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.
This is the Disney Together Time Puzzle from Ceaco. It is 400 pieces.
I have done this image before, but when I saw it in a local puzzle box in this version, I knew I wanted to try it. Together Time is a type of puzzle that has three different size pieces in one puzzle.
The idea is that a group of people of different ages or abilities can work on a puzzle together. I think it is a good concept, and I would be interested to do a puzzle like this with a child to see how they liked it.
I love rainbow puzzles, and this was a fun one. It’s so satisfying to work a puzzle section by section. I got this one at the puzzle swap and assumed I would do it once and pass it along, but I think I might keep it to do again.
The puzzle is from the ColorStory line, but I couldn’t find a specific title. The brand is Ceaco, and the artist is Lars Stewart. It is 750 pieces.
Colorful Harvest is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Tracy Flickinger. I first did it with friends at Thanksgiving last year, but have been wanting to do it again solo.
For the last few weeks, I have been participating in a puzzle by number challenge in a Facebook group I belong to, and one of the prompts was mushrooms. I had a 1000-piece puzzle picked out to do, but I kept putting it off. I do want to do that puzzle, but I have done some harder 1000-piece puzzles recently and was just not feeling it right now. I had another 300-piece option that I was considering, but then someone in the group posted this puzzle for the mushrooms prompt and I got excited, knowing I had this puzzle and hadn’t remembered it had mushrooms on it.
This is my last puzzle for the challenge, so I am looking forward to what I call “mood puzzling” again. There is actually one more prompt left on the challenge, but I get a freebie for being a subscriber to the YouTube channel run by the group organizer.
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.
Christmas Camper is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Stephanie Peterson Jones. This was an adorable, quick puzzle that I have been saving for the Christmas season. I knew it would be pretty easy, so I did it without looking at the image to make the puzzling last a bit longer. I love all of the festive details!
Colorful Harvest is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Tracy Flickinger. I have done several of her puzzles and really enjoy her style. The quality of this one was good, which was nice because Ceaco can be hit or miss.
I took this puzzle with me to Thanksgiving at Renee’s house. I thought the image was appropriate to the holiday and also though the smaller piece count would be good for the time we had available. Renee and I were about 75% done when our friend Mike showed up, and he joined us to finish the puzzle.
I liked this puzzle a lot and will definitely redo it sometime by myself to enjoy it even more.
Ceaco has a series of puzzles called Happy Camper, and I picked up this 5-in-1 multipack featuring some of those images. I started doing Happy Camper puzzles after I finished all of the Food Trucks that are currently out. Most of them are only 300 pieces, which makes for a short puzzling experience, but they are really cute, so I like them. I thought this pack would be a good way to get a bunch of them for a lower price.
I was not impressed with this pack of puzzles at all. Some of the images are cut off versions of the original puzzles, and the quality was terrible. The image was coming off the cardboard in a lot of places. A lot of the pieces were damaged and a couple had even lost the knobs entirely. The puzzles are cute, but I would recommend getting the individual ones instead of the multipack. Those are usually a bit better quality.
One thing I did enjoy was that for the last two puzzles I did (the vertical 300-pieces ones), I solved them without looking at the image while I was puzzling. It gave me a different experience to what I normally do, and I enjoyed it. It was fun figuring out where sections went as the puzzle came together. I don’t know if I would like to do this all the time; I think it could be quite frustrating on a larger, more detailed puzzle.
Farm Life is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Olivia Gibbs. I have done several of hers now and I really enjoy them. The art is so charming, and the puzzles are a lot of fun.
Sea Town Harbor is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Olivia Gibbs. I really enjoy her artwork; I find it so charming, and this one was no exception. The puzzle was very easy to solve, given the large piece sizes.
I especially liked the houses and the boats; those are some of my favorite elements to put together. And the flowers, water, and sky were no problem because there are so few pieces.
In So Many Words 