Tag: puzzles

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Cozy Retreat

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!

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Hue Wormhole

Hue Wormhole is a beautiful puzzle by Wenjia Wang.  This is a 1000-piece, circular puzzle from Antelope Puzzles, and it was a lot of fun to put together. I have never done a circular puzzle this big and it actually ended up being too big for the puzzle board I was doing it on.  I had to carefully transfer it to foam board to get photos of it.

The colors in this puzzle are gorgeous, and the quality is impressive! The pieces were a nice thickness and fit together well. I started with the border and then worked my way from the outer green and blue up to the purple edge. The greens and orange went pretty well, but then I got a big bogged down in the reds. I kept working it and eventually got to the purples, which were a lot easier.

All in all, this was a joy to assemble and I highly recommend it!

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My First Puzzle Swap

On Friday afternoon, I attended my very first puzzle swap! It was held by Susquehanna Township Parks and Recreation, and it was a lot of fun.

Each person who brought puzzles set them up on a table or on chairs around the room and then walked around the room checking out all the puzzles. Once you found a puzzle you liked, you would ask the person to see if there was a puzzle of yours they would like to trade for.

I took six puzzles but several people brought quite a few more than that, and it was fun to see all the different options. I ended up trading five of mine and donating the last one to the township summer camp program. The picture above shows the puzzles I came home with after the event.

It was a great event and it sounds like they might do it again, which I would really enjoy.

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Puzzle Chess with Jenn

Last Friday night, our good friends Bill & Jenn came over and, while they were there, Jenn and I played two rounds of puzzle chess. We used two 100-piece puzzles I had on hand. It was a lot of fun! I did manage to win both rounds, but the first one was only by ten seconds!!

Here are our results. We started with 20 minutes on each of our clocks.

The first puzzle was Beautiful Wild Animals from a generic Amazon brand, MJPHDM. It was a surprisingly good quality. The pieces were sturdy and fairly thick, and it came with a nice, big poster.


The second puzzle was Cosmos, and it came from Ceaco. The quality was decent, but the pieces were thinner and there was no poster.

In case you are wondering how to play puzzle chess, here’s how it works. You pick a small puzzle (we used 100 pieces) and you build the border together and lay out all the other pieces. Then you start a chess clock, which you can get on your phone, and take turns putting one piece into the puzzle. Once you have placed your piece, you tap your clock to end your turn and start the other person’s time. Whoever has the most time left when the puzzle is done is the winner!

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Spring Tea Party

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.

Here are some closeups of the bunnies:

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Country Life Crochet

Country Life Crochet is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cobble Hill, and the artist is Jessica White. She has actually created several different crochet puzzle designs, and I have this one and the Halloween one.

The image is amazing! The stitches are so detailed, and they look so real that you would think you could touch them. That level of detail combined with the random cut of the pieces made this puzzle incredibly difficult, though. It took several sessions to finish it, even with my friend Suzanne helping one evening.

Here are some close ups of a few of the blocks:

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Catching Up – March 2025

March has been one of my busiest months in a while, and I am ready for things to slow down.

One of the things that has been keeping me quite busy is being on the planning committee for the 10th Autism Mother to Mother Luncheon that is taking place this Saturday. I am in charge of registration, which also includes getting everything ready that we are going to hand out in the folders for each mom. I am glad to be working on that and not more people-intensive things like fundraising or recruiting volunteers, but it has still been stressful at times.

I haven’t been able to do much puzzling because of the luncheon planning. I completed two puzzles on my own and two puzzles with friends at the church brunch & craft event. Even with that, one of the puzzles I did on my own was only 99 pieces!

Here is how far I am on my current puzzle:

I did reach a milestone on my puzzle Instagram – I hit 1000 followers! I am quite pleased by that. I only have 150 followers on my Bookstagram, although probably half of those are people I know IRL and I usually average only 10 likes per post on there. I’m not really sure if it will grow much because most of the accounts I look at to consider following are into romance, romantasy, fantasy, or thrillers. On the other end are more literary accounts, which I prefer but don’t feel I can compare myself to. It is harder to find people similar to myself on there, whereas with puzzles it is quite easy to find common ground and even if their tastes are different from mine, I don’t usually mind too much.

I have also started posting my puzzles and book reviews on my Facebook feed. There are a few people who like them and since they aren’t on Instagram, I do it mainly for them. I get nervous posting books that relate to my faith journey because I have a number of conservative friends on there, but no one has said anything mean or argumentative so far. I don’t really want to spark debates; I just want to share what is going on with me and hope maybe it will make someone think a bit.

Michael is still job hunting, but he has had some success in his health journey. He has been climbing stairs during the winter while it has been too cold to go on walks and can really tell a difference in his stamina. He also weighed in at 199 lbs a few days ago when we saw the weight management doctor, which was very exciting! I am very happy for him to be taking care of himself so well. I wish I could say the same about myself.

Here is a screenshot of my puzzle Instagram when it hit 1000 followers:

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Parenthese Enchantee

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.

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Weekend Recap

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.

What did you do this weekend?

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Cozy Kitchen

Cozy Kitchen is a 99-piece mini puzzle from Trevell, and the artist is Marion Réau (aka Marion Brouillard). This was my first Trevell puzzle, and I was super impressed with the quality. Some mini puzzles aren’t the best quality, but this one was really nice.

This image was also done in a 500-piece size, but it was a limited edition and is hard to find these days, so I was glad to at least be able to do the mini version. I just love this image – the colors are great and I love all the little details.

I also ordered another Trevell puzzle with this one, Parenthèse Enchantée. It is 500 pieces, so I’m looking forward to doing that one.