I Love the 1980’s

I Love the 1980s
I Love the 1980s by Charlie Girard – White Mountain – 1000 pieces

It’s so sad that this puzzle wasn’t any fun. I mean, just look at it, a jumble of different images, no cottages or kittens, no landscape, no brush strokes, it didn’t have 200 sky-colored pieces – what a colossal disappointment…. NOT!

OF COURSE I LOVED THIS PUZZLE! It’s everything a growing girl needs; a collage with bright colors, interesting images, a fun theme, it’s all there. 🙂

This puzzle had been assembled by several people before it got to me, but was still in great shape. White Mountain puzzles can sometimes be hit or miss, but this one was very good quality. And they have some of the very best collages around, so even if they quality disappoints a little with one puzzle, I’m always willing to take the chance with another. I’m a collage junkie.

I’ve been reminiscing about the 80s quite a bit lately, and if you’re sick of hearing about it you should move on with your daily routine and stop reading this immediately, because there’s going to be a lot more reminiscing here today. This puzzle is titled I Love the 1980’s, and I did. I still do. It’s more fun for me to think about the 80s right now then spend too much time worrying about this bleeped-up world we’re living in today. JMHO of course.

I remember every single thing shown in this collage. I haven’t seen every television show or movie, didn’t own every one of the toys, or listen to all of the music – but I remember each one. The Police, for example – not my cuppa, as we say. I was a cheerleader (insert laughter and groans here) and there were some older “mean girls” on the squad who tried and very often succeeded in making my life miserable. They LOVED The Police; always listening to them and talking about them during practices and bus rides. So my teenage brain decided that if those b*tches thought they were great, that this band definitely wasn’t worth my time. Therefore – (sorry Sting) – I never purchased or listened to any of their music. I didn’t buy the album shown here, but I definitely remember it.

I remember all of it, but have chosen just three sections to show and talk about. Otherwise I’ll sit here all day with my 80s mall hair and neon pink and green earrings like, totally going on and on. Barf me out! Gag me with a spoon!

I Love the 1980s 1

I loved Cyndi Lauper – still do. People who express themselves in their own way despite what others think of them are awesome in my book, and Cyndi is one of those people. Her music was upbeat and fun, sometimes thoughtful and haunting and beautiful, love it! Plus, I kinda had that hairdo for a while. LOL It wasn’t bright red, or quite that long, but it WAS shaved close on one side and a little wild. 😉

I Love the 1980s 2

Pop rocks are just plain fun in my book, even now as a gray-haired old lady. I never believed the whole “if you eat pop rocks and drink Coke you’ll explode” crap, but it was hilarious to listen to, that’s for sure. My mom loved Pop Rocks too, and I remember being very selective about what candy I would buy with my allowance – Pop Rocks usually made the cut and I always shared them with mom.

I Love the 1980s 3

I chose this section of the puzzle because even though I’ve never seen an episode of this show, it was HUGE in the 80s and the cliffhanger at the end of that one season was the topic of conversation for the entire summer. Seeing this makes me miss the cliffhangers at the season’s end of a show. Did they die? Is that character killed off? Who did that? You don’t really see that much these days. There are too many shows and no real seasons anymore.

Forty years ago at the end of the season, a gloved hand was shown shooting J.R. Ewing, the show’s main character and villain; fade to black. Who shot him? Will he live? What’s going to happen? Because at the time there were pretty much only three networks on tv, everyone knew about it and it was the topic of conversation the whole summer. It was a huge deal. HUGE. Seriously, it was in the paper, serious news shows talked about, it was on the cover of Time magazine for goodness sake!

Can you think of a show on now that would garner the same sort of attention? I can’t. Our viewing options number in the hundreds, perhaps thousands every day. Too many shows, no real seasons anymore, too much going on. I remember being thrilled to watch the last episode of the season for my shows, because most of the time there was a cliffhanger – so exciting! And then we had to wait all summer until the new season started again to find out what happened. I miss that shared experience and excitement.


I could talk about, at length, pretty much everything shown on this collage. However, that would make for a ridiculously long post and you would all get bored eventually. Feel free to discuss or ask me anything in the comments if you’d like, perhaps we can continue our 80s discussions there. 😉

I Love the 80s…Finally in Progress

80s IP
I Love the 80s by Charlie Girard – White Mountain – 1000 pieces

FINALLY! It took me until just this morning to, at last, get going on this puzzle. As of nine o’clock this morning the Selfies puzzles were still on the board, un-photographed.

