier posts, but the short story is we designed a sewing room that represented our family and made it into the top ten out of almost 9,000. Now we just need your vote to help us win!

Please consider following this link and voting for 6 Daughters, 6 Wedding Dresses. My girls and I would be very grateful!
http://reg.taunton.com/webapps/ultimate_sewing_room_voting.html

Have a great day!
Blessings,
LRae

Yesterday’s contest voting outage allowed for a fairly quiet day once we told the girls “it’s Sunday. They probably won’t fix it until tomorrow.”

Played a good game of “Quirkle” it’s kind of a cross between the “Set” card game and “Scrabble.”  It uses tiles with shapes and colors.

Quirkle

Vote for us if you haven’t!  Don’t forget to reenter the sweepstakes part for the $500 fabric.com prize if you have already voted.

Here’s the link again:

http://reg.taunton.com/webapps/ultimate_sewing_room_voting.html
vote for “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding dresses by LRae”

Thank you so much!
ZMac

It’s real. Go check out http://www.craftstylish.com , a magazine by Taunton Press.

The Design Your Own Ultimate Sewing Room contest is advertised all over their website, along with the $500 voting prize by fabric.com.

The problem today is that last night, all of the Taunton Press websites went off line about 11:50pm Eastern.

The websites came back online by 2:30am eastern, but the contest voting page was sending people to their online store.

By about 8:00 am eastern the contest link was sending people to the voting results page.

The only thing we can figure is that the voting software crashed and they had to disable it and since it’s a Sunday they don’t have anyone there to fix it.

We are hoping that they get the voting page fixed tomorrow when their computer people get to work!

Since we are only IN the contest and not RUNNING the contest there isn’t anything we can do but wait :(

If you have any questions or want to vote for us, leave a comment or send an email to us at 6daughters AT 6daughters6weddingdresses.com and we’ll notify you when it’s working again.

We assume since there are 10 days left in the contest, CraftStylish will have the voting page fixed ASAP.

Thank you for your votes and support so far. There’s still a long way to go for us to capture first place and hold on to it!

ZMac

We're stuck in second until the voting page works again.

Please check back to vote for us!

Here’s the link if you haven’t voted yet (remember to vote for 6 Daughters, 6 Wedding Dresses):
http://reg.taunton.com/webapps/ultimate_sewing_room_voting.html

Thanks!

ZMac

At that time we were in 2nd place with about 2603 votes and 1st place had 2744.

I hope that whatever is wrong doesn’t lose the voting data!

If you were trying to vote please try again tomorrow.

Will check again in the morning.

ZMac

Hooray! We made it to #2!

My children were excited and posed for this picture while out enjoying temperatures that were tolerable to play in (after two days of negative temps).

Here’s the link if you haven’t voted yet (remember to vote for 6 Daughters, 6 Wedding Dresses):
http://reg.taunton.com/webapps/ultimate_sewing_room_voting.html

Thanks again!
LRae

Thank you for all of the nice complements and encouragement, we really appreciate it!

Some of you have wondered what it’s like with the 6 daughters (and 2 sons).

Well it’s tough to find a tooth brush holder, for example. So, I made one this last weekend.

Toothbrush Holder for 10

This is a prototype, the next version will incorporate some changes and will be made from straight hardwood.

Well, remember to go vote for Ellen, please?  (you could win a $500 prize for voting)

http://reg.taunton.com/webapps/ultimate_sewing_room_voting.html
vote for this one –> “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding dresses by LRae”

Thanks
ZMac

This is one of my younger daughters in a dress that I made for her last Easter. I made matching dresses for her sisters also. When I was finished, I told them they better stay that size for a long time because they were going to have to get married in those dresses since they were so much work. Now that I’m gradually moving up in this contest, there is hope that I might have the enthusiasm and additional tools to make them new dresses for their weddings (or they can make them…). I guess I should start feeding them again. :-D Thanks for visiting my site! LRae

So guess where the next trip had to be. To the JoAnn Fabrics sale! Now I have a lot of skirts to sew…. SO if you would please consider going and voting for me in the sewing room contest, that would be great!

You can see the details in previous posts, but my entry is “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding Dresses”. Here is the link to vote:
http://reg.taunton.com/webapps/ultimate_sewing_room_voting.html

Thanks so much!
LRae

Store closings - you gotta love them!

I have a really exciting idea that would potentially help lots of WAHMS with the current CPSIA issues. I’m hoping to get it together and post it soon.

Please go vote! My girls and I would really appreciate it!
Thanks!

Hey everyone, need some help.

Ellen (my wife) entered a contest to design a sewing room. I told her
she needed something unique to get the judges attention, so she made a
design called “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding dresses” and submitted it.

Well, she made the top 10! (of thousands of entries)

Now the help part… I told her if she could make the top 10 I could
probably win it for her… :-(

Soooo… Go vote for her, please? (you could win a $500 prize for
voting)

http://reg.taunton.com/webapps/ultimate_sewing_room_voting.html
vote for this one –> “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding dresses by LRae”

The sewing room prize will go nicely to helping make their dresses :-D
(Yes, I really have 6 daughters, 2 sons too)

Thanks!
Zack

PS, Send this on to everyone you know! :-)

PPS, If you have contact with another homeschool group, could you send
this on to them and ask them to help? Perhaps we can get help from the
whole country!

We even setup a website where we are going to track her progress:
http://6Daughters6WeddingDresses.com

There were over 8800 entries.  We found out a few days late and her entry is currently in 10th place with only 167 votes.

So, WE NEED YOUR HELP to capture first place!  The voting lasts until January 27, 2009.

LRae’s entry is titled “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding Dresses” and looks like this on the voting page:

6 Daughter, 6 Wedding Dresses

Go vote for her, please?  (you could win a $500 prize for voting)

http://reg.taunton.com/webapps/ultimate_sewing_room_voting.html
vote for this one –> “6 Daughters, 6 Wedding dresses by LRae”

The sewing room prize will go nicely to helping make their dresses :-D

Thanks!

ZMac