Pixar Posters

On February 2, 2020February 1, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles7 Comments

I know, it’s a Ceaco, what in the world am I doing assembling a Ceaco so soon after the Christmas debacle? It was a gift, and I love the image, so why not? I can’t very well have a bonfire and torch all the Ceaco puzzles I have here…..although…….🤔.

The fit was terrible, it was very loose and even moving three connected pieces was pretty hard to do. On the plus side the pieces were a workable thickness and the image reproduction was very good. Again, this is one of those times where the image overcame the quality and I enjoyed myself anyway. It’s a collage, there are lots of words, and each of the posters is bright and fun. I had a great time with it, despite it’s issues.

*I tried to be impartial and just judge the puzzle on it’s own merits, and I think I was, but I’m still a little perturbed at the brand in general and so I may have been specifically on the lookout for any problems.*

These were my two favorite sections to assemble, though pretty much all of them were fun. I loved the movie Brave – Girls rule! – and it was the first section I put together; all that red hair was the most logical place to start after putting together all the words and titles. Coco was much more entertaining to assemble than I thought, and although I haven’t seen the movie I found myself enjoying it very much. My son tells me I should see it and that it was an excellent movie that I will love; he and I have VERY different tastes in movies, so I’m not so sure about his recommendation. 😉

My kids are older now and so I haven’t seen many of the newer Disney-Pixar movies. Of all the movies shown here I have seen just over half of them, nine out of seventeen. There was a time not so long ago that when a new movie came out on DVD (or VHS) that we would all take a trip to the store and get ourselves a copy; then we’d go home and watch it together that evening – or sometimes we couldn’t wait and we watched it in the afternoon. I have great memories of watching Disney movies with my kids, and so perhaps I haven’t watched the newer ones because my kids are all adults, off living their own lives, and not always available to watch movies with mom.

Pixar Posters 3

This is the last section I put together, only because everything is blue, and most of the pieces just looked blue – even the teeth! It was still good fun though, especially because at the end of the puzzle when the pieces are dwindling down to nothing it gets more and more exciting. You’re almost there, and every piece you find gets you that much closer to the end, and you’re finding each one faster and faster – almost more quickly than you can put them into the puzzle!

As many puzzles as I’ve done, the end is still as exciting to me as it ever was. Getting down to the last few pieces is entertaining, full of anticipation, fast-moving, thrilling, dramatic, and always fun. I hope it never gets old.

Nothing in Progress

On February 1, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling8 Comments

Question Mark

All of my puzzle boards are empty, and I haven’t chosen what’s next for any of them. I have two large fabric covered boards and a white board, and for the first time in several weeks they’re all bare. There are so many puzzles to choose from here that I haven’t been able to narrow down which one is next.

I’ve had a VERY difficult 1500 piece puzzle on my second board for a few weeks now, working on it here and there, but never long enough to get too frustrated. It’s not an image that I would normally choose to assemble, but it is beautiful artwork and the puzzle was one that I brought over from mom’s house. I remember when she found it at the thrift store and that she loved the image; and even though she knew it would be a challenging puzzle she thought that the two of us together would be able to get it done. We never got the chance to work on it together, but I got it done for her. 💝

So, many empty boards and no new puzzles in the works just yet. Hopefully I can decide on something today and get it started. Although, I may take the day off and lay around in bed, we’ll have to wait and see.

Surf Shark Bar

On January 31, 2020January 31, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

This was a quick little puzzle I was able to assemble in bed when I wasn’t feeling well. It’s one out of a multipack of 12 puzzles, and I’ve found that the 150 piece puzzles in this set are terrible quality. The fit is bad – so much so that you can’t put together the edges until the rest of the puzzle is put together.

I knew when I bought these puzzles that they wouldn’t be the best quality, but it was the images that made me buy it anyway. All of the artwork by Iralu makes for fun puzzling and are the kind of illustrations that you don’t normally see on many puzzles; it was worth it for me to brave the less than stellar quality. (But on the plus side, the 300 piece puzzles have been much better quality than these 150 pieces.)

Even with the awful quality, I still enjoyed most of the assembly. I don’t regret buying this set of 12, because I’m having a good time putting them all together.

None of the 500 piece puzzles in this set have been put together yet, and I’m hoping that their quality will be more like the 300 piece ones. I don’t know why I haven’t gotten to them just yet, but I’m looking forward to them very much. Honestly there are so many puzzles here to be done that it’s becoming truly difficult to decide which one comes next. There are so many that I absolutely want to do that choosing between them is getting quite difficult. I need to get these giant stacks of puzzles pared down somehow! I’m puzzling as fast as I can, but it never seems to even put a dent in my to do pile. Please don’t suggest that I stop shopping for puzzles, that’s just silliness and it would never work! 😉

Viva Las Vegas!

On January 30, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

This puzzle was more fun than I expected – don’t you love it when that happens? I do! I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been wrong about a puzzle, thinking it will be easy and it ends up being hard, or vice versa – or thinking it will be fun and it ends up being a drag, or vice versa. It seems I’m almost never right on the money about how enjoyable or difficult a puzzle will be, but it’s still fun being happily surprised. 🙂

I love the colors, which gave it just the right amount of difficulty, I think it made it a bit easier than it would have been without the extra color.

Las Vegas 1

I was surprised at the detail in this puzzle. This section is only about 20 pieces out of this 750 piece puzzle, and you can see how detailed the image is. There’s even a McDonald’s there on the strip!

This was a thrift store purchase, and even with a missing piece and several chewed pieces I still had a great time with it. You can see above that somebody’s pet (or child) enjoyed a chew on several of the pieces. And the image is so detailed that you can’t even really see the missing piece, that’s a bonus too in my book. 😉

Even with chewed up and missing pieces I still enjoyed this assembly much more than I thought I would, and it was a well made and great quality puzzle. Everything doesn’t have to perfect for me to enjoy a puzzle, this is a perfect example of that.

National Puzzle Day 2020

On January 29, 2020January 29, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling4 Comments

It’s National Puzzle Day! Today is the day to celebrate all things puzzle – jigsaw puzzles, crosswords, logic puzzles, sudoku, word searches, etc. I enjoy puzzles of all kinds, but it won’t be a surprise for you to hear that jigsaw puzzles are my favorite. I learned my love of puzzles from my family, so today is a day for me to remember and appreciate my loved ones as well as enjoying some puzzles.

Every year I write a special post on this day, to remember the people who helped me love jigsaw puzzles as much as I do. This year, with my heart still broken from losing my mom, all I can think about is her and how much we enjoyed puzzling together. We’ll never sit together in front of a puzzle board again, and the loss still feels too heavy to bear.

I miss her on many levels, she was my mother after all. But in her later years we became the best of friends, and our shared love of all things jigsaw puzzle was one of the reasons why. We could talk about, look at, shop for, and work on puzzles for hours on end; no one else in our lives felt about puzzles the way we did, and we loved sharing them with each other. She was the first and most important member of my puzzle posse, and I miss her terribly.

My mother encouraged me to assemble the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle, and to start this blog; she was my first follower, my most faithful reader, and always cheered me on. My love of puzzles blossomed mostly because I was always able to share them with her, and they will always be a reminder of her too.

National Puzzle Day will forever be a day for me to remember my mother, and her mother – the two women in my life who taught me to love puzzles of all kinds. I got my start with jigsaw puzzles as a child at my grandmother’s side, and spent countless hours as an adult side by side with my mother assembling them. They were beautiful, kind, loving women, and for me this day is another reason to remember and honor them.

Happy National Puzzle Day my friends!

I miss you Gram, I miss you Mom. 💖