Tag: puzzling

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Peanuts Baseball

Peanuts Baseball is a fun 500-piece puzzle from Aquarius that I purchased to use for the Winter Bingo I am participating in this season. It depicts several different scenes showing the characters from the Peanuts cartoon playing baseball.

This is the first puzzle I have done from this brand, and I was very happy with it. The pieces were a nice thickness and fit together quite well. There were no false fits, and I was able to move sections around pretty easily. The only downside was that it was missing one piece at the end.

Such a fun, colorful puzzle! I would be open to doing more from this brand.

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Songbirds

Songbirds is a super cute puzzle from Mudpuppy. It is 500 pieces, and the artist is Neiko Ng. I had originally received it from a Secret Santa exchange during Christmas 2022, but I donated the puzzle before doing it to a drive they were having at our church specifically asking for new games and puzzles. I did really like it, though, so I ended up purchasing it for myself recently.

It was a very easy puzzle to do. The birds all came together quite quickly. There were a large number of light blue pieces with musical notation on them that were harder to put in. Once I sorted by shape, however, they went in pretty quickly as well.

I was very happy with the quality of this puzzle. There was virtually no puzzle dust, and the pieces fit together very well. I was able to move sections around fairly easily, and there were no false fits.

I am so glad I got this puzzle again. There is one other Mudpuppy puzzle that I donated which I have put back on my wish list, called Hungry Plants.

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Love Stamps (Repeat)

In honor of Valentine’s Day month, I decided to redo a puzzle I had done a couple of years ago. Love Stamps is a 1000-piece puzzle from White Mountain, and it is a collage of U.S. stamps with the theme of love. The artist is Lois B. Sutton.

This was a really easy puzzle to do. Even though it was 1000 pieces, it took me less than 3 hours to complete. I think it helped that I had done it before, but also it was very easy to sort and then put together each section.

Another reason I redid this one is for the Winter Bingo I am doing for a Facebook challenge. It fulfilled the Romantic square on the board. I only have three squares left, and I will have gotten all 6 bingo entries from the contest!

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Hawaiian Food Truck Festival

Such a fun puzzle! I got this one from my son for my birthday in 2022 and just got around to it last week. It’s called Hawaiian Food Truck Festival, and it’s a 1000-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games.

I enjoyed all of the fun details in this one. The border came together pretty easily, but then when I was working on the sky, I realized there were several sections in the wrong place. It took quite a while to get it straightened out.

Towards the end, I had to start relying heavily on the poster to figure out where individual pieces went. At the very end, even that wasn’t working, and I had to sort by shape to place the last few pieces.



Even though it’s a very busy puzzle, I still really enjoyed it.

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Cinque Terre

Cinque Terre is a part of the Vivid Collection from Buffalo Games. It’s a 300-piece puzzle that I got from a puzzle box in my area. Even though it has a lot of detail and areas of sky and water, it was pretty easy to put together due to the low piece count.

I loved how rich the colors were, and I enjoyed the detailed buildings all crammed together on the cliffside. I didn’t realize when I was doing it that it is an actual place in northwest Italy.

This is another one I might hold onto for a while so I can do it again. Eventually I will probably return it to the puzzle box.

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Winnie the Pooh

Winnie the Pooh is a 1000-piece Ravensburger Disney puzzle that I got at a local bookstore to use for the Winter Bingo I am participating in. It fit the squares of Birthday or Balloons (it had both!) and Disney or Cartoon (with bonus entry for using Pooh or Tinkerbell).

It was a really fun puzzle to put together. The quality was great all around, although of course there was a lot of puzzle dust and no reference poster. But the difficulty level was just right and I didn’t get stuck at any point.

Such a cute image! I loved the amount of detail in the puzzle. There was a lot going on, but it wasn’t chaotic at all. Highly recommend!

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Plant Life

Plant Life by Galison is a 1000-piece panoramic puzzle that I got from the local puzzle box. The artist is Julie Seabrook Ream. I chose it because it was a very pretty image, although I wasn’t sure how hard it would be. 

Well, it turned out to be very hard!! It was pretty slow going right from the beginning. The first day I did the border and parts of the yellow, orange, red, and pink sections. I wish I had kept track of my time, but I do know that I spent a lot of hours even though it was only four days of puzzling.

The second day I moved onto the light green and some of the purple. There were a lot of dark pieces that were hard to see, which was made worse by the glare on the pieces.

The third day I filled in more of the sections I had already worked on and started the green section. The green section was definitely the hardest – it was the largest section and had the most similar pieces.

On the fourth day, I think I worked for about ten hours and I finished the puzzle. At one point, with about 200 pieces left, I seriously considered quitting, but I persevered and got it done.

I am glad I kept going and finished the puzzle. It is such a beautiful image. I considered framing it, but frames this size on Amazon run about $80, and even on Ebay or Etsy, the best price I could find was $70. So I ended up taking it apart and it is going to go back to the puzzle box for someone else to tackle.

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Ice Cream Truck

Ice Cream Truck is the third food truck puzzle I have done from Ceaco. These 500-pieces puzzles are fun, colorful puzzles that I have really enjoyed doing. The artist is Stephanie Peterson Jones.

I do have to admit that this one was my least favorite of the three in terms of quality. There were a lot of pieces that were stuck together and had to be torn apart. They also didn’t lay flat as nicely as the other Ceaco puzzles I have done. And there was a lot of puzzle dust!

The image, however, was great. I loved all the signage and the bright, colorful details in the puzzle. Even with more sky than the other ones had, it was still pretty easy to put together.

As much as I have enjoyed these, I am not planning to get any more of them unless I run across them in the puzzle box or at a thrift store. I’m ready to tackle some other subject matter!

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Needlework Station

I recently found a Facebook group for a puzzle box in my area. It is located on the side of the person’s home, and people can drop off puzzles they don’t want anymore and take puzzles that other people have dropped off. I visited it for the first time last weekend and brought home three puzzles to do.

The next day I chose the one I was the most excited about and put it together. It was a 500-piece puzzle from Ravensburger called Needlework Station. It was a large format puzzle, so the pieces were bigger than on a normal puzzle, which I kind of liked. The artist is Lars Stewart.

This puzzle was a real joy to do. The sorting was easy and the pieces were great quality. They fit together well and it was easy to move sections around. The colors and textures in the image were colorful and interesting.

Now I have to decide whether to take it back and exchange it for another puzzle or keep it around for a while to do again later!

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Go Camping!

Go Camping! is an adorable 500-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Olivia Gibbs. I needed a summery scene for the bingo challenge I am doing, and it fit the bill nicely.

This puzzle was a lot of fun to put together. I like the piece shapes of the Ceaco puzzles I have done, and they fit together well. The image also has a lot of bright colors and distinct textures, which made it a pretty easy one to solve.