Panda Family

On February 14, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This is such a sweet image, it’s hard to resist those adorable faces! I love the pop of color at the bottom too; it’s just a lovely picture all around.

Ravensburger puzzles are excellent quality premium puzzles, no matter what age group they’re geared towards. The puzzles for both children and adults are made from high quality chipboard and have a beautiful finish. They fit together very well, and sometimes I might even say the children’s puzzles fit even better than the adult ones. After giving a few Ravensburger puzzles to my adopted grandson, his mother tells me that he prefers this brand over all his other puzzles. He will assemble pretty much any puzzle he can find, but he always goes back to the Ravensburgers, even the ones that may be missing a piece or two. He’s become a bit of a puzzle snob like me!

This image isn’t too simple, the bright colors at the bottom are easy enough to assemble quickly, but the pandas themselves and the forest in the background take a little bit more time. It was fun to assemble, even for a “grownup”, and was the usual wonderful Ravensburger quality. Highly recommended! 🐼

The Ballet Class

On February 8, 2018February 8, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Very cute Ravensburger that we were hoping was complete, unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be. Still Mom and I enjoyed ourselves assembling it, and isn’t that what counts the most?

I love working Ravensburger puzzles, they’re my favorite manufacturer. Their puzzles are excellent quality all around and are the best to work with in my opinion. And if I ever have a problem with one of their puzzles they have always made it right immediately with excellent customer service. The pieces are thick and feel good in your hand, there are always a nice variety of shapes to work with, the image reproduction is excellent, and they fit together very well. They’re the best in the biz!

Even with this puzzle being over 34 years old, it is still in excellent shape. I could tell by the condition of the box that it was a well loved puzzle, but I was pleased that the pieces themselves were still holding up wonderfully. If only all the pieces were there – bummer.

Still, it won’t deter us from continuing to shop at the thrift stores, there are too many fabulous puzzles there at such good prices. If you want to stop my mom from shopping the thrift stores you’re going to have to wrestle her car keys from her – good luck with that! 🙂

The Story of Heidi in the Alps

On February 7, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

I got a bee in my bonnet about getting all the children’s puzzles in my house assembled so I could donate them and get them out of here; so I spent some time in front of the tv catching up on my shows while assembling 9 puzzles one after another. It also helped me build my stockpile of posts back up, so I have a little cushion now in case I need it again. 😁

These two puzzles were only 12 pieces each and went together extremely quickly, but they’re beautifully made puzzles of excellent quality. Almost every puzzle I assembled this day (7 out of 9) were Ravensburger puzzles and every one of them was wonderful quality. I appreciate companies that put effort into their puzzles for kids, and the best that I’ve found are Ravensburger, Cobble Hill, and Eurographics.

When I assembled the second puzzle in the box I struggled to remember the name of the boy in the story. I know I read it as a child, and I remember the movie Heidi with Shirley Temple, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember the boy’s name. (I’m sure I just dated myself with the Shirley Temple reference, but that’s mostly how I remember the story of Heidi) I had to give up on my memory and look it up online, his name is Peter.

Jigsaw puzzles are great for helping children develop problem solving skills, fine motor coordination, spatial awareness, pattern recognition and many other essential skills. I highly recommend puzzles as gifts for children, they’re fun and educational and might even start someone off on the road to enjoying jigsaw puzzles for the rest of their life!

Movie Reel

On January 17, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

My youngest son gave me this puzzle for Christmas, so bright and fun and full of color! My daughter and I started it’s assembly on Christmas Day after we finished Retro Dogs, and I finished it a day or so later. I love the image, and it was mostly great Ravensburger quality but I was slightly disappointed in the image reproduction. Some of the smaller images were more fuzzy and indistinct than others; that’s not something I usually find with a Ravensburger.

The quality of the pieces themselves was excellent, as usual. The image reproduction, though, left a bit to be desired. Most of the image was crisp and clear, but some small sections were seemingly out of focus and slightly fuzzy. I haven’t had this problem with Ravensburger before, but it’s worth mentioning for this puzzle specifically.

I enjoyed this puzzle very much, I think the choice of these 3 Pixar movies was excellent, probably because I’ve seen all three of them and the kids and I loved them all. The bright colors and adorable characters made this wonderfully fun to assemble. The edges of the movies reels and the blue background gave it a bit of a challenge, but it wouldn’t be as much fun if it were too easy. 🙂

Even with the small quality issue, this was a great puzzle and I still recommend it. For me it brought back memories of watching these movies with my kids when they were younger; how in the world is Toy Story 23 years old?!

Garden Traditions

On January 13, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This was a fun puzzle that went together pretty quickly. Again, it wasn’t a puzzle image that I would buy new, but it was definitely one that we’d buy at the thrift store. As usual, I enjoyed it immensely and ended up liking the image much more once it was all assembled.

A 500 piece Ravensburger is just about the perfect size puzzle for me when I haven’t been feeling well. I can only sit for a limited amount of time and a 500 piece is 4 times easier than a 1000 piece (according to conventional wisdom) and therefore doesn’t seem to require as much thought or time studying the pieces. I can pull the pieces for a section and put them together relatively quickly, giving me a sense of completion and making it easier for me to walk away for a while to take a break from sitting or standing to work on it.

I enjoy the 500 piece Ravensburger puzzles in both the smaller and larger piece sizes. The larger size seems to go together more quickly for me, but they’re both quite fun if you’ve got a good image. I’ve done a couple Jane Maday puzzles in the past month or so and find that they’re quite fun to do and just the right amount of challenge. I hope we find more of her puzzles at the thrift stores. 🙂 There’s an adorable 350 piece puzzle of hers from Cobble Hill called Christmas Train that I’ve seen on Puzzle Warehouse’s site, it looks like a great puzzle for next Christmas!