Category: Miscellaneous

Post #1500!

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Miscellaneous16 Comments

Can you believe it? This is post number 1500 for my little blog – the one I thought would be finished once I completed my monster 40,000 piece puzzle. The picture above is from the very first post ever on My Jigsaw Journal, a few days after I received the giant puzzle from Germany in September of 2016. It seems like a lifetime ago, although it’s only been about 5 ½ years.

It wasn’t my plan to become a puzzle blogger, I began this as a way to keep family and friends updated on the giant Disney Memorable Moments puzzle that I was assembling. Social media isn’t my thing, I have no facebook, instagram, twitter, etc., so I created the blog to post about which section I was working on and how it was going. But I realized once I started that I love everything about puzzles; I love shopping for them, looking at them, reading about them, talking about them, assembling them, and writing about them too.

I ended up with many more “followers” than just my family and friends, and was surprised to see that people from around the world were reading my posts and keeping up with them every day. It helped keep me motivated to make progress on the enormous puzzle every day, and I also found a community of like-minded puzzle geeks – what a blessing I didn’t even realize that I needed!

One thousand five hundred posts, that’s quite a lot; I’ve written about puzzles in progress, and my lack of progress on them when I’m dealing with life. I’ve written about my family, puzzling with mom and how much happiness that brought me, and working on puzzles with each of my children and my husband too – and the joy of sharing my passion with them. I’ve written about my puzzle pal Buddy, who kept me company while I puzzled, and always watched over me away from the puzzle board as well. I show off the puzzles I’m proud of, the ones that were fun and the ones that were just….meh….and warn you all about the ones I wish I’d never found. I share my life through the puzzles I complete, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the friends I’ve found here.

So congratulations to me for keeping with it; and many, many, many thanks to my faithful friends who come here to see the puzzles I assemble, read about me and my posse, my struggles with P.A.D.S., depression, anxiety and life in general, and who keep me company on my puzzling journey. I don’t think I’d still be here doing this if it weren’t for you all, thanks for sticking around.

Congrats to us all on post number 1500! 🎉🧩🎉

Happy New Year Puzzle Giveaway

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Miscellaneous33 Comments

Fantasy Palace by Ciro Marchetti – Wentworth – 500 pieces

It’s been quite a while since I held a puzzle giveaway, so I’m starting 2022 by giving away some puzzle joy in the form of this beautiful, gently used 500 piece wooden puzzle from Wentworth. It’s a gorgeous image isn’t it? It could be yours!

It’s been nearly four years since I assembled this puzzle (you can click here to check out my original post) and there always seem to be new ones to do, so it’s only been assembled once. It was truly a pleasure to put together, and I’m feeling the need to share the wealth by sending it on to someone else who will enjoy it at least as much as I did.

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post (if you need something to say, I’d love to hear if you have any puzzle goals for 2022). Each comment will be given a number and I will use a random number generator to determine the winner one week from today; Wednesday, January 19, 2022. This giveaway is open to all puzzle lovers, no matter where in the world you live.

Good luck everyone, and here’s to another year of happy puzzling!

Veteran’s Day/Remembrance Day

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Miscellaneous4 Comments

Today is Veteran’s Day here in the United States, and Remembrance Day in many countries around the world. As the wife, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, daughter-in-law and granddaughter of veterans – please allow me express my gratitude to all those who have served in the armed forces.

For every man and woman who gave of themselves to give something back to their country…saying thank you for your service is nowhere close to enough – but it is truly heartfelt.

I know what serving means. And what it costs. Thank you.

THANK YOU 💗

Happy Almost Birthday To Me!

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Miscellaneous4 Comments

It’s not quite my birthday yet, but there are early presents coming my way today! According to the delivery website/app a big box of puzzles that were ordered what seems like forever ago will be delivered today! I’m so excited that the use of exclamation marks is getting out of control!

I ordered a metric crap-ton (technical term) of micro puzzles from Wentworth, along with a 200 piece Christmas puzzle. You’re shocked, right? That’s fair. Regular readers know that Christmas/holiday puzzles are just not my pile of pieces, but this one is very different and looks like it’ll be really fun to put together.

You’ll be even more shocked that quite a few of the micro puzzles are holiday/winter themed as well. But, they are all very different than the average holiday images and full of cuteness, silliness, and just plain prettiness. There are three that are just winter puzzles, and those can wait until after the holidays to be assembled. With this delivery, and the puzzles that are already here, there will be lots more holiday puzzles than usual on the blog this year. Looking forward to it? I am!

It doesn’t matter if they’re Christmas images or not, there’s going to be a delivery today (if all goes as planned) of a big box of puzzles for me. Wooooo hooooo!

The PADS is flaring up today with expectation and excitement! Happy dance! 💃🎶💃

Where In Neverland Is It?

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Miscellaneous4 Comments

Tink, help us find it!

It’s been four and a half years since I completed an enormous 40,320 piece puzzle (this is only 1/10 of it), and I am still to this day receiving emails and comments on the blog asking me where the Mickey Mouse icon is in this section. Well, today I decided to show everyone instead of just telling them where to look.

There is a hidden icon of our favorite rodent in each section; the one in this section not only seems to be the most difficult to find, it’s also the largest – which I think is why so many people get thrown off when looking for it. In the other nine sections it’s quite small; the markings on a deer in Snow White, a small bubble in Fantasia, etc. But the one in Peter Pan is huge in comparison, and therefore it doesn’t register at first when you’re looking for it. It didn’t for us anyway. Not at first.

Back when the puzzle first arrived, my husband and I, two of our three children, and my mother SCOURED the booklet looking for the icon in this section. Some of the others were easy to find, and we already had it in our heads that it would be small and somewhat hidden. The Peter Pan section is very dark, and we all looked at every inch of the image to try and find it. When someone finally said, “Hey could it be these clouds? They’re perfect circles, it’s gotta be this right?”, we weren’t certain but thought that it was probably the icon. After thoroughly looking through the image in the booklet, and seeing every single piece of the actual puzzle, our conclusion was that the cloud was, in fact, the icon we’d all been searching for.

The picture I took of this completed section has quite a bit of glare on it, making it very hard to see. So here’s a picture from the large booklet that comes with the puzzle (this was easier than waking up the enormous puzzle from under my bed where it’s sleeping).

Can you find it? Tink’s fairy dust is pointing the way….

I’ve added arrows pointing to the ears. They faked us out making the other icons so small and this one so big – it’s even bigger than Tinkerbell herself!

Don’t feel bad if you couldn’t find it on your own – when we put the puzzle together and it was large as life in front of everyone many people had to be shown even after being told where it was. I’ve even got a picture of me on my hands and knees crawling on the puzzle to show someone. 😊