Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
Marrakesh is a 1000-piece puzzle from eeBoo, and the artist is Miranda Softoniou. It is a delightful and colorful image showing a street in a market area, and I had a lot of fun solving it. I really enjoy puzzles from this brand, especially the ones featuring scenes from various cities around the world. Even though there is a lot going on in the image, it was not overwhelming.
Park Avenue is a 500-piece puzzle from Puzzle Crush, and the artist is Joy LaForme. Interestingly enough, the first puzzle that I did back in 2021 was from Puzzle Crush. I had some definite quality issues with that one, but I am glad to say that the quality of this puzzle was much better and I had no problems with it.
I found this image to be so pretty that I bought it fairly quickly after seeing it. I knew the pink foliage would be tricky to put together, but I figured it couldn’t be too bad since it was only 500 pieces. And I was right – the bottom and middle parts went together easily, and once I shape sorted, the top part wasn’t too bad.
I would consider more from this brand and from this artist, who I know has a lot of puzzles out there.
Trick or Treat Hotel is a 1000-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Charles Wysocki. I purchased this several months ago and have been holding onto it for Halloween puzzling. My friend Suzanne was over one night and helped me get it started. She did the border, which she loves doing, and I started on the house.
It took me a few days of puzzling to finish this one, mainly because the colors are so dark and similar to each other. I figured that would happen going into it, though, so I wasn’t upset by it. I really loved putting the house together. The rest was okay, but the house was great.
Happy Halloween!!
Welcome to Spooky Town is a 500-piece puzzle from Mudpuppy, and the artist is Stephanie Birdsong. I picked it up because it was such a fun Halloween image, and it did end up being a lot of fun to put together.
I have always liked Halloween, even though I don’t really decorate for it. I always enjoyed taking my son trick or treating, and I also enjoyed the times I got to hand out candy. Now that my son is grown, he really enjoys handing out candy to trick or treaters as well. The last couple of years, he has done that at his dad’s house because they get a lot of kids in that area.
Mid-Century Modern Dream Home is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cobble Hill, and the artist is Diane Dempsey. The quality of this puzzle is outstanding. I chose it because I liked the image, which shows a variety of mid-century modern homes, along with some cars from that time frame.
With all that said, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have liked. There were a lot of the same colors spread across the puzzle, so it was hard to pick out a section to work on. It also had more brown and beige than I like. I do still plan to get some of their retro Christmas puzzles, though.
Midnight in San Francisco is part of the Cities at Midnight series from KI Puzzles. It is 1000 pieces, and the artist is Mandalina Tantareanu. This was my first puzzle from this brand, and I was impressed by the quality. The pieces fit together well but weren’t too hard to take apart when I was done.
I was drawn to the beautiful color palette. The colors are vivd and soft at the same time, if that makes sense. I also love doing buildings, which this puzzle has several of, as well as a cable car and a suspension bridge. This was a nice challenge and a very enjoyable puzzle.
The Gardener’s Palette is a 1000-piece puzzle from Ravensburger. The artist is Anne Searle.
This one had been on my wish list for quite a while. I think the image is so pretty, but I also thought it would be doable since each type of flower has its own block within the puzzle. I stopped at Barnes & Noble before my last therapy appointment and picked it up then. Last week, I had a tooth pulled and my friend Renee brought me a dinner of soft foods and hung out to watch some Grey’s Anatomy. I had already seen the episodes and was getting restless, so I decided to start this puzzle. After sorting the pieces, I was glad I had my little vacuum because of course there is so much puzzle dust with Ravensburger.
I worked on the puzzle little by little over the next several days and it was such a joy to do. I love the quality of Ravensburger puzzles. It was so much nicer than some of the puzzles I have done recently (either because of poor quality or having been done so many times that they were soft and breaking apart). The image is just beautiful and it even has words to put together to identify each flower. (I love puzzling words!)
So pretty!
This was my second box of four puzzles from my Completing the Puzzle subscription. I enjoyed three out of the four, but that fourth one had me questioning whether I want to continue with the subscription! I have decided to give it another month and see how it goes.
The first puzzle I did was Sugar Spectrum from the brand Fred. It was 500 pieces, and the artist was Emily Blincoe. It is a classic rainbow style puzzle and was a lot of fun, as well as being pretty easy. I have done several puzzles of this style, and this one was a good representation of it.
My second puzzle was Le Cinque Terre, which was also from Fred and 500 pieces. This is the one that made me question everything. I really liked the image from Maurizio Santucci and Elisa Certi. I enjoy buildings and this one had adorable ones. At first glance, the sky and sea didn’t seem too bad, but they were actually horrible. I had to take the sky apart several times before finally getting it together – there were so many false fits that I almost gave up. When I finally finished the sky, I found there was one piece missing. Ugh!
