The Colours of Spring is a 500-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Terry Redlin. Redlin is a new-to-me artist, and I thought the image was kind of charming on the box, but I found it to be darker on the puzzle than it was on the box, which made it somewhat difficult.
This was another one I got for free from the friend who moved away. She had told me she couldn’t guarantee the puzzles were complete, but I was still quite surprised to have a total of eight missing pieces! There was also so much dog hair in the box – more than I’ve ever seen before in a used puzzle.
This one unfortunately had to go in the trash. I am not willing to pass it on to anyone with so many pieces missing.
Mothers Day at the Park is a sweet Americana image by Sharon Ascherl. This puzzle was 500 pieces and came from Sure-Lox, and I am pretty sure this is my first puzzle from both the brand and the artist.
I was impressed by the quality of this puzzle, especially given that they aren’t very expensive. I got this one for free from my friend who moved away recently and enjoyed it quite a bit.
Check out my puzzle haul! A woman from my church is moving and gave me a bunch of puzzles she didn’t want to take with her. Of course, I said I’ll take them all! I’ll do the ones I like and them pass them all to other puzzlers.
The first ones I chose to do were the set of Thomas Kinkade puzzles. They were from Ceaco, and there were 3 of them. I have never done any of his artwork and thought I would give these a try even though they are not my normal style.
I had a pleasant time doing them. The largest one was a bit tricky because there was a lot more sky and also the border has a lot of false fits. I had to mess around with the border a few times to get it right.
Dream Universe is a 500-piece puzzle. It is unbranded.
I got this at the puzzle swap I attended recently. Originally, I had thought I might skip it and just put it back in my swap pile, but then I saw that it had letters on the back of the pieces so that I could sort it into smaller sections. So I did it that way and quite enjoyed it.
The quality was pretty good, especially for a no-name brand.
Blackbirds Roost at Mill Creek is a 500-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Charles Wysocki. I just love his images, especially ones like this with a lot of buildings and other interesting elements. I love the coloring of the sky as well.
This was a nice, easy puzzle that was very enjoyable to put together. Here are a few closeups of some of the details:
Cozy Retreat is a 500-piece puzzle from Ravensburger, and the artist is Nancy Wernersbach. It is one of their large format puzzles with oversized, easy-to-grip pieces, and it has a nice matte finish.
I have done a few other large format puzzles from Ravensburger and enjoyed them very much. This one has been on my wishlist for a while, and I’m glad I got it. It was a nice, relaxing puzzle to put together, very low difficulty and such an interesting image.
Here are some closeups:
I can definitely see myself revisiting this puzzle many times!
Spring Tea Party is a 500-piece puzzle from Galison, and the artist is Victoria Ball. It is such a sweet image, and it was very easy to put together. The colors are a bit muted compared to what I normally prefer, but I still enjoyed it a lot.
Parenthese Enchantee is a 500 piece puzzle from Trevell, and the artist is La Jeanette.
Such a gorgeous image! I have been eyeing this puzzle for a while now and am so glad I got it. I love all the beautiful colors and interesting details, and the matte finish on the pieces is so nice. The packaging is wonderful too. It came with a nice poster and a cotton drawstring bag holding the pieces.
This was a fun weekend! On Saturday, I attended a Brunch & Craft women’s event at my church. Everyone was invited to come for brunch and bring any craft they wanted to work on while socializing with each other. I don’t really have any crafts I am working on right now, so my friend Suzanne and I decided to do puzzles together.
There was a good turnout at the event, and everyone was talking about how we would like to do it again. I brought four puzzles for us to choose from, all ones I had previously done. Our friend Brianne joined us for the first one, Mountain Camper from Ceaco. It was a 300-piece puzzle and went very quickly with the three of us working together.
After that, Brianne decided to do some coloring, and Suzanne and I did Paper Paradise from Galison, a 500-piece puzzle. One of the other women at the event who enjoys doing puzzles stopped over and helped for a little while. We finished just under the wire.
This morning I was a greeter at church. The pastor started a new series for Lent called Practicing the Way. It was inspired by the book of that name by John Mark Comer. The sermon was very good and we also had a surprise visit by our bishop. We gave out t-shirts to 5 newcomers today, which was exciting.
This afternoon we had a small birthday celebration for Michael, who turns 23 tomorrow. The party included Renee, Chris, Evan, and Hans. We had lunch followed by the cake Michael has requested – chocolate with chocolate frosting with chocolate chips in the frosting. He got some fun gifts including a metal 100-sided die and a Nintendo 64 t-shirt. After that, the boys played games on the Switch while us old folks napped and chatted on the couch.
I do wish I had one more day to the weekend to decompress a bit, but I am glad I was able to participate in both events. I will get a bit of down time tomorrow after work since Michael’s therapist is out of town and Michael won’t have an appointment like he usually does.
Dog Walkers is a 500-piece puzzle from Dowdle. I received this as a gift from a friend and did it now after using the randomizer on my puzzle app to pick my next puzzle.
Honestly, I am not a huge fan of this brand. Something about the artwork just does not appeal to me. I also encountered a lot of false fits with this puzzle, especially in the top section. The top third of the puzzle took quite a while to complete.
