Our tight-knit Community is one of the many unique features that sets eHow apart from other sites.    Whether it’s a local or international matter our Community has the ability to come together and combine our efforts to help out wherever it is needed.  After all, we are a site full of people who believe in the, “roll up your sleeves and let’s do it,” mantra.  True to form, over the past few days we’ve seen a lot of support and concern that has gained a strong momentum in our Forums.

The eHow Team shares our community’s deep concern regarding the recent devastation in Haiti. Today, our parent company, Demand Media, made a donation to the High-Tech HelpHaiti Fund on behalf of our websites and member communities, as well as our employees and freelancers from across the country. This Fund was created by Austin Ventures (“AV”) in conjunction with the Entrepreneurs Foundation (“EF”), which has raised money to match corporate and personal donations.

The HelpHaiti Fund has already wired monies that were split evenly between Partners in Health (@PIH_org) and Concern Worldwide (@ConcernWorld).  Both groups have long histories in Haiti and are making a difference on the ground today.  We are truly humbled by their work and pleased that we’re able to make a contribution to support their efforts in the name of our online community.

In addition, across Demand Media’s network of owned and operated sites, we are donating advertising banners and impressions to help send our audience to the American Red Cross and Network for Food sites specifically for relief in Haiti.

More information about how you can help can be found here.

Please let Rich or Julie know if you have any questions or concerns.

Dolly, our “eHow Goodwill Ambassador” has been traveling across the country and hanging out with various eHow members.  Some of you may be wondering, “I’ve heard of Rich and Julie, but who’s this Dolly character”? Well, Dolly is none other than a cute eHow doll hand crafted by eHow member, Veryirie.  Dolly was obviously “conceived” during a moment of sheer eHow pride - how’s that for immaculate conception?  One of our other members, Shirley Philbrick has been chronicling Dolly’s journey through her blog and posting regular updates on our eHow Forums.   You will also find other members’ links to their blog posts on their visit with Dolly.So far Dolly has gone from Hawaii all the way to Maine, New York and Pennsylvania.  At some point we hope that she will come visit the eHow Team in Santa Monica, California!

Things have been pretty busy in the eHow Community and New Year is quickly sneaking up on us.  As most of you know, we hosted our second annual eHow Member Event in San Francisco a couple of months ago.  During the Event, we had the amazing opportunity to pick up some culinary skills from the professional chefs from Parties That Cook.   Our little gastronomic adventure  included the following delectable treats:

• Albondigas: Little Meatballs in Almond, Garlic, and Parsley Sauce
• Chicken Skewers with Spicy Peanut Sauce
• Crab Quesadillas with Cotija Cheese and Roasted Tomatillo Salsa
• Mini Sloppy Joes with Melted Monterey Jack
• Peanut and Coconut Wontons with Sweet and Spicy Soy Dipping Sauce
• Sweet Potato Galettes with Bacon and Sour Cream
• Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting

We split up into smaller teams and prepared one of the dishes and we came together at the end for an amazing feast.  Other communities may have stopped there and remarked “Oh that was a great meal” and go about their lives.  However, at eHow, we wanted all of our members to have a Julie and Julia culinary moment and share their cooking experiences.  Soooo, we devised a small little contest amongst the Event participants and asked them to try out one of the recipes at home and complete an I Did This.  Several of our participants sent in some amazing I Did This testimonials but there can only be one eHow Iron Chef…(drum rolls please).  Maria a.k.a. deepthinkin is the winner of our Cooking Contest.   She creatively tweaked our Chicken Skewer recipe with tofu to accommodate her vegetarian friends.  So that she can continue to snap up pictures of her projects and share them with us in future I Did This posts, we sent her a Nikon Coolpix digital camera.  Are you inspired? Then check out deepthinkin’s Baked Tofu Veggie Skewer Recipe, and test out your culinary skills in the kitchen and share your experience with us.