It was NOT a good weekend.

But, I got them photographed and got the 80s puzzle sorted and started. All the progress you see here was done this morning. I had to get myself back to the board no matter what, I was going crazy without my puzzles to help me with my depression, pain, stress and anxiety.

15,300 cases of Covid in my state yesterday. Just my state. Not a whole country. Just. My. State. What the hell is going on? BLEEPING BLEEP! With all this going on I should be puzzling 16 hours a day to keep myself calm. *insert a giant sigh here*


Anyway, I’m back at the board. I’ve written today’s post and tomorrow’s too. Hopefully by Wednesday I will be feeling a little better. Even the teensiest bit better would be a relief. Thank God for puzzles! 💗🧩💗

I Love the 80’s..Almost in Progress

I Love the 80’s by Charlie Girard – White Mountain – 1000 pieces

It’s almost in progress because although I know it’s next, I still haven’t photographed the Selfies puzzles that I finished last night. But my son chose this next puzzle; and though I’m a little intimidated by it, I’m still looking forward to it.

So I’m gonna scrunch my socks down over top of my pegged pants, throw some pop rocks in my mouth, turn on some Cyndi Lauper, and, like totally get into this bitchin’, tubular puzzle!

Cereal Boxes

Cereal Boxes
Cereal Boxes – White Mountain – 1000 pieces

I had a really good time with this one – as is usual for almost all collages – and insomnia helped to make sure that it was assembled in less than 24 hours. It certainly helps me get more puzzling done, but I’m not sure it’s great for my health. 😐

The piece quality was very good on this puzzle; thickness, shapes, and fit were all quite nice. The image reproduction though, wasn’t the best. There was quite a bit of fuzziness on many of the cereal boxes. It seems to be a recurring problem with White Mountain collage puzzles, but I still buy them because they make me happy to assemble them, fuzzy spots or no.

Cereal Boxes 1

What in the world is this cereal doing in a collage of fun cereals? This is your parent’s and grandparent’s cereal! If I had to eat this there would be so much fruit and sugar on it that it would be obscene. Yikes.

Cereal Boxes 2

Kix was the only cereal shown with 3 separate boxes. This was my favorite of the three, but it definitely isn’t my favorite of the cereals. I remember being younger and mom buying this cereal and we were not happy about it. To me it was so boring and tasteless, it was like chewing on little round puffs of styrofoam. Blech! When my kids were younger and we were on assistance, I remember that this was one of the few cereals you were allowed to buy for them. They had to be relatively healthy with as little sugar as possible, and I always opted to buy the Chex cereals for the kids instead, they were much better tasting if you ask me.

Cereal Boxes 3

This is one of my favorites, probably tied with Lucky Charms in the number two spot. Graham Cracker cereal – yum! (My favorite isn’t a General Mills cereal, so it’s nowhere to be found in this puzzle).

All in all I adored this puzzle, not only was it fun to assemble it brought back great childhood memories for me. 🥣💗

Lucky Charms

Lucky Charms
Lucky Charms – White Mountain – 100 pieces

So now we’ve come to the end of the set of cereal mini puzzles, and the last of them is my favorite of the six cereals – Lucky Charms. For a sugar-hungry kid like I was, how could the cereal with dehydrated squeaky marshmallows not be my favorite?

I’m sad that this multipack set is over. Having some 100 piece puzzles around to assemble in between larger ones was nice, and now the smallest puzzles I have are 300 pieces. Not that they aren’t entertaining, because they most definitely are; but the 100 piece mini puzzles are great for when you only have a few minutes to puzzle and don’t want to sort and start something larger.

Lucky Charms have been around longer than I have, and I still remember the commercials from long ago. The marshmallows have changed over the years, but I still remember the roster as Lucky the Leprechaun used to say in the commercials, “Pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers – and new blue diamonds!”🎶Frosted Lucky Charms, they’re magically delicious!🎶

My mom always said that I was never really interested in tv shows when I was young, but as soon as the commercial break started I would stop what I was doing and run into the room to watch every single commercial. Then apparently when we went grocery shopping I would walk down the aisles next to her cart and perform the commercials for the products on the shelves. That must be why, almost 50 years later, I can remember the order of the marshmallows.

I was a weird little kid. 🤪