Another very cute Christmas puzzle that isn’t the usual – these are my kind of holiday puzzles! This is another favorite Christmas movie in this house, and although it’s only 18 years old, we think of it as a classic. We watch it every year, and it never fails to make us laugh; I think it’ll be part of our holidays for years to come.
As I’m typing up these posts it occurs to me that almost every cardboard Christmas puzzle I have was given to me as a gift. I go right on past them in the store, because I have an admittedly bad attitude about them in general. So most of the ones I’ve assembled this year have been gifts from previous years. Luckily though, everyone who has gifted me a holiday puzzle knows how I feel and has given me ones with images that are more my style. 💝💚
After the edge was assembled I started with Buddy the Elf; then the words went together, and then all the snowflakes around the edges. The snowflakes were the most difficult part for me, but we puzzlers love figuring things out – I got it done in the end.
What I ended up with was a very funny, sweet image. Loved this puzzle. 💟
Thank you Penny! Sorry it took me two years to get to this one, but it was great fun once I finally assembled it.
There hasn’t been a Ceaco puzzle on my board in quite some time. **Flashback to the terrible, awful, very bad, horrific 12 days of Christmas advent calendar of 2019😱**
Anyway, this puzzle was a Christmas gift from that same year, and it’s taken me a while to get to assembling it. But even though I still have beef with this brand, I am NEVER ever ungrateful for puzzles that I receive as gifts. It isn’t so much about the actual puzzle itself, but more that someone cared about me enough to pick out something they thought I would like and appreciate. And if the brand isn’t a favorite or the image isn’t exactly what I would have chosen for myself, it is still loved and appreciated by me. Always.
This movie is a favorite in this house; we start watching it on Christmas Eve, and have it playing in the background most of the day on Christmas. All of my children adore this movie, and it makes a momma happy when your grown kids want to watch a movie with you. Everyone’s tastes in movies are very different these days, but this movie will bring us all together for a couple of hours – what’s not to love? 💖
If you’re a regular reader here you may know how much assembling words makes me happy. You’ll be surprised to learn that the letters in this puzzle were the very last things to be put together. Each letter is quite large, and if I had pulled all the pieces it would have been close to half of the whole puzzle! So I started with the pieces that were all red, then the red pieces with a bit of the border that surrounds the images from the movie and any pieces with a face on them.
After that, I let the pieces take me wherever they went and ended up waiting until the very end to get those words put together. Once all that was left were letters it was much easier to find whichever piece I was looking for.
This puzzle was really enjoyable, it’s a great image too – and not as easy as it looks. A good time was had, and I am so grateful for the gift. (I love you Baby Princess 💕)
Giraffe With Bubblegum by Coco de Paris – Cardinal – 300 pieces
These images by Coco de Paris are just too adorable for me to pass up. The first one I did was mistakenly titled “Bulldog with Butterflies” but those of us in the know realize that is most definitely NOT a bulldog, it is a Boston Terrier. My Buddy was a Boston, their faces are just so recognizable. Fortunately they got the title of this one correct, I am certain that is most definitely a giraffe. 🦒
I’ve seen a dozen different puzzles by this artist with animals painted atop the pages of a book. Some are hilarious, some are silly, and some are just beautiful; but they all look like they’d be entertaining to assemble.
Unfortunately, this was just fair quality for Cardinal. There were quite a few bent pieces, and some warping; but the fit was good and the image is nice. I cannot speak to the quality of the other puzzle images, just the two that I’ve put together so far. The “bulldog” puzzle was good/fair, and this one was just fair.
But as I’ve said before, what constitutes good quality for me isn’t necessarily what is most important for you; the only way to know for sure is to try it yourself. So if these look like puzzles you’d enjoy assembling, please don’t let my “review” keep you from giving it a try. Reviews are always subjective; they are one person’s opinion – not gospel.
Somehow the eyes look happy to me. Maybe because some poor, overworked optometrist made them a GIANT pair of glasses so they can see just how big their bubble gets?
Long time readers know I love a puzzle with quilts, and this is an image of just one very old quilt – and a busy one at that. It was pretty difficult for only 300 pieces, and for some reason I decided to make it harder on myself by putting the box away and working without an image. Wow.
Yep, that about covers it. Just…..wow.
The quality of Pomegranate puzzles is exceptional, and I found myself absentmindedly rubbing my thumb over the pieces as I contemplated where they should go. The hand feel is so nice that I couldn’t help myself! The fit was excellent, everything was as it should be – which is quite rare in a puzzle these days.
There’s a whole blurb on the back on the box about this quilt, it’s maker, and the museum where it now resides. “This forty block quilt depicts scenes of domestic life and public events in the 1860s. There are two blocks that celebrate what she (the quilter) viewed as significant reconciliatory events in postbellum America: the freeing of former Confederate president Jefferson Davis and the granting of suffrage to freed slaves.” The story behind the quilt is one of the reasons it is so valuable, and rare.
This quilt is considered one of the rarest in the world, and was the most expensive quilt ever sold at auction in America. It was purchased by private collectors for $264,000 in 1991; and the couple who purchased it eventually donated their collection of over 1000 quilts to the University of Nebraska. It’s an amazing piece of history, and a beautiful example of the form of art that many women used to express themselves.
Look at the different fabrics, the pattern – the amount of work that went into just a single quilt block is amazing to me. And this was done in the 1860’s! Imagine the time it took for just one section. On one hand there were no “electronic” distractions, after all the work was done for the day what else was there to do? On the other hand, I imagine it must have been difficult to work on things like quilting at the end of the day – by candlelight. One of the blocks has “Done Nov. the 18, 1867” embroidered into it; if that is when the entire quilt was finished, it was more than two and half years after the end of the civil war.
Check out the detail here, it’s amazing. What people can do with just imagination, a few simple tools and their hands sometimes astounds me. Truly.
This is a fantastic puzzle, with an interesting image that is challenging to assemble, but completely worth it. It would be a wonderfully entertaining 1000 piece puzzle!
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.