As some of you may heard in the Forums, we hosted our 2nd annual eHow Member Event in San Francisco in October.  Our eHow Community live in various states and though we communicate almost daily via the internet,  it was nice to talk in the same room for a change!  Not only are our member events a wonderful way for our team to meet our Community members in person but  a great opportunity to exchange information and gain valuable feedback from our Community.   If we owned a jumbo jet or had Paris Hilton’s credit limit, we would have loved to have invited every single Community member but we hosted as many people as we could.  We invited a mix of members who we felt would represent our Community as a whole.  This “mixed bag of folks” included new and old members, single and married peeps, men and women, ducks and zebras.  Just kidding on the last part.  The common bond of these members were that they were all people who contribute to our Community’s sense of teaching and learning from each other.  Every member was a project-doer and enjoyed sharing their experiences through their articles as well as I Did This  projects.  At the event we tested out some new features that are “in the works” and we also got a chance to test drive our eHow mobile phone application on the Google Android (available through T T-Mobile).  As Rich and Julie always say on the Forums, “Community feedback is very important” and at this event we were able to have in depth round-table discussions about existing features on the site as well as features that are coming soon.

Last but not least, who doesn’t love good food?  One of the highlights of the Event was getting to learn some new recipes from the professional trained chefs at Parties that Cook.  So we rolled up our sleeves and this is what we dished up…

Thank you to everyone that was able to take time away from their friends, family and home to participate.  We hope to meet more of you at future events!  Check out more photos from our event on our eHow fan page on Facebook.

Here ye here ye we are seeking brave and creative souls that are willing to wield their pumpkin carving knives to fashion some ghoulish and devilish jack-o-lanterns.  In celebration of Halloween, eHow is hosting an “I Did This” Pumpkin Carving Contest.  For the additional details,  please take a look at the Official Contest Rules in the Contest Section of the Forums.

If you would like to participate in the contest, simply check out some basic instructions on “How to Carve a Pumpkin,” and click on the I Did This button to the right.   Your I Did This entry should include step by step photos of your pumpkin carving experience and any templates you used to craft your pumpkin.  The grand prize winner will receive an iPod Nano.  This contest ends November 7, 2009 at 11:59 PM (Pacific Standard Time), so please submit your I Did This before the deadline.

Pumpkin carving is a great group activity so gather your family, friends and children this weekend and carve ‘em up.  If you need some inspiration, here are the pumpkins that our Community Manager, Julie and her husband carved at a Halloween bash last weekend.

Not quite PUMPED yet?  Well here are some more pumpkins that our fellow Community Members jimdris, butterfli, kinghostile, and pianistic designed and carved at our eHow Member Event in San Francisco last week.

Last but not least, please be aware that this is not for the faint of heart as de-gutting a pumpkin is serious work!

We have two new exciting updates to share with y’all this week…eHow Article Submission Guidelines and I Did This.  Some of you may have seen Rich’s post on the Forums with our brand spankin’ NEW eHow Submission Guidelines.  Our team has been working hard to lay out the crucial elements for quality content on the site.  The new submission guidelines gives tips on everything from titling to image uploads and spam.  If you haven’t already done so, check out the post on the Forums before you sit down to draft your next how-to article or I Did This.  The site is growing and as you know from previous posts, more and more people are coming to eHow for quality information and how to complete their projects and tasks.  It is essential that all of our contributors become familiar with the guidelines so we continue to provide quality how-to information to our readers.

In other news, some of you may have noticed, the featured I Did This on the homepage. This is a newer format to eHow and are available for all users to share how they completed a variety of tasks.  This is another great way for people to share their experiences on how they’ve completed a particular project.  Julie, read an eHow article on how to make her wedding invitations and shared her experiences in her I Did This.  Rich also created an  I Did This on designing a t-shirt.  For some of you, DIYers out there, I Did This  is a less restrictive format style than the traditional how-to article.  If you would like to share your experiences on how you completed a project in more of a blog-y fashion, I Did This is perfect for you.  We will be reviewing our library of how-to articles and putting them to the test and posting I Did This about our experiences in future blog posts so stay tuned!