Tag: P.A.D.S.

Blacklight Bowling

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles22 Comments

Blacklight Bowling by Aimee Stewart – Buffalo – 1000 pieces

This beauty was either a Christmas or birthday present from my fellow P.A.D.S. sufferer and Aimee Stewart fan, Penny; I absolutely adored it, and am so thankful to have people in my life who help me feed the beast that is my puzzle addiction. 👹🧩👹

It was outstanding quality all around – Buffalo puzzles have almost never let me down. The fit, chipboard, piece shape, and reproduction are excellent and make for truly fun puzzles. I’m so thankful that my favorite artist licenses her work to a company that cares about it’s product; if I could only get Aimee Stewart images from Ceaco or Galison I think my poor heart would break!

Aimee and her husband Lars seem to have gone bowling with their fur baby (a Shiba Inu named Miso) – how in the world did Miso get a better score? And who programmed the computer to keep score? There is obviously a glitch somewhere; those are clearly not calculated properly.

And yes, I’m a nerd who checked to see if they were tallied correctly. 🤓

Love the snack bar, it’s so colorful with all of that neon – I would love to go cosmic bowling there! 🎳

Post #1500!

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Miscellaneous16 Comments

Can you believe it? This is post number 1500 for my little blog – the one I thought would be finished once I completed my monster 40,000 piece puzzle. The picture above is from the very first post ever on My Jigsaw Journal, a few days after I received the giant puzzle from Germany in September of 2016. It seems like a lifetime ago, although it’s only been about 5 ½ years.

It wasn’t my plan to become a puzzle blogger, I began this as a way to keep family and friends updated on the giant Disney Memorable Moments puzzle that I was assembling. Social media isn’t my thing, I have no facebook, instagram, twitter, etc., so I created the blog to post about which section I was working on and how it was going. But I realized once I started that I love everything about puzzles; I love shopping for them, looking at them, reading about them, talking about them, assembling them, and writing about them too.

I ended up with many more “followers” than just my family and friends, and was surprised to see that people from around the world were reading my posts and keeping up with them every day. It helped keep me motivated to make progress on the enormous puzzle every day, and I also found a community of like-minded puzzle geeks – what a blessing I didn’t even realize that I needed!

One thousand five hundred posts, that’s quite a lot; I’ve written about puzzles in progress, and my lack of progress on them when I’m dealing with life. I’ve written about my family, puzzling with mom and how much happiness that brought me, and working on puzzles with each of my children and my husband too – and the joy of sharing my passion with them. I’ve written about my puzzle pal Buddy, who kept me company while I puzzled, and always watched over me away from the puzzle board as well. I show off the puzzles I’m proud of, the ones that were fun and the ones that were just….meh….and warn you all about the ones I wish I’d never found. I share my life through the puzzles I complete, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the friends I’ve found here.

So congratulations to me for keeping with it; and many, many, many thanks to my faithful friends who come here to see the puzzles I assemble, read about me and my posse, my struggles with P.A.D.S., depression, anxiety and life in general, and who keep me company on my puzzling journey. I don’t think I’d still be here doing this if it weren’t for you all, thanks for sticking around.

Congrats to us all on post number 1500! 🎉🧩🎉

The Seven Chakras – Eagle Update

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling4 Comments

So, after many attempts to put together the multipiece eagle, and failing every time – I finally broke down and emailed Liberty Puzzles to see if they could give me some help. After exchanging several emails with members of their customer service team I have quite the update for you.

The customer service I received was PHENOMENAL, let me tell you that right away. They replied to my email within five minutes and were more than happy to offer whatever assistance they could. One of their excellent customer service team said that he sat down to assemble the eagle himself so that he could take a picture to send to me, and then that’s where it gets interesting. This is a quote from his email….

“Good news / bad news for you . . . it turns out that there was a design flaw and that multipiece whimsy does not actually fit together. I think you were probably doing it correctly but that the top piece just wouldn’t fit. ….Sorry for the trick we didn’t know we were playing on you and congratulations on figuring it out!“

Hooray! Here I thought that my pain medications and hot flashes were dumbing down and quick-boiling my brain cells to death, and it turns out it wasn’t my fault! I can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear that. Honestly, nothing they could have told me would have made me happier.

The artist who designs their pieces will be “tweaking” the design a bit so that the eagle whimsy will work the way it’s supposed to, and they will be sending out a replacement eagle puzzle. I’m thrilled with their solution, and so thankful for their willingness to help.

Even before they knew there was a problem, someone stopped their day and sat down to assemble the whimsy pieces – just to take a picture to send to me. That is exceptional customer service!

Apparently they’ve sold a good number of this puzzle, but I was the first to figure out that each contains a separate multipiece representation and that there was an issue with the eagle. I’m certain there was a lot of thought and planning that went into the design for each of the chakra puzzles, and along the way apparently something got “inadvertently nudged” and the top piece of the eagle doesn’t quite fit – but just barely.

Anyway, I promised an update about the eagle whimsy. And here it is. Once I receive the new puzzle I will definitely assemble it and show it to you. I did tell them that there was absolutely no rush in sending the replacement. I’m certain they’re swamped with holiday orders and because that one email made me feel so much better, I’m more than happy to wait until after the holidays.

And I’m happy I’ve still got some functioning brain matter! 😎

The P.A.D.S. is strong with me. Even I didn’t know how bummed I was that the eagle had defeated me; that is, not until I learned that it was a design flaw. The relief and happiness that washed over me …. I can’t even describe it.

I have the most severe case of P.A.D.S. ever!

Happy Almost Birthday To Me!

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Miscellaneous4 Comments

It’s not quite my birthday yet, but there are early presents coming my way today! According to the delivery website/app a big box of puzzles that were ordered what seems like forever ago will be delivered today! I’m so excited that the use of exclamation marks is getting out of control!

I ordered a metric crap-ton (technical term) of micro puzzles from Wentworth, along with a 200 piece Christmas puzzle. You’re shocked, right? That’s fair. Regular readers know that Christmas/holiday puzzles are just not my pile of pieces, but this one is very different and looks like it’ll be really fun to put together.

You’ll be even more shocked that quite a few of the micro puzzles are holiday/winter themed as well. But, they are all very different than the average holiday images and full of cuteness, silliness, and just plain prettiness. There are three that are just winter puzzles, and those can wait until after the holidays to be assembled. With this delivery, and the puzzles that are already here, there will be lots more holiday puzzles than usual on the blog this year. Looking forward to it? I am!

It doesn’t matter if they’re Christmas images or not, there’s going to be a delivery today (if all goes as planned) of a big box of puzzles for me. Wooooo hooooo!

The PADS is flaring up today with expectation and excitement! Happy dance! 💃🎶💃

Retail Therapy

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling4 Comments

It’s been a rough few weeks for me, but I finally figured out something to brighten my days a little – puzzle shopping! 🧩🛒

When I came to the end of my posts of the shaped mini shoe puzzles I wondered if there were any new sets, or sets that I’d missed. A few clicks of the mouse later I had my answer – turns out there were six of them. It seems my PADS kicked in at that very moment and I may or may not have purchased every one of them I could find.

Oh wait, I actually did buy them! They’ve already been delivered, and one set has already been assembled. 😁

Stay tuned.