Review: What’s For Breakfast?

On September 1, 2017December 30, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Puzzle reviewsLeave a comment

This post is sponsored by Puzzle Warehouse.

What’s For Breakfast? – White Mountain (Family Time Puzzle) – 400 pieces

What’s For Breakfast? was such a fun puzzle! This was my first Family Time Puzzle from White Mountain, and it was very entertaining. I love a collage puzzle anyway, but it added a little something to have pieces of 3 different sizes. Large pieces for the kids or seniors, medium pieces for those in between, and smaller pieces for adults. Each size had about 1/3 of the puzzle, I loved it. It was fun by myself, and would be even more fun with the family. 🙂

White Mountain puzzles have good quality. Their pieces are a bit bigger than average, which makes for a larger finished puzzle – it looks like a big accomplishment when you’re done! They have an excellent catalog, and I think the best collages in the business. Click here to see all the puzzles available from White Mountain at Puzzle Warehouse. There are so many great puzzles to choose from I can never decide on just one or two! (I ordered 5 last time 😮)

The finished puzzle is 18 x 24 inches ( 45 x 61 cm). The pieces of this puzzle seem different than older White Mountain puzzles I have assembled, the chipboard seems tighter, more compressed. I like it! There were a few pieces that weren’t cut all the way through and had to be separated, but 99% of them were just fine. There was little to no puzzle dust in the bag and no hanging bits of paper on the pieces; this again is an improvement over older WM puzzles I’ve assembled, looks like they’re improving their quality! There were a good variety of piece shapes and they fit together quite well. The image reproduction was excellent, with all the bright colors I remember from the cereals I ate as a child, and a matte finish to prevent glare. Excellent quality! The boxes are large and colorful and have the name of the puzzle, piece count, manufacturer and a partial image on all four sides, perfect for shelving either vertically or horizontally.

The assembly was speedy and fun and took me back to my youth. There are a couple cereals there I don’t remember, like Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy, but for the most part I remember them all. I can’t believe the difference in the Trix rabbit; look at the Trix box in the top row, he’s certainly very different there than he looks now!

It was easy to pick out all the large pieces and assemble that side of the puzzle, then transition to the medium and then the small. It made for an interesting assembly as someone working alone, but would be lots of fun for a family to assemble in an evening. Wouldn’t it be great to turn off the tv and put the phones down for a night and spend some time together working on a family puzzle?

Collage puzzles are my favorites to assemble, it’s like getting many little puzzles in one❣ White Mountain has an excellent catalog of collage puzzles to choose from, or click the link above to see all the collage puzzles currently available at Puzzle Warehouse.

What’s For Breakfast? is an excellent collage puzzle that the whole family can enjoy and assemble together, or that you could do on your own. The different piece sizes make it easy for all age groups to work together or for an interesting assembly for just one person. Definitely recommended. 👍👍

I received this product at no cost to facilitate this review, all thoughts and opinions expressed are truthful and 100% my own.

Roadside Attractions

On August 20, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

Gorgeous puzzle from Cobble Hill, excellent quality too – this one is getting glued and framed for my hubby, who loves old pinup girls. What an awesome wife I am! 😉

Cobble Hill makes excellent puzzles, their quality is very good. The linen on the pieces gives you a nice feel, and even the boxes feel luxurious. The fit is good, about average I’d say – neither too loose or too tight. The random cut makes for an interesting assembly, and they have a wonderfully varied catalog. I love their collages, and the new color series they’ve put out looks fun – but challenging!

The little ladies on the sides went together quite quickly, and were fun to put together. The lovely lady in the middle and her car took a bit more time, but still an entertaining assembly. There’s another pinup collage by the same artist called Seaside Attractions from Cobble Hill, looks like just as much fun as this one! I don’t know that I’ll get it for my husband, I seem to be running out of wall space. 😮

Road Trip USA

On August 17, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This was a quick assembly that was more fun than I thought it would be, and I love these kinds of puzzles!

