Ballet Lesson (2)

On March 3, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

Ballet Lesson – Ravensburger – 100 pieces

This is the second Ravensburger puzzle with this title I’ve assembled, the first was only 35 pieces and not nearly as beautiful as this one. This puzzle is a lovely image enhanced with glitter – I loves me some glitter! How disappointing that it was missing a piece. 😦

The colors in this image are so pretty, and with the added fun of glitter it’s just an all around beautiful puzzle. Absent piece aside, the quality was excellent and to my surprise there wasn’t a ton of glitter loose in the box. A lot of times with a glitter puzzle much of it comes off and ends up in a pile underneath the pieces, not so with this puzzle. Yet another reason Ravensburger puzzles are my absolute favorite. I was hoping it would be complete so we could pass it on, but it’s glaringly obvious that a piece has escaped.

Missing pieces are the chance you take when you purchase puzzles used. I would say probably 90-95% of the puzzles we get from thrift stores are complete, and that’s a pretty good average. Sure, it’s a little disappointing when you find a missing piece, but you still got to assemble a puzzle. Well, most of it anyway. 😉

Winnie the Pooh

On February 22, 2018October 29, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles2 Comments

This beautiful puzzle is SO BIG! It’s only 24 pieces, but the finished puzzle is 20 x 27 inches – the size of the average 1000 piece puzzle. I’ve never seen bigger pieces!

Another wonderful quality Ravensburger puzzle, and the fit was absolutely the best I’ve seen. There are places in the picture above where you can’t even see the shape of the pieces the fit is so good. This puzzle was very well-loved before it was donated – from the condition of the box and the little bits of wear and tear you can see on the ends of some pieces I can tell this puzzle has been assembled many, many times. Regardless, it was cared for and still in very nice shape.

I very much recommend Ravensburger puzzles for the kids in your life, they are impeccably made and stand up extremely well to multiple assemblies.

I love Winnie the Pooh and all of his friends, I have wonderful memories of listening to the stories on an 8 track tape in the family van as we traveled on the weekends. It had the real voice actors from the movies and short films, and we all loved listening to it and quoting all the dialog. Yes, I’m that old. For you young’uns, 8 track tapes were like very large cassette tapes that you couldn’t rewind. For you REALLY young’uns, cassette tapes were like CD’s that you couldn’t choose what track to listen to without rewinding and fast forwarding. Grandma’s lesson is over. 👵

Ballet Lesson (1)

On February 20, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Ballet Lesson – Ravensburger – 35 pieces

I assembled another kids puzzle with the same name on the same day (that’s the reason for the number), they were both Ravensburger and both very pretty. This one was much easier to assemble, but the other one had fairies and glitter and you know I’m a sucker for some glitter!

Ravensburger kids puzzles are absolutely wonderful quality, if you’ve got kids you’d like to buy puzzles for I highly recommend them. Cobble Hill and Eurographics also make excellent quality puzzles for children and have great catalogs to choose from.

The pieces are large and easy to handle, very thick and fit together beautifully. The colors are interesting and lovely without being too bright – it’s subtle, but so very pretty. There are an excellent variety of piece shapes to work with, and enough going on in the scene that each piece has clues to where it should go. It’s important with a puzzle for very young children that it not be too difficult for them to figure out placement, each piece should have something that leads to the piece beside it. It builds confidence and gives them a sense of accomplishment, and puzzles are so very good for developing brains!

I never took ballet lessons as a child, I was too much of a tomboy to want to put on a frilly tutu and dance around. I wanted to be a gymnast like Nadia Comaneci; it seemed like much more fun to get to run around and tumble, that was much more my speed. But if you’ve got a little ballet dancer in your life, this would be a great puzzle for them! 🙂

Suess Street

On February 18, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

Finally I was able to get a 1000 piece puzzle done, my first since the beginning of January. Yikes! Luckily I was able to make a quick trip to get myself a few puzzles last weekend, and this is one of the puzzles I chose. I love this image, and it’s a Ravensburger so it’s wonderful quality. 🙂

I may have to make a change to the way I sort and assemble puzzles, I find these past few weeks that I have little tolerance for laying out all the pieces, etc. It may just be an attitude problem on my part; I guess I’ll wait and see. For the most part I sorted these by colors, with the brick background pieces sorted by shape. It seemed amazingly tedious, but again I have a bit of a ‘tude lately, so surely that didn’t help. And, it’s the first 1000 piece puzzle for me in more than a month, so there’s that to consider as well.

I love Dr. Suess, and I have many of his books completely memorized because I read them to my kids so often that after a while I didn’t even need to look at the pages. My daughter loved Fox in Socks, and my boys loved Cat in the Hat and One Fish, Two Fish; I was always partial to Dr. Suess’s ABC. This puzzle image makes me smile and remember that time spent reading with my little ones when they were still small.

If you’re a fan of Dr. Suess or Ravensburger, or just enjoy a very fun puzzle I highly recommend this one. Excellent quality with a wonderful image – what more could you ask for?

Busy Airport

On February 17, 2018 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

This very small piece count puzzle didn’t take much time at all, but it was done on a day where I sat in front of the tv assembling all the kid’s puzzles I had in the house. I wanted to make sure all pieces were there before donating them to the school my daughter works for.

Another wonderful quality Ravensburger puzzle, although I think this one may have been well loved before it was donated to our local thrift store. The box showed quite a bit of wear and tear, but the pieces seem to have held up very well. There was one slightly bent piece that you can see in the picture above (the tab is slightly raised), but otherwise the puzzle remains in very good condition.

Many puzzlers say they only do 1000 piece puzzles or more, but I love puzzles no matter the size. I’ve had quite a bit of fun doing puzzles geared towards children, perhaps because I may be an adult but I refuse to “grow up”. I can enjoy myself doing a puzzle no matter how many pieces it has, and as long as there’s enjoyment that’s all that matters!

Besides, parents need to see reviews of puzzles for children; they deserve information about quality and difficulty of assembly as much as adults do. 🙂