Sunday Randomness #275: Bringing puzzles back: Jan and Feb 2025 with 49 and 50 Sweet treats

White Mountain 1000 piece Tasty Treats (Yes, this one tempted us with temptation treats!)

MB Puzzle EZ Grasp 300 piece Ice Cream Social (Yet another temptation puzzle!)

 

Sunday Randomness #275: Bringing puzzles back: January 2025 with 47 and 48 Playful Places

Masterpieces 300 piece Playful Paws puzzle

Ravensburger 750 piece Puzzler's Place puzzle

 

Sunday Randomness #275: Bringing puzzles back: December 2024 with 44, 45, and 46 Baking, Bunnies, Laundry

Bits and Pieces 300 piece Baking Cookies-makes me want to start the holiday baking right now!

Gibson 550 piece Holiday Village with bunnies.  Fun but the snow looked very similar and was a little hard to put together.

Ceaco 550 piece Paws Gone Wild with dogs doing laundry.  I just had concerns about the dogs being around all the laundry cleaners and chemicals.  And I just can't approve of the dog in the washer and doubt the dogs wouldn't be freaked out by the vacuum cleaner.  Just have to remember to suspend my beliefs in reality when working puzzles.  

 

Sunday Randomness #275: Bringing puzzles back: November 2024 featured a dog, some cats, a coral reef, and some difficult donuts 40, 41, 42, and 43

Galison 500 piece featuring Momo the Dog-this one was from a puzzle night and was so fun to put together.

Ceaco 550 piece Paw Gone Wild with a bunch of cats.  Crazy cat lady is something to be proud of if you are a responsible crazy cat lady.

Milton Bradly 500 piece Coral Reef puzzle which was a bit harder because the edges of the puzzle didn't match the box.

Colorcraft 1000 piece Difficult Donuts.  Enough similar colors to make it "difficult" but enough difference to make it doable.

 

Sunday Randomness #275: Bringing puzzles back into our lives September 2024 has eccentricity with puzzles 29, 30, and 31

 

Glow in the dark!

Masterpieces puzzle Moon Fairy 300 piece (missing that one piece in the center-it's much harder to find the missing piece with the glow-in-the-dark picture)

Wave Hopper puzzle that came in a cool metal van container.  No idea who made it or how many pieces.  We thought maybe around 600-700 hundred?  And yes, we checked all over the poster and the metal van for clues but it only had that thrift store price sticker.

Pendelton Mills has this 1000 piece puzzle of Patchwork rugs/quilts/wall hangings.  Mego made this one a lot easier for me to understand by presenting it as 20 small puzzles.  We each picked different designs, completing about 2/3rds of the puzzle, and then worked on the remaining images together.

Sunday Randomness #275: Bringing puzzles back into our lives Late June into July sees puzzles 16, 17, and 18

 

300 piece Buffalo Puzzle Vivid collection "Rainbow City" was a fun little puzzle-smaller pieces but it came together quickly since the mirror images were very different.  

Back to another 1000 piece!  Cobble Hill made this scrumptious Breakfast Sweets puzzle.  Who would have known that pancakes in different forms would look so alike?!?!

July saw us going to a simple 500 piece puzzle from Bits and Pieces of animals at a picnic. 

Dowdle 300 piece puzzle Festival of Trees

The title pretty much sums up the puzzle.  Made through Dowdle Folk Art, this three hundred piece puzzle didn't take us too long to put together even though we were thrown off just a bit by the long rectangular shape rather than the more squarish rectangle of some other puzzles we've completed.  The puzzle had many different trees and costumes, making it a fun little one to finish as we put together different sections representing the Festival of Trees. Thanks to my friend for giving us the puzzle for Christmas one year!

Usborne Famous Women 550 piece puzzle

Hedgehog again was up for more of a challenge so we completed most of this 550 piece puzzle without using the picture.  However, with the last hundred or so pieces we needed more help to fit together the word sections.  So we did use the picture during the last few days.  The puzzle incorporates quiz questions in the puzzle and we knew some of the answers but definitely not all of them.  A fun and informative puzzle about strong, brave, creative and pioneering women inspiring a new generation of women to be pioneers too!

300 Piece Search and Find Puzzle

We completed this Walter Wick 300 piece puzzle back in October but I'm behind on posting about it.  I figured it was time for another puzzle post since no one ventured a guess on the mystery plant.  (A one dollar incentive apparently doesn't go very far these days.)   The Walter Wick puzzle was fun but it actually got a bit confusing with all the beads, especially the blue beads winding throughout the puzzle.  We're currently working on an Usborne puzzle about famous women.

Pearls Puzzle

Our most recent puzzle completion: An Anne Geddes design in a small 100 piece puzzle that I picked up at Deseret Industries for $.75.  It only took Hedgehog about 15 minutes to piece this together.   Hedgehog remarked occasionally about finding matching pearls. We had a 1000 piece woodland otter puzzle out for months that we finally just put away because everyone had stopped working on it.  We do better with completing the 500 or less piece puzzles.

550 Piece Apothecary Puzzle

In about a week's time, Hedgehog completed this 550 piece jigsaw puzzle titled "The Apothecary" by Lee Dubin and manufactured by SunsOut.  We've moved some furniture around and reclaimed a larger table that was downstairs so now the puzzle making can continue.  Puzzle making was hampered for a couple of years by the lack of space and the lack of stability of the old card table with wobbly legs.  The new table enables us to set up the puzzle, have the box lid on hand and line up pieces all on the same table top. Hopefully I'll post a couple more puzzle pictures before the end of summer.