This was a large piece puzzle by Buffalo, though the pieces were not quite as large as most other brands with “large pieces”. By Buffalo standards they are large, compared to their normal size pieces. I have said pieces so many times in this paragraph already that the word has ceased to make sense! 😐

I’ve lived in Michigan and Florida, and neither of those plates is familiar to me, they must be quite old. But they all work together to make a really nice image for puzzling, and it’s an entertaining assembly. The background isn’t too difficult to assemble, but enough of a challenge to make it fun. Click here to see this puzzle at Puzzle Warehouse. *I don’t get anything for you clicking or buying, they’re just my favorite puzzle store.

Definitely recommended, especially for those who need puzzles with larger pieces. The bright colors and large pieces would be great for anyone with aging eyes or fine motor issues. Great puzzle from Buffalo!

Route 66

On June 11, 2017 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Here’s another one mom did the majority of, but she insisted that I take a picture of it for the blog anyway.

Mom and I had just finished a 1000 piece puzzle, and were looking for the next puzzle to start. We were both in the same kind of mood apparently because we looked at many different puzzles and we were both feeling the same way about all of them; it was sort of a blah thing where nothing looked like it would be fun that day. Mom had to take a phone call and so I continued the search and ended up on this one. I started sorting the edge pieces and putting everything on trays while she was on the phone and when she was done and came over to the puzzle table she was a bit wary and asked “What puzzle is that?” When I showed her the box she smiled and said “Nice choice!” We were definitely in the same weird mood. 😎

Buffalo puzzles are always good quality and it’s nice after working a loose fitting puzzle to work one that fits together well like Buffalo does. And it was also nice to work on a collage, I enjoy them very much! Somehow a collage puzzle, even if it’s a large piece count doesn’t feel overwhelming. You can work on just a small portion at a time and eventually connect them all together and then it seems like quite the accomplishment! When I’m in the “blah” mood where no puzzle seems to be the right one, the answer is usually a collage.

There’s something about Route 66 that lends itself well to a collage puzzle, this is actually the second one I’ve done – the previous one was a Ravensburger. The old postcards and maps give it a nostalgic feel and it’s interesting to see all the roadside attractions that used to make Route 66 a place to “get your kicks”. 🙂

Colours of Asia

On May 13, 2017May 18, 2023 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

My first Educa puzzle! Not bad at all – I liked it very much. 👍

From what I’ve read online I was expecting a puzzle with a very loose fit, I was happy to find out that this was not the case. It was slightly loose fitting but not at all what I’d imagined. Good piece thickness and image reproduction, and the pieces lie flat in the finished puzzle. The only issue I had was with similarly shaped pieces and sometimes thinking you’d placed a piece properly when you didn’t. It didn’t cause too much problem in this puzzle, but I’d be careful if there were a puzzle with a large amount of the same color. Otherwise I have no problem with their quality and wouldn’t hesitate to order a puzzle. Note to self: No big blue skies if ordering an Educa puzzle!

It’s nice to order a brand and find out for yourself what YOU think of the quality. Everyone has different qualities that are most important to them – piece shape, thickness, how the pieces fit together, grid cut, random cut, etc. You have to find out what is important to you in a puzzle and which brands are the ones you prefer. Everyone is different and you can use other’s reviews as a guide, but only you can decide which is best for you. I’m trying when I order puzzles to find a company I haven’t tried before and see if there’s a puzzle that looks like fun for me to assemble. This is the puzzle I choose to try out Educa; cool picture, right?

This image is beautiful, and it’s always fun to have several little pictures in the bigger puzzle (well, it is for me anyway). When I was assembling this puzzle there were several extremely stressful things going on, and this puzzle was a welcome respite. I could sit, even if only for a few minutes , and pull out pieces for one small section and just be absorbed in the puzzle and fitting pieces together. Too bad there weren’t more than 1000 pieces, the stress is still here but the puzzle is done! 🙂