Candy For All Seasons

On February 14, 2020February 14, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles6 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day! Today is the day for love, and gifts of flowers, jewelry, and candy if you believe the commercials. Hubby and I don’t go in for all of that; he treats me like the queen I am all year long. 👑

Anyway, to the puzzle! I don’t have any Valentine’s Day puzzles here at the house, and I don’t like to repeat any posts, so this one was the closest I could get specific to today’s holiday. I associate some holidays with candy – Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, and Christmas. This puzzle has one heart lollipop which is the only candy I could find for Valentine’s Day; it’s a little sad, one lonely lollipop.

There’s plenty of chocolate eggs and rabbits for the Easter holiday. The only thing I could find specifically for Halloween was the candied apple at the bottom. There are some Christmas chocolates in the foreground, but really not that much.

The surprise for me was the Thanksgiving candy. I don’t associate that holiday with candy at all, for Americans it’s all about the Thanksgiving dinner; but there were several things shown here that I’ve never seen at all.

Candy 1

I have never seen a chocolate turkey before, or anything like the lollipop shown here. It’s probably the least appetizing “candy” I’ve ever seen. I certainly wouldn’t want to eat it – candy corn and green chocolate – ugh. Does that sound good to anyone?

I’m familiar with most of the candies shown, but I’ve never seen or eaten Turkish Taffy or Abba Zabbas. I’ve seen and tried Lemon Heads, but never knew they make other flavors like Cherry Heads and Apple Heads too!

The quality was a little disappointing with this one, most notably the fuzzy image reproduction. I’ve seen this on several White Mountain collages, but it doesn’t stop me from buying them. It can be a bit annoying, but they have some of the best collages in the business and collages are my favorite type of puzzle to assemble – so I just deal with it. If it’s important to you though, you should be aware.

This White Mountain puzzle was a thrift store find, and I very much enjoyed putting it together, even with the four missing pieces. According to my puzzle friend Nicola, the task is to put together all the pieces you have until there are none left. The puzzle may not be complete and you may have missing pieces, but you have completed your task when you place the last piece. If you look at it that way, it’s a little less frustrating, right?

I try not to get too upset at missing pieces, most especially the ones from the thrift store. In my mind, I’m dividing the time spent by the amount paid for the puzzle. If I spent 8 hours on a thrift store puzzle that I bought for $1.99, then even if there is a missing piece or two I have gotten a fantastic deal! Where else can you get time to yourself, productive entertainment, and all the health benefits that come from assembling jigsaw puzzles for only 25 cents an hour? A bargain at 100 times the price!

Window Shoppers In Progress

On February 13, 2020February 13, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling2 Comments

Shoppers IP — Window Shoppers – Ravensburger – 1000 pieces

This puzzle got started on Tuesday afternoon, but unfortunately there were things that had to be done yesterday that took up the entire morning. When I finally did get home I was wrung out and ready to do absolutely nothing – and that is what I did.

Life is constantly trying to insert itself into our puzzling time; the family wants food, clean clothes, a tidy house – so rude!

Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to it today and make some more progress. I was enjoying myself before quitting time came. 🙂

Knitters Stash

On February 12, 2020February 12, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles4 Comments

This was a fun and wonderfully challenging puzzle, and I think the finished image is very pretty; it reminds me of my mom who always had yarn or crochet thread with her when she went anywhere. In addition, mom got this puzzle for us at the thrift store – it has her written all over it.

It was one of those Springbok puzzles with a very tight fit, which we know I am not a fan of; but even though the fit was a bit annoying I had a great time putting this together. It took my aging brain a little longer than normal to adapt itself to working with a random cut, but the challenge of it had me completely engrossed.

Thrift stores have so many treasures like this to find, I miss my black belt thrift store shopper – not only was she the best mom ever, she also always found amazing puzzles for us to try. Love you mom. 💖💖

Vintage Cake Shop

On February 9, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

I don’t assemble many 1000 piece Buffalo puzzles, it has something to do with the pieces; they all look exactly the same and sometimes I just don’t want to deal with it. I know, it doesn’t make much sense, but I never said that I was rational or that my brain was sensible – you just have to roll with it sometimes. 🤪

That being said, I loved this puzzle much more than I thought I would. It was more pastel than I’m used to seeing in Aimee Stewart’s work, but it made for a beautiful image and a great assembly. It was a little more challenging than I’d assumed, but entertaining and absolutely lovely.

Buffalo puzzles have excellent quality, with thick pieces that fit together well and very nice image reproduction. They also have a large catalog, including many exclusive images from Star Wars, Josephine Wall, Charles Wysocki, and Aimee Stewart. I’m not sure why I have a thing against them for having boxy pieces that all look the same, but I do. It doesn’t bother me with their smaller piece count puzzles, but with 1000 pieces or larger I just don’t care for it. Once I start working with the pieces though, it doesn’t bother me as much and I end up having a great time, like with this puzzle.

Cake Shop 1

This is much more pale than I’m used to seeing when assembling an Aimee Stewart puzzle image, but it was still captivating and difficult to walk away from.

Cake Shop 2

The display case of cakes was the most difficult section, and ended up being assembled last. All those cakes! It looks like a nice little shop to visit for some coffee and cake though, doesn’t it?

I’ve got a 2000 piece Cake Shed puzzle from Buffalo in the to do pile, and after assembling this puzzle I’m looking forward to seeing how the pieces are and how it fits together. I may try to get that one done sometime this month. More cake for everyone! 🍰

Good Housekeeping Collection

On February 6, 2020February 6, 2020 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

GH Collection — Good Housekeeping Collection – New York Puzzle Company – 1000 pieces

I absolutely loved this puzzle, both because it was a collage and great fun and because it brought back memories. It was assembled once already. My mom and daughter did the majority of the assembly and I came in at the end and helped out; I didn’t feel as though I actually assembled it since they did most of the work, so it didn’t make it onto the blog. I have great memories of the three generations of women working on this together, and it’s a puzzle I will never get rid of.

I’ve done quite a few NY Puzzle Company puzzles, and I really like them. Their catalog has a lot of magazine covers, and I find they are great fun to assemble. The quality is very good too; thick pieces, very nice fit, and great image reproduction. I’ve never had a bad experience with this brand, which is something I can’t say about most of the brands I’ve assembled.

GH Collection 1

I just loved the look of this cover, how both the woman’s dress and the dog’s coat blend into the background color. (Plus, you can’t go wrong with a dog!) Several of the covers were the same, where the background color is the same as the clothes of the women so that they blend together.

GH Collection 2

I also was glad to see that not every cover is about fashion or cooking or some other “ladylike” pursuit – we ladies can do so much more than that! There were several covers of women doing things like working on a car tire, and even what I think was a suffragette being hauled off to prison. I like it!

My mother loved this puzzle, and that’s probably part of why I loved it too. It was great quality, a fun assembly, and a wonderfully challenging image – but even more than that it reminds me of her. She put this one together with my daughter and I before, but she loved it so much that she didn’t re-donate it, I found it at her house with her things. It’s a keeper for me, definitely.