Every Piece Counts 

After four months and hundreds of hours, the puzzle has finally come to an end. It’s a bittersweet ending for me because although I love to the see the puzzle finished, its hard to see the project come to an end. I have enjoyed every minute of this experience and I hope you did as well! Autism is something that has effected friends, family, and members of my community, so choosing to raise awareness for Autism made the most sense to me.

I cannot express how thankful I am for all of the support that I received in the last four months. The contributions have come in many different forms: many of you have shared the link to my website with friends and family, some have printed off fliers and placed them around town and at work, and others have donated towards the cause, even if it was just $1. All of the contributions have motivated me to challenge myself and to complete the puzzle.

Also, please help us find a home for the puzzle! Send any ideas to evrypiececounts@gmail.com

Enjoy the video (and be sure to share it with your friends, family, and on Facebook)! Thanks again for everything! And remember Every Piece Counts!

The “Eye Spy” Puzzle Contest has come to an end and the results are in…that mysterious eye was the eye of the White Seahorse! Thank you to everyone who participated and congratulations to the 4 people who guessed correctly:Kelly Edwards,Theo Davis, Debbie Kingsbury, and Ella Ettinger!

Now, after putting all the names in a hat and drawing one, the winner of the 3,000 piece version of “Life” is:

**Kelly Edwards**

Congratulations Kelly!

Please email evrypiececounts@gmail.com with your mailing address and we will be sending the puzzle to you

Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest! I know it was tricky, but you all had great guesses!

Hope you all had fun

I can finally see the bottom of the box! It’s hard to believe that this exact box was once overflowing with pieces. When I started this project, the plan was to put the pieces down as donations came in. started out doing that, but my love for working on the puzzle hooked me, and I ended up getting ahead of myself! So, as you can see, I am nearing the end of the puzzle and need some help. I still have not found a home for the puzzle yet – do you have any ideas where it should go? Should it be auctioned off and have the proceeds go directly back into the project? Should it be donated to an organization? Let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions! Feel free to leave it in the comment area or e-mail evrypiececounts@gmail.com. Thank you to everyone who has supported my project and my efforts thus far!

The “Eye Spy” Puzzle Contest is running until August 1^st, so make sure you put in your guess! Even if you are not interested in the prize, you can still donate it to your local school, library, or somewhere else. All the guesses are looking good keep on guessing!

I have been out of school for the last two weeks and have been very busy working on the puzzle. Lately, I have been working on the sky, space, sailboats, and the clownfish. So far, the puzzle is about 60% complete. With all that said, I am having some trouble and maybe you can help!

Take a look at the image above – it’s of an ‘eye’. I have no clue where the eye belongs…oh no!  So, I definitely need some help. If you choose to accept the challenge and correctly identify who this eye belongs to, you could win a 3,000-piece puzzle of “Life”! Here’s how it works:

• Go to our Facebook page
• If you haven’t already, “Like” us
• Comment on this update on the FB page with your answer

Check out the interactive image of the puzzle to help you figure out which animal the photo belongs to!

Everyone with the correct answer will be included in a drawing and one person will be the winner.

The contest ends on 08/01/11.

Good luck and guess away!

When I first started Every Piece Counts, I really had no idea it would have taken off as much as it has! After a few weeks of puzzling, I started to ‘Google’ my name to see if any articles would come up. It took a bit of time, and then some of the local and tri-state newspapers began posting articles about my project. In my searches, I came across one company, BeBop Clothing, who featured me in a blog post and did a whole write up about my project. My project had made its way to the West Coast, California in particular, and I couldn’t have been happier. But wait, the only thing better than that news was the fact that they are a retailer of fashionable and fun clothing for women! I immediately got in touch with the writer of the blog at BeBop Clothing. The California company was very interested in getting involved with the project and working out some sort of sponsorship. BeBop Clothing (parent company: Second Generation) donated $500 towards my project as well a variety of different outfits to wear while working on the puzzle. You can see me working on the puzzle with some of my BeBop clothes in the pictures attached to this blog post. All the clothes are so cute and really comfortable! If you have not heard of BeBop Clothing, definitely go check them out! Thank you so much BeBop Clothing (Second Generation) for your donation, support, and for just believing in me and my project!

It is finally SUMMER!!! Although the school year went pretty fast, I am glad it is over. Now it is time to puzzle! I know I have been really busy lately with sponsorships, concerts, and puzzle parties, but I do want to update you on the puzzle, so here is a picture where you can really see the entire thing.

I would also like to give a quick shout out and thank you to Northern Highlands Regional High School for holding a Dodgeball Tournament where the proceeds went to my project. Thank you so much Northern Highlands! A huge thanks to everyone who has supported me and my project all along the way!

This past week has been pretty busy – I am nearing the end of school, so that means I have finals to study for. However, I’d like to bring everyone up to speed on an event that was held in town this past Sunday. A family that I babysit for, The Pataki Family, held a puzzle party for their kids’ friends.

The puzzle party was so much fun and full of puzzling activities. There were several different stations set up. One station gave the children an opportunity to design their own small puzzles; another required the children to complete everything from 48 piece floor puzzles to 200 piece puzzles. There was a coloring station where kids could color pictures of the animals, hot air balloons, and sailboats from the puzzle, “Life”. The biggest activity of the day was a puzzle scavenger hunt. The kids divided into three teams of about seven kids, each team had to find a puzzle piece that had their team’s color on it.

Once the team found all 36 of their pieces, they could put the puzzle together. But here’s the awesome part – the puzzle was blank, so once put together the teams could decorate their puzzle to their liking. It was an awesome activity and the teams did a really nice job decorating the puzzles. The puzzle party was a great success and lots of fun! Thank you so much to all the families that participated. A very special ‘thank you’ to our generous sponsors that helped to make this event a huge success. Educa-Borras, for donating all of the fun puzzles that were completed at the party. Panera Bread of Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, for donating delicious cookies for the party. The biggest ‘thank you’ goes to the Pataki Family for coming up with such an incredible idea and for hosting the event!

Just a couple more days of finals and then I am free to work on the puzzle all summer long! Stay tuned for more updates, blog posts, tweets, etc.