A Christmas Story

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A Christmas Story – Ceaco – 750 pieces

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!” 😉

Candied Apples and Candy Corn

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Candied Apples and Candy Corn by Jane Wooster Scott – Ceaco – 584 pieces

This is not your normal Ceaco puzzle, the pieces were backed with thick cork board and there were a lot of whimsies – there were balloons, a dog, a train, birds, even a clown! SO MUCH FUN! As an added bonus there are 42 pieces of the puzzle that you can assemble separately to make a juggling clown. I didn’t do that part, but what a cool idea!

The puzzle was only 584 pieces, but they were quite large – almost too big for my whiteboard which I used at the time for regular 1000 piece puzzles (20″ x 27″). It wasn’t an easy puzzle by any means, the two trees at the top took me an hour 😮 It’s more challenging with the random cut of the pieces and whimsies, but I enjoyed every moment and love, love, LOVE THIS PUZZLE!

I used to tell my mom to stop buying puzzles at thrift stores because we have so many, and she’s always buying more. Not anymore. If it makes her happy she should go for it, I should keep my mouth shut – not to mention she sometimes finds amazing puzzles like this one. Best thrift store find of the year! (I checked online to find a price, and found one new for sale at a retail store for $124.00!)