Perry the Penguin by John Francis – Wentworth – 15 pieces
How adorable is this little guy? According to my father the Christmas season doesn’t start until after Thanksgiving. But I’ve got a ton of Christmas puzzles this year to share with everyone, so according to me the season is now. My Christmas tree has been up since 2019, so the season is always. All the time. ❄
This little guy wasn’t supposed to show up on the blog until early December, but I’ve decided he’s too awesome to wait. And I don’t want to bombard everyone with micro puzzles and mini puzzles for the whole month of December, so I’m starting now. Because I can.
To be completely honest I wasn’t paying close attention when I was ordering a bunch of micro puzzles from Wentworth; if they were cute or had images that weren’t the ordinary holiday themes they found themselves in my cart. If I had read everything completely I would have seen that I ordered three children’s puzzles – ones with EXTREMELY large pieces for little hands to assemble. It was pretty surprising to find them and their great big pieces in my delivery of mostly micro puzzles, but since I love puzzles of all shapes and sizes these little guys were adopted into the posse for the time being.
They’ll be going to their forever home soon. Where little hands can have fun and learn to love puzzles like Grandma Stacey does. Hopefully. Well, maybe not like Grandma Stacey – I can be a little bit obsessive about jigsaw puzzles. Maybe we’ll just hope they learn to love puzzles. 💜🧩
Such cute whimsies, and ones that children can easily identify. Each of these kid’s puzzles have a whimsy piece of the character, so sweet!
I wanted to show you how VERY large the pieces are. They are made for small hands to grasp easily, and made of wood so they’ll last for years if they’re taken care of.
Even though these puzzles only took me a minute or two to assemble, they are beautiful – and beautifully made. And I enjoyed putting them together. If I’m lucky, when I visit my honorary grandkids I’ll get to put them together again, with a little help. 💟
Frog Pile by Lori Anzalone – Cobble Hill – 500 pieces
I love frogs, and there are several frog figurines around my house, so of course I loved this image when I saw it; not only the subject matter, but they’re so bright and colorful – my kinda puzzle. It was more difficult than it looks, but not so much that it was frustrating. The perfect amount of challenge. The finished puzzle is absolutely stunning. 😍
The quality was pretty good, other than a very loose fit. Two or three pieces couldn’t be picked up to move to another place on the board without falling apart or using both hands. It wasn’t so bad that you couldn’t tell that you’d found the correct piece, but it wasn’t good either. With a lesser quality brand puzzle this would probably annoy me much more than it did with this one. The linen textured paper that Cobble Hill uses has such a great hand feel, the thick pieces and the overall quality of the brand made up for the shortcoming in the fit department.
The wet look on the frogs is done beautifully, and that little blue guy there has the best “smile” on his face! As far as his little buddy next to him, I think if I ever saw a black polka dotted frog out in nature I would steer pretty clear of it.
What can I say? Red is my favorite color, so I’m a little partial to the red ones. Doesn’t this one look like they’re ready to let you in on some juicy gossip they just heard at the pondwater cooler?
Psst. Did you hear what Veronica did last Friday at Señor Frogs? 😮
This Disney collage made me so happy; when it was released in 2018 I remember seeing it and telling myself that I would absolutely be assembling it. It took 3 years, but it finally happened! And thankfully it was just as entertaining as anticipated. 💗
The quality of this puzzle, however, wasn’t the usual Ravensburger fabulousness. It started with the sorting, the amount of puzzle dust was unusual, there was a LOT; the pieces had to go into a colander to sift it all out. That usually means it will be a bit loose fitting, and it was. Most likely it was produced near the end of the run when the die that cuts the shapes is getting dull. But other than those two issues, it was a lovely puzzle. The more matte finish was very nice to work with, and the image is stunning. Each poster has a different style to it, and made for a fantastic collage.
Get ready for a little reminiscing, there are many wonderful memories attached to these movies for me. I picked out a couple of favorites – none from the Memorable Disney Moments puzzle – to spend a little time talking about.
Robin Hood was a family favorite for us, it came out when I was 5 years old. We had a Robin Hood 8-track that we listened to in the car on road trips; it was basically the plot of the movie, without the slow parts – with all the same actors. My father was an umpire when I was young, and we spent every weekend traveling to tournaments for him to officiate. I tell you this to let you know that we were ALWAYS in the car, and we had 8-tracks of many Disney movies to keep us company. We especially loved the ones with really great music. Some of our favorites were The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh and The Blustery Day/The Honey Tree, Robin Hood, The Aristocats, etc. Most weekends in the 70s and 80s you could find us in our vehicle, driving somewhere several hours or more from home, happily belting out Disney songs at the top of our lungs. 🎶
My mother ADORED Roger Miller, and he voiced Allan-a-Dale in Robin Hood – the Rooster folk singer who narrated the movie. So, obviously we had to listen to this one over and over. The whole family loved Robin Hood, and although there aren’t that many songs in the movie, my sisters and I can all sing each one by heart…we could probably quote the entire movie. Phil Harris as Little John was my favorite – that man was crazy talented! There are so many wonderful memories associated with this movie for me.
**For any young people who may be reading this, 8-track tapes were like big, fat cassettes that you couldn’t rewind. Cassettes were small reel-to-reel devices that had recorded sound or music.**
Ah, The Aristocats. This one isn’t as well known, but for me it’s an absolute treasure. Another great movie with wonderful music (and Phil Harris) that takes me back to my childhood. Eva Gabor’s accent enthralled me as a child, and somehow her voice and the animation together made her seem so refined and fabulous. The little girl kitten, Marie, was so very sassy and she was my favorite character; she had one of my favorite lines in the movie, “Ladies do not start fights – but they can finish them!” The jazzy music was so fun to sing along to, especially the nonsensical lyrics. I LOVED IT!
