It’s been years since I’ve assembled a puzzle with an image by Jan van Haasteren, and I remember why – I don’t really like such crowded, busy images. But this one being a gift, and only 550 pieces made it a little easier for me to handle. Still, it was no walk in the park!

There are several things that you’re supposed to be able to find in every JVH image, but I confess that I was only able to find the shark fin and the hands. Even though I scoured the image from top to bottom and side to side I wasn’t able to find the self-portrait of the artist, or Sinterklaas (Santa) – they were nowhere to be found! Ah well, it does make you pay attention to the artwork and gives you an appreciation for the hours and hours of work that must have gone into it. They’re unbelievably detailed!

My youngest son came in the room as I was finishing the puzzle, and pointed to this section, he said “I don’t think you could do that in real life, you would hurt your back!” I completely agree. It’s one of those things that when you’re younger looks like it would be fun, but now, at my age, it looks like it would be terrifying!

These two men in the firetruck have the right idea if you ask me, there’s no way I’d want to be a firefighter! They’re fantastic, brave people and I have all the respect in the world for them, it just isn’t a job that I could do. I can’t image the heat they have to deal with in fighting fires, it would be way too intense for me! I’d be happy to be able to drive them around though, as long as I could stay in the truck once we got there. 😉

This was a fun assembly, and I was pretty proud to get it finished – it was quite difficult!