A Christmas Story Leg Lamp

On November 26, 2021November 25, 2021 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles2 Comments

A Christmas Story Leg Lamp – USAopoly – 500 pieces

Well ya’ll, the holiday for Americans to gorge themselves on dinner and fall into a tryptophan coma has passed. It is now – according to my father – officially the Christmas season. What better way to kick it off than with a puzzle from the quintessential holiday movie … A Christmas Story.

This puzzle was first assembled over four years ago; back then mom wanted to assemble it too so I took it apart and off it went to her house. The plan was to glue it after she was finished, and then I would hang it in the window or on the door as a Christmas decoration. She never did get to it, and so it came back to my house and this year it was finally reassembled – it is already glued on both sides and ready to show everyone my oddball Christmas spirit! 🤪

Reading through my previous post about this puzzle, it was a little surprising that I didn’t mention the edges and how in some places the pieces just sit together instead of attaching to each other. It’s a big pet peeve of mine, and assembling the shaped edge was hard enough without the added annoyance of having to find the piece to make it all click together. Either I was much more excited about this puzzle four years ago, or I am much crankier these days. Or both.

Probably both.

But, if you’ve got this puzzle and are going to assemble it, here’s a tip…. When you’re sorting for edge pieces take every piece that has any bit of the white border. Then, when you come to edges that don’t connect you can help anchor them with the inside pieces

It was simple to sort ; edges, lampshade, fringe, fishnets, and shoe/base. The assembly was pretty simple as well, but nonetheless enjoyable. Truly a fun puzzle, and I’m excited to finally have it as a holiday decoration.

As I sit here typing up this post I’m thinking of where exactly to hang my new Christmas decoration. Hubby wants to build a custom frame for it, complete with LED lights! We gotta show it off – “It’s a major award!” 🤶

A Christmas Story

On November 20, 2021November 18, 2021 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

A Christmas Story – Ceaco – 300 pieces

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 💕)

A Christmas Story Leg Lamp

On August 9, 2017August 10, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

During one of my sleepless nights I was of course looking at puzzles online – you’re shocked aren’t you? Of course you are, I’m so level-headed I would never go on a late-night puzzle shopping extravaganza! 😇 I saw on Puzzle Warehouse that this puzzle was discontinued, they have a few left but I didn’t want to miss out so …. surprise! I ordered it!

I had so much fun assembling this puzzle, I smiled all day. We love A Christmas Story at our house, and especially love watching it on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day when the marathon is on tv. Pretty much the whole family says the dialog along with the movie and we all laugh and have a great time; it’s one of only a few movies that everyone in the family enjoys. Of course I had to get a leg lamp puzzle!

The assembly was quick and fun and I highly recommend this puzzle. The white border helped identify edge pieces so it was easy to start there and work inwards; that’s not always easy to do with a shaped puzzle. Not a lot of sorting necessary either – it was just a pleasure to assemble.

USAopoly has some great pop culture puzzles; and their quality isn’t bad either. There are a nice variety of piece shapes, the pieces are on the thin side but they are sturdy and fit together very well. The image reproduction is good, with a shiny finish, and they have some very fun images to choose from.

It’s pretty tall, 3 feet high (91cm) so make sure you’ve got a big enough work space. After I let mom assemble it I’m going to glue it and turn it into a Christmas decoration. Wouldn’t it be great to drive down the street during the holidays and see leg lamps or leg lamp puzzles in people’s windows? It’s putting a smile on my face right now. 😁

I know, I’m weird – but weird is awesome, and I embrace it!

If you would like to make an awesome window piece for your holiday decorations this year (or just think this would be a fun puzzle) you can find it at Puzzle Warehouse by clicking here. (I don’t get anything if you click or buy from them, they’re just my favorite puzzle store) They even have another leg lamp puzzle from a different company that’s double-sided, it has scenes from the movie on the back of it, 600 pieces. Too much fun – and it’s a major award! 😉

A Christmas Story

On December 11, 2016January 30, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

We love A Christmas Story here at our house, so this was a fun assembly even though it wasn’t the best quality puzzle. Ralphie and the gang are always welcome here!

Normally Ceaco puzzles are not my cup of tea. We have found several Ceaco puzzles that were apart from the norm with very good quality. One was backed with thick corkboard and had a lot of whimsies, which was super fun and an excellent buy at the thrift store for 99 cents! We also found a Ceaco puzzle backed with red velvet!

This puzzle, however, was a run of the mill Ceaco. The pieces were on the thin side and the image was quite shiny and difficult to work under lights at night. A majority of the puzzle is the dark green Christmas tree, and the gloss on the pieces made it difficult to distinguish shades and and shapes when working at night. It was a random cut puzzle, which did make it more interesting to assemble, so that was a plus.

All in all, our love for the movie outweighed the quality of the puzzle, and we still enjoyed the assembly. “You should see how it looks from out here!” 😉