This movie in particular makes me think of the theater in the next largest town to where we lived. They had matinees of kids movies for 75 cents or some ridiculously low price; mom used to take us there all the time. She’d make popcorn – to fill half a large brown paper bag – and off we’d go. We saw so many movies there, and The Aristocats sticks out in my mind. Maybe because I loved the movie so much, and mom was so great about taking us there to see so many wonderful movies. Many times we went and saw the same movie over and over again, and we saw The Aristocats more than once at that theater.
You never know as a parent when what you do for your kids will make a treasured memory. Mom probably just wanted a chance to sit down for a couple of hours and enjoy a good movie with the kids. What happened was she was making memories for us that decades later I still think about and cherish. A song from any one of those movies brings these memories back and makes me smile, and makes me grateful that I had a mom who loved spending time with her children. 💖
There are great memories associated with pretty much every movie in this puzzle, and a post about each and every section would be very, very long indeed. I just chose two of my favorites to share with you – excluding the movies from the big puzzle, because I’ve already talked about them quite a bit.
Educational puzzles make me so happy, and the assembly is almost always fun. (Spoiler – this one – lots of fun) Learning new things or getting a refresher on things I already knew is entertaining for me; thank goodness there are so many great puzzles out there to learn from.
Puzzlebilities is a new brand for me, and happily the quality was pretty good. There were a few slightly bent pieces, but a teeny bit of muscle power put them right in no time at all. The chipboard was thick and the fit was nice as well. Overall, I’d say the quality was good/very good. They have quite a few educational puzzles to choose from, including two shaped puzzles of the Earth and the Moon – those two look a little too challenging for me. Click the link above to look through their catalog; their mineralogy and human body puzzles are the ones that jumped out at me. They look like fun! The company (Hinkler) is an independent publisher based in Melbourne, Australia, but I found this puzzle at my local Barnes & Noble.
I don’t ever recall seeing this big ol’ swordfish looking dinosaur before – wow! The Shonisaurus was forty-nine feet long; it sure would be something to see that thing swimming towards you, wouldn’t it?
Ok, how many of you knew there was a dinosaur called the Arizonasaurus? How about the Prestosuchus? Without shame I am admitting that I’d never heard of them before. Gee, wonder where the Arizonasaurus was first found – I’ll take a wild guess and say…….Arizona? These two stood out to me for another reason as well, both of their heads look extremely similar to a T-Rex’s. At least they do to me.
This puzzle has already found a new home with my honorary grandson, and he was extremely excited! I haven’t seen him very much this past couple of years and he has apparently developed a love of all things dinosaur. I’m so glad I decided to get this one on my first trip puzzle shopping after my break; it has found a new home and will be greatly loved.
This image is more difficult than I thought it would be, but there was plenty of fun assembling it anyways. Learning new things – especially from a puzzle – really does make me happy. I was so excited to show hubby the new dinosaurs I’d never heard of, and he patiently listened and pretended to be interested. What a good husband. 💜
*Speaking of the hubby, Happy 246th Birthday to the United States Marine Corps! To all those who serve and have served in The Corps, like my husband and his brothers…..thank you. Semper Fidelis!*
Wool Shop USA by Steve Crisp – Milton Bradley – 300 pieces
This is such a lovely image from Steve Crisp, and doesn’t it look like an awesome shop to visit too? I would definitely enjoy spending a little time in there.
I have been actively avoiding any puzzles with dogs in them, and I honestly didn’t even see the little pupper in this puzzle until I was putting it together. It’s fascinating how I seem to take in the image as a whole and don’t notice things; sometimes glaringly obvious things, until I’m putting it together. I’ve done puzzles with names that let you know you’re putting together a puzzle with cats, but I don’t notice the title – or the cats – until I start assembling. It’s normal for me to miss certain small details until the actual joining of pieces, but many times I miss stuff that is right out in the open.
This was a good quality puzzle from Milton Bradley, with a nice variety of shapes that fit together very well. The image reproduction is gorgeous, as you can see from all the pictures here – even in the close ups there is much detail with crisp lines and no fuzziness in the backgrounds.
I just love the look of this cash register, it’s so much more interesting looking than the little computers you see at stores everywhere these days. I think it would be more fun to use a cash register like this than to just touch a screen – just my opinion of course. Old timey things seem like they’re better made and more aesthetically pleasing to me.
As someone who’s been around crafts all her life, I can say this is an excellent representation of an old sewing machine. This is what they looked like, and they were both beautiful to look at and extremely well made. And there were two old sewing machines in this image, they reminded me of when I was young. My mother had a very old sewing machine in a cabinet that looked like a regular old table, but when you flipped the top over, pulled the machine up, and opened up what looked like a table leaf – you had a sewing machine, with a flat surface for your fabric, and you could pull a chair right up to the table and put your legs underneath. It was VERY cool, and I wish we still had it in the family. 🧵
There’s something about these old timey panels with well dressed women, they’re so perfect for the image. The rest of the image is crisp and clear and both of these panels on the front of the counter are more fuzzy and indistinct, and it gives the whole scene a look of authenticity.
My Jigsaw Journal 