And I have to thank my cousin Dejah whose love for puzzles keeps us interested in puzzles.  She also has a love of the color orange.  If anyone reading this can pass the message on, I've got a  dish towel/pot holder set (new!) that I want to pass on -I just need to run it over to Ardie and Lorraine's sometime.

Bargain Buy #2: 750 pieces, dozens of animals, 1 ark

Dowdle Folk Art has some of the greatest puzzle pictures for humor and variety.
We recently completed the 750 piece puzzle featuring Noah's Ark: Partly Cloudy With a Chance For Rain.

The top right is the puzzle picture over our completed puzzle.

The top left picture is the completed picture with different lighting (still trying to figure out how to get decent lighting for our pictures with this digital camera).

The bottom picture is the poem on the back of the box by David Halling that accompanies the puzzle.


(disclaimer: We bought this particular puzzle "used" from a local thrift store for $1.00 and received nothing from the Dowdle Co. in compensation.)

Little Turtle Puzzle

Latest puzzle-103 pieces. This was completed awhile ago but I just didn't get around to posting about it.

Too busy with reading, gardening, walking, baking, sorting, making, creating, coloring, cleaning, cooking, running, playing, sleeping, painting, building, etc...

400 piece Flower Puzzle

Most recently completed puzzle. Oval shaped. Just a bit harder to do this puzzle but not as hard as originally anticipated. The flower design made it easier and the 400 pieces almost seemed easy-maybe we're getting better at this hobby.

Adding another puzzle maker

Love this Peanuts puzzle of reading. All the puzzles in this post are 63 piece puzzles that were each completed in less than an hour (usually a lot less.) Eva has now joined us in completing puzzles. She did the reading puzzle and the baseball puzzle on her own.


Sarah completed the camp puzzle and the Snoopy "Joe Cool" puzzles below but the 63 piece puzzles were just too easy so she let Eva do two puzzles above. My parents had these in storage and we were looking for some easy puzzles to complete after the 750 piece lighthouse. These fit the bill well. Cute, easy and full of confidence building all in the short time frame of an afternoon.


It seems strange somehow that puzzles are really logical art. One takes the pieces and puts together a beautiful picture from what was just a concept in the artist's mind in the beginning. Making puzzles helps me to feel creative and I hope the girls sometimes feel that way also.

500 Pc. Making Friends Animal Puzzle

Here's the latest puzzle that we just completed. Sarah received this for a "white elephant" gift back at Christmas time. Sarah and I worked on it about equally and Eva and Jessica put in pieces here and there when they had the inclination. This was a 500 piece puzzle with the thick pieces that are so much easier to put together than some of the new puzzles with thinner pieces.

This particular puzzle was made by www.sunsout.com which has many other wonderful puzzles including some from Utah artist, James Christensen.

The link below goes to an article from the Harvard Health Publications talking about the benefits of encouragement while doing jigsaw puzzles. It does point out that encouragement is more beneficial than instruction as far as completing the puzzles. The jigsaw puzzle section comes under "cultivate social support." So jigsaw puzzles can help prevent memory loss and promote self-confidence. We've found it's better to have success with a good quality puzzle with fewer pieces and then work up to puzzles with more pieces. Sometimes there's a feeling to be over ambitious and we've ended up with a puzzle that just collects dust rather than collecting connected pieces.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Preventing_memory_loss.htm

Turtle Town Puzzle

We recently completed this 500 piece puzzle with a lot of help from Sarah and some help from other family members.

Birthday Puzzle #2

Geburtstag-puzzlespiel #2

This second birthday puzzle Sarah received came from MB Puzzle. It was 100 pieces, measuring 12 1/2" x 15" with no official title. The MB puzzle site is a part of the Hasbro site-who are the well know makers of such games as Battleship, Candyland, Sorry, Life, Clue, Hungry Hungry Hippos and many more games under the retail names of Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers. Plus there are many more games of which I only recognized a few. For a more complete listing check their website at www.hasbro.com/games/

Birthday Puzzle

One of the gifts Sarah received was this 300 piece puzzle: Roger Nannini "Home Sweet Home" Apple Glen with 300 pieces and measuring 24" x 18" from Ceaco. It mentions it's for ages 12 and up but we all worked on it a little and finished it in less then a couple of weeks. All the detail and words in the puzzle made it easier to put together than the tiger puzzle we did earlier.

Piece by Piece Puzzles

Another way to have quality family time and help ward off Alzheimer's at the same time! Yes, you too can enjoy puzzle making with your family. An article from Ezine Articles addresses how one can "Create A Family Tradition" utilizing Jigsaw puzzles. The article also confirms that putting together puzzles utilizes both sides of the brain at the same time-a feat not often achieved by most activities. (Another activity utilizing both brain hemispheres is crawling.)

A different article from USA Today talks about hobbies and how they can help slow Alzheimer's. Puzzles are mentioned in the article. One of my latest family hobbies has been completing puzzle on a little rickety card table with the kids.

These are a couple of the recent puzzles we've done. The Bakery Bear was missing two pieces which made it a bit more challenging.

But the Tiger puzzle had so many pieces that were similar in shading that we almost thought it would never be completed.



But here they are in completed glory and we just completed the outside frame for the next puzzle.