Tag: Jigsaw Puzzling

Benefits of Blogging

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Miscellaneous6 Comments

My darling (sometimes frustrating) husband dragged my butt out of the house yesterday to shop for a couple of things we needed. I truly despise shopping – unless it’s for puzzles. Knowing that, the first place we went was to a store that had puzzles, so I’d at least be a little happy to have gone shopping.

After a year in the sunken place with pretty much zero puzzles assembled and none blogged about, my memory of which puzzles I’ve assembled is shaky at best. While the hubs was “helping” me pick out puzzles there were times when I couldn’t remember whether or not I’d assembled a puzzle. Mostly these were collages, I’ve done so many and sometimes they look so similar that honestly there was no certainty whether or not I’d already assembled it. Sometimes I was certain, I’ve definitely done that one – many times I was clueless.

Here’s where the title of today’s post comes into play….one of the benefits of my blog is that I post about every puzzle I assemble. All that was needed was for me to take out my phone and search the blog. If the title isn’t there, it hasn’t been assembled by me. What a lovely resource!

I know there are plenty of people who use apps or lists to keep track of assembled puzzles, and that’s awesome. If it works for you then that is what you should do. For me though, it’s completely unnecessary. A benefit of being a puzzle blogger that I hadn’t even thought of. 😎

Another benefit I hadn’t realized is the memories of people and loved ones found in my writings. My mother is all over the place here, and re-reading through my old posts the past couple of weeks has been sweet/lovely/sad/funny and many other adjectives I cannot put into print due to my lack of coherent thoughts about it and also a lack of sufficient amounts of caffeine this morning. The gray cells aren’t completely awake yet today.

I’ve truly been enjoying reading through all the old posts. I just got through Christmas 2019 and the debacle of the 12 Days of Christmas puzzle advent calendar. I find I’m still pissed at Ceaco about it, and also when I’m ticked off I tend to be quite funny. Some of those posts really made me laugh!

Seeing puzzles I’d forgotten that I’d assembled, the ones I hated and the ones I loved, the posts where hubby had ticked me off about something, or my Buddy made me smile or laugh, seeing all the fun pictures, reading through the comments – all of it – it’s been lovely for me to help me in trying to get back to my former self as the Puzzle Goddess. (My mom named me that, I would never presume) I wouldn’t say The Puzzle Goddess is 100% back, but she’s on the road home and will hopefully be here soon. 🧚‍♀️

In no way am I trying to get anyone to start a blog – about puzzles or anything else. This weekend of reading through My Jigsaw Journal and having to leave the house to go shopping have brought into focus for me the two unexpected benefits of my blog. There are plenty more (again, just for myself) but these two reasons presented themselves to me this weekend and I thought I’d share them with you.*

*Partly because I find them to be two awesome benefits that showed themselves recently, and partly because the posts where I was more “chatty” about life and the goings on here at the My Jigsaw Journal household were more interesting and fun for me to re-read.

A Work In Progress…

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling6 Comments

So I finished my 500 piece puzzle yesterday, and thought that I really should put together a 1000 piece puzzle. But to be honest it kind of terrified me – it seems so very long since there was a puzzle with that many pieces on my board. I really was quite apprehensive about it, so much so that I texted my puzzle buddy Penny to get some back up! She encouraged me, and even gave me a couple of suggestions to try so it wouldn’t seem like such a big undertaking.

Does this sound ridiculous to you? It does to me, I completed a 40,000 puzzle for crying out loud! Geez lady, get a grip. Anyway, thank you so much Penny, you helped more than you know!

It seems ridiculous to say it out loud, but it looks like the last 1000 piece puzzle I put together was in July of 2020. Holy crap! It’s been 15 months since I’ve sorted or assembled a “larger” piece count, and it was truly intimidating for me to even think about even sorting it; there was much anxiety. Thank goodness for my long distance Puzzle Posse. 💗

This morning I’ve finally started sorting it (hubby had to go into work today so the board is mine for a few hours), and I’m doing just fine. No overly anxious thoughts, and it looks like it’s going to be a fun assembly once the sorting is done. If you were wondering, it’s a collage from Re-marks. Can’t wait to see how it goes, wish me luck!

What Are You Working On?

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling8 Comments

Ok, so I know I said I wouldn’t be posting every day, but I had to talk about what I did yesterday after replying to everyone’s comments and feeling the puzzle love. 💞

I spent several hours lying in bed re-reading through my blog, because not only did I spend the last 14 months not puzzling at all, I barely looked at my blog. Honestly I felt a bit disconnected from it. So once I decided to post and then started replying to comments I felt the need to get back in touch with “my old puzzle self” and so went back to the beginnings of this blog and started reading.

5 years ago last month was when I started My Jigsaw Journal, and the largest puzzle I have ever assembled – Memorable Disney Moments, a 40,320 piece behemoth of a puzzle! I’m a bit awed at myself that I even started it, let alone completed the thing. What a colossal task! What was I thinking? And also, yay me! That was freakin’ awesome! 😎

I barely got very far, only up to November of 2016, but I’m amazed when I go back at how many puzzles I’ve completed. There’s so many I’d forgotten about! There’s even one with the title “The Hardest Puzzle I’ve Ever Done”. 🤣 At the time it actually was, but it certainly wouldn’t be called that now. Actually, I’ve glued that one to frame and still have it. It was a b*tch of a puzzle that took a really long time for the piece count, but having way more puzzles under my belt now, it’s probably only in the top 20 hardest puzzles I’ve completed – and it ain’t even close to the top.