I did give up on the sea. The parts with a design on them weren’t bad, but the plain blue pieces seemed to go together correctly until I realized I had two open spots but the two pieces I had left were different shapes than the openings I had. I did find one piece out of place and fixed that, but I couldn’t find the culprits that caused the mismatch at the end. I finally gave up and just left the pieces out.
I had another Fred puzzle in my box but decided to switch it up and do the MasterPieces 300-piece puzzle from Dean Russo called Mad Kitty. This one had large EZ Grip pieces that would be great for someone with arthritis or some other hand issue. It was random cut as well, which was fun. I love cats, so this image was great. I also enjoyed how colorful and chaotic the pattern was. Super fun!
The last puzzle I completed from this month’s box was Beach Trash, also from Fred. It was 500 pieces and the artist was Emily Blincoe, just like the Sugar Spectrum puzzle I did earlier. It was one I had seen online before but never quite liked enough to buy it outright, so I was glad to get the chance to do it this way. It was a good puzzle; the difficulty was medium low so I never got stuck or frustrated.
I find it interesting how I can have such a negative feeling towards the subscription when three of the four puzzles had absolutely no problems at all. That one bad experience almost overwhelms the positive feelings from the other three. But, like I said above, I am not going to cancel just yet. I am going to give it another month and see how it goes.
It has been a busy few months, yet I’m not sure how much progress I have made on things.
Michael did have two work assessments, but still has one more scheduled. He is applying for jobs as well. I believe his job coach is now on board with our feelings that Michael would do best in an office environment and without customer interaction. Now the hard part is finding something close by and part time.
Michael’s health is good. He has been losing weight. He is also meeting with his therapist regularly and has really taken ownership of those sessions. I recently took him to the podiatrist, which we learned should probably have been done several years ago, and he gave him some suggestions to assist with his issues. The main problem is flat feet.
Last weekend Michael flew to Minneapolis with his dad and stepmom for his cousin Kyle’s wedding. It seemed to go fairly well, although he was glad to get home.
I am still working on my health issues.
Mental Health – I am very happy with my psych nurse practitioner. We tried increasing my sertraline to help with my anxiety, but it had some side effects that I didn’t like. So now we are trying buspirone, which is supposed to help with anxiety but also may help with some other issues I have been experiencing.
GI – My allergist determined that I do not need Dupixent. She said my condition would now be described as PPI responsive esophageal eosinophila. She wanted me to take the PPI for three more months and then see the GI doc. It took two weeks and several phone calls to get the prescription to the right place and to get the GI clinic to schedule my appointment. It was very frustrating and I had to escalate the issue at both doctors’ offices.
Dental – I have had a cleaning, two fillings done, and a root canal. Next up is a permanent filling over the root canal and an extraction. After that, I’m going to check what’s still available on my insurance and make plans for additional work to be done.
Diabetes – My diet went downhill for a couple of months, but I am doing better with it now. I was starting to feel really tired all of the time and even had some sleep disturbances which my PCP thinks may be related to my blood sugar. She ordered me a Dexcom continuous glucose monitor, and I am looking forward to being able to track my blood sugar and hopefully be more in control of things.
Arthritis – The arthritis in my right hip has been acting up lately. My hip hurt so badly one day that I wasn’t able to put my right sock on, and I had to have Michael help me. After that, I bought a sock aid that Renee recommended, which is really nice. I also had difficulty standing for greeting at church last time I did it. I spoke to Pastor Shannon afterwards and asked if they had a tall chair that I could sit on while greeting. They do have one, and she agreed that I could use it for that.
In fun news, I have been spending my down time reading, puzzling, and streaming shows. I started a second Instagram account to post about books, since my first one has become mostly puzzles. I haven’t posted much on the book account yet, but I hope to keep adding to it.
In puzzle news, I bought a fun accessory – a desktop vacuum. It works great to clean up puzzle dust and even has a nozzle to get in the corners. I also framed my 2000-piece puzzle, Novel Avenue, and hung it above my couch. The frame I got is a bit flimsy since it was intended for a picture or a poster, not a puzzle, but it works for now.
Last Saturday, Kim brought over her puppy Remus for our weekly lunch and a movie. He had just gotten fixed, so she didn’t want to leave him alone. At one point, he laid down on the couch in the same spot that her previous dog Sabbath had chosen when he was here shortly before he passed away. It was so sweet.
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.
Here are the completed puzzles from the set:
In So Many Words 