Tag: P.A.D.S.

Happy 10th Anniversary My Jigsaw Journal!

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Miscellaneous17 Comments

Ten years of jigsaw puzzles, I almost can’t believe it! And all from wanting to do a GIANT jigsaw puzzle and document it online for my friends and family. Just….wow.

So when I realized that this year would be the 10th anniversary of the blog, I mentioned it in passing to my bestest puzzle pal, Penny. We talked about how we’ve been friends for over nine years because we met right here at My Jigsaw Journal and ended up trading emails, then phone numbers, then we started trading and gifting puzzles to each other – but we’d never met. We live in the same state, just under two hours away from each other, but it never worked out for us to get together.

Until now, of course! 😎

Penny and I talked about how I started the blog because I was working on the world’s largest (at the time) commercially available puzzle and I wanted to keep family and friends updated on my progress. By starting the blog I could update every day, and whoever was interested could read when and if they wanted to – that way I wouldn’t bore people or become completely annoying talking to them about something they weren’t really interested in. Penny then earned her title of The Vice-President of Enabling by telling me that Trefl has some new very large piece count puzzles, including ones with Disney images; and wouldn’t it be great for the 10th anniversary of the blog to start another great big Disney puzzle just like I did ten years ago?

Wouldn’t it be great? Hmmm….

This of course led to checking out the puzzles online and of course they were adorable, and before you know it there were a couple of very BIG puzzles on their way to my house. Penny and I decided that we were both going to start working on this new puzzle at the same time, and that when we got together we’d each have our puzzles to show off and take pictures with. So before you see any of those pictures, here’s the new puzzle we’re starting today…

Golden Age of Disney – Trefl – 13,500 pieces

Ain’t she a beauty?? It reminds me of Disney’s Memorable Moments, mostly because of the separate sections with different movies or characters shown, and the fact that there are even twinklies in the background! (If you were here at the beginning you’ll know what that means 😉)

Just because I can, I’m going to brag a little…here’s me on top of my giant puzzle from 2016. It took me six months to complete it all, but I’m immensely proud of the accomplishment; and it’s the whole reason I started My Jigsaw Journal – so my friends and family could watch me put it together online.

Memorable Disney Moments – Ravensburger – 40,320 pieces

The new puzzle is not nearly as big as that giant one that had me going “temporarily” bonkers ten years ago🥴, but it’s still pretty darn big and I’m almost as excited to start this one as I was the enormous Disney from a decade ago. This new puzzle is in more easily digestible chunks – 1,500 pieces per section as opposed to 4,032 pieces on the larger one. That’s a huge difference for me, and the sections are small enough that each one would even fit on my white board if that’s where I wanted to work on it. With the previous puzzle I had to work each section on my BIG board (5 ft x 4 ft,) because they were colossal sections. Mostly though, I’m very happy to only have to sort through only 1,500 pieces for each section, that’s the best part of all! (Sorting really helps me with the way I puzzle, but it also needs a big straw, which is to say…it sucks.)

I love the images, I love everything about this new puzzle except for one thing. The little booklet that comes with this puzzle tells you that if you want to connect everything together you have to remove rows of pieces from each section so that they all connect into one puzzle. Uh….no thank you. What’s going to happen is I am just going to put each completed section where it goes and take a picture of it that way. I already know what a chore it is to assemble and connect an extremely large piece puzzle, there’s no way in hell I’ll be disassembling part of it just to take a damn picture. The way it’s described in the booklet says the puzzle has 13,500 pieces, but if you’ll be assembling and connecting it their way the finished puzzle would be 12,556 pieces. Nope. No thanks. Not going to happen.

I can’t speak to how Penny will be connecting or photographing hers, but my pictures will just be sections set next to each other. And since I’m not technically connecting them they could be put in any order or shape I’d like; it doesn’t have to be a three by three square/rectangle, it could be one long row, etc.

So when Penny and I were finally able to meet for the very first time I brought my new giant puzzle and we took a few pictures. If you’ve been here long enough you know I’m not a fan of me being in any photos, especially online, but I made an exception here for the anniversary post…

We’re both going to be starting this big puzzle at the same time, but since she has younger kids, a job, and a life I have a feeling that I might be the one who finishes first. Doesn’t matter though, it’s still going to be fun!

It took nine years of emails, texts, and talking in the comments of the blog before we finally met and I’m so very glad that we did. It was a whole big deal for me involving several days away from home, my daughter had to take the day off work in order to drive me, etc. I normally don’t do much that’s just for me, but this time it was important. So all the arrangements were made several months in advance and we were finally able to get together. Our visit was only for a few hours, but completely worth all the fuss!

Ten years of this blog – it’s brought me many things. Best of all is friends from all around the world, and this one specifically that is so close to home. She’s my bestest puzzle pal and the only one in my life, really, who is always down to talk about puzzles (or anything, honestly). Everything and anything puzzle related she’s ready to listen, talk, share pictures – whatever we feel like doing. I’m so glad we found each other here. 💚🧩

There have been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of puzzles here (about 1,451 actually, with a grand total of 735,306 pieces assembled so far) and many, many comments and conversations about all things puzzle and beyond. Yep. I checked that too. Of course I did – 7,972 comments!

I’ve found fellow puzzle bloggers from Finland and Germany and Russia that I’ve traded many emails and puzzles with, and fellow puzzlers and PADS sufferers from around the globe who love to talk puzzles with me. I’m so glad to be in this community of people who are so kind, considerate, compassionate, and giving. We puzzle nerds are the best, even if I do say so myself! I am most definitely a proud puzzle geek. 🧩🤓

So Happy Anniversary to My Jigsaw Journal! I never thought I’d be doing this for so long, but here we are. We’ve puzzled and shared and laughed and cried together, all of us. And it means to world to me, you have no idea. 💕💖💕

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 Puzzling5 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! 💃🎶💃