Also, I was TERRIBLE at getting good pictures of my completed puzzles in the beginning. As in……truly, unbelievably awful. Wow. Just wow. I’m a little embarrassed, but mostly just amused at myself for being so crappy at it. Luckily I don’t really take myself that seriously, so it isn’t too depressing. And…there’s absolutely no way for me to change it. Most of the smaller piece count puzzles we (my puzzle posse and I) assembled I no longer own, so there’s no way to take a better picture. There are one or two that I glued to keep and hang that I could possibly take good pictures of and repost about them, otherwise, they’re all gone. And, to be fair to myself, those first couple of months I was just using the pictures that I took on my phone to text to my mom to show her when I’d completed a puzzle. I hadn’t started the blog when most of those pictures were taken, and some of them were ridiculously awful – but they were just to show the puzzle over a text. Still, they were truly hideous and it makes me laugh.

It was very entertaining to go through and read my old posts and see the puzzles I was doing. I’ve only gotten through November of that year, but I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. I could re-post about an old puzzle or two if I still have them or they were particularly fun or interesting. Just so that I could have something to talk about while I’m trying to get myself back into the groove, who knows. I’ll have to think about it.

Anyway…….enough about me. What are you guys working on? I haven’t shopped online, gone to the thrift stores, or shopped in a store for puzzles in 14 months. What cool new puzzles are out there now? Which ones are you working on? Have you taken a break from puzzling too, or slowed down how much you’re working on them? What’s happening with all my fellow P.A.D.S. sufferers? Do tell. I’ve truly missed talking to you all!

Hi All, I’ve Missed You!

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Miscellaneous38 Comments

Hey everyone! Thought I’d drop in to tell you all that I’m still alive. 🙂 You’ve probably forgotten all about me, but I’m still here!

Things are still crazy around here, and I have barely done any puzzling at all in more than a year, but I haven’t given up completely, just took a much needed mental health break for a bit. I’m not embarrassed or ashamed to tell you that I suffer from severe depression and anxiety, and it has been overwhelming; especially with the worldwide panorama…panatella…panamiga…panini…pandemic…plague – whatever you want to call it. To be honest, the last couple of years have been extremely difficult for me and I needed to take time for myself to process everything.

I’m still struggling, but doing my best – and that’s really all I can do.

Hubby is well and whole and fortunately/unfortunately working from home more often than not. I’m incredibly grateful that he has that opportunity and is able to stay safer at home – but also a little miffed that our house is so small that the only place he has to work is on top of my puzzle board. I started working on a puzzle a few months ago (one of those 500 piece puzzles that is really 10-12 smaller puzzles that you assemble individually), but wandered away from it and haven’t been able to go back. I’m trying to work out a way to get back to puzzling, because to be honest I’ve basically been in bed for the last year and I need to try to get myself out of this hole I’ve dug myself into.

My boys are both healthy and well, and I’m extremely grateful for that – more than I can possibly say. My daughter had a terrible car crash earlier this year and seriously broke/injured her leg. I roused myself out of bed and cared for her at her home for a couple of months until she was able to be up and around on her own. She had multiple surgeries and is still healing and dealing with the trauma and injury. But she is alive and otherwise healthy and we are grateful beyond measure.

I’m still on multiple pain meds 24/7, which I need to function, and they are part of the reason the depression became overwhelming. Once my heart condition made itself known I was no longer able to take my medications for depression – when choosing between happiness and a heartbeat I chose the latter. 😉 But then I lost my mother, Covid happened, my husband was hospitalized, and it was just too much for me to bear. I always tried to keep this blog lighthearted and fun, and it seemed that I was no longer able to do that. I had to take care of myself first and foremost, and that’s why I took a break from puzzling and blogging.

But I’m trying to get myself back now. I won’t be posting daily again for a while probably, but I won’t be gone for months at a time either. I have to figure out this new format that WordPress has for posting (I DO NOT LIKE IT AT ALL!), so my posts will probably look different until I figure it all out. Plus I still have to figure out how puzzling is going to work with hubby hogging my space! Please have patience with me if you can.

You’ve all become friends that past several years since I started this blog, and I truly missed talking to you all every day through my posts and the comments. I hope I haven’t been gone too long and that some of you are still hanging around. Please let me know how you are, I’d love to hear from you! 💗

*I’m adding a link to a previous post I wrote about mental health. I just re-read it, and I think I did a pretty good job talking about how we need to be more open and talk about our struggles. No Puzzling In Progress

Street Food…In Progress

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling3 Comments

Street Food IP
Street Food by Shanghee Shin – Re-marks – 300 pieces

I not only finished yesterday’s puzzle, another one got started too. That, ladies and gentlemen, is progress! (For me)

Re-marks may not be a “premium” brand, but I appreciate their catalog of fun and interesting collages; and to be honest I can overlook a bunch of puzzle dust or a slightly spongy fit if it means having images that are fun and exciting to assemble. 🙂

Hubby is off fishing this morning (thank goodness for hobbies that get him out of my hair for several hours at a time), and so hopefully this puzzle shouldn’t take long at all. I won’t be hearing “Honey where is my…” and “Babe, do you remember where I put…” or “Could you come at look at…..”

Here’s to a productive weekend of puzzling and relaxation!