The Last of the 500's!

Finally finished the last puzzle in the 500's!  I have one 529 piece left and then a 750, then on to the 1,000s!  So my posting of these will start to take a little bit longer.  Plus Princess number 2 is due any day now so that will put a pause in things too.

 

 

Anyway, here is the picture.  When I first dumped out the pieces they all looked alike, but after working with it for awhile I started noticing the differences.  It really wasn't that hard.  This is entitled "The Predators" and I finished it on 10/29/2012. The past 500s puzzles have been your typical Big Ben or Croxley brands.  This one was different and I wasn't real pleased with how well the pieces stayed together, but it was much better than that Encore! brand from way back when.  Enjoy!

 

3-D Puzzle

So this isn't the 3-D puzzle you're thinking of.  I did not build up.  Instead when you look at it, some of the frogs "jump" out at you.  It's made out of a thicker material.  LegoWarrior helped me put it together.  Thank goodness he did.  Because of the 3-D material it gave me a headache at times.  I know it doesn't show in the picture, but just take my word for it.

Overall, I'm GLAD this one is done.

500 pieces 10/27/2012

3-year-old Doing 500-Piece Puzzle

Thought I would make this a separate post to brag about my 3-year-old.  Miss Princess is absolutely amazing.  We homeschool so she has been learning from birth with intent.  She can read at an early second grade level and puts puzzles together all the time.  But I don't think she has ever attempted more pieces than about 100.

Anyways, I started on a 500 piece and she asked if she could help.  I realized this was good mommy-daughter time so I said she could.  She immediately recognized that I had separated the edge pieces from the middle pieces and she started working on the edge pieces.  She noticed as well that there were a bunch of blue edge pieces.  She pulled those out and started working them. 

After she got 2-3 together I started really watching her and was so impressed!  She sorted the pieces by shape and then really got to work.  It didn't take her long and this is what she ended up with:

 

She did the entire top edge and about 8 pieces down each edge completely by herself.  No one helped her in the least.  She looked at Grandma (taking the pics) and said "Arn't I cute?"  LOL!  By the time she was done with that I was done with most of the sky which fit right into her edge.  She started working on some mountains and did get one piece in but then got bored and left.   I was just blown away by what she did!  LegoWarrior in the background helped too.  He put the rest of the edge together for me.  Mr. Man and Grandma also put in pieces on this puzzle so it was a family effort.

 

 



500 pieces 9/28/2012

Just more random puzzles from the closet....

500 pieces  9/24/2012

500 pieces 9/25/2012

500 pieces 9/27/2012

500 pieces 9/29/2012

500 pieces 9/29/2012

500 pieces 9/29/2012

200 pieces?  Didn't come with box from rummage sale. 10/01/2012

 500 pieces 10/01/2012

 500 pieces 10/06/2012

500 pieces 10/06/2012

500 pieces 10/06/2012

500 pieces 10/06/2012

500 pieces 10/15/2012

500 pieces 10/22/2012

500 pieces 10/26/2012

500 pieces 10/26/2012

500 pieces  10/27/2012

Yeah Right!

(text from back of puzzle box)

HAHAHAHAHAHA! 

What about when they don't INCLUDE them in the first place?

Another 500 Piece Checked Off

Yesterday I had my 7-year-old climb up and get all the puzzles out of our closet.  I was not going to put my 34-week pregnant self up on a stool to get them down.  I stood by him and sorted them as he brought them out.  We carried them all out to stack on the puzzle table and I had him count them.  36!  Thirty-six puzzles to do before LIFE.  Actually there are 37.  We left a large 5,000 piece in the closet because the box was so big. 

At least now we have a better visual of how many are left.

Mr. Man and I had a date night last night.  Went out to Olive Garden and then came home and did a puzzle.  That is our entertainment.  We don't have t.v. so we don't watch movies together.  We could play cards, we personally like Cribbage, but I beat the pants off him most of the time.  So we puzzle instead.  It's a great lesson in spousal patience and if you are a puzzler you can learn alot about the way your spouse thinks by watching them puzzle. 

ANYWAY, enough psychology.....

Here's the puzzle, very boring looking picture, but all the red lettering made it fun:

 

 

Enjoy!   I'm off to work on another on this quiet Sunday afternoon.

New Puzzling Area!

Since the ultimate goal of getting these smaller puzzles out of the house so I can get LIFE back out,  Mr. Man let me spend some money and buy an 8-foot table to put them together on.  Mainly I will need lots of space for LIFE, but it will come in handy for the smaller puzzles too. 

My mom lives with us and she suggested putting the table in the main area of the house where the kids spend most of their time so in the evenings when I'm puzzling, I can still be around them instead of another room in the house where the table was originally going to go.  My main concern was that I have four, soon to be five, children ages 3-9 and two nephews that are 3 and 6 that come over a couple times a week.  That's six children actively running around a puzzle table?  I don't think so.

We had to come up with a plan.  This is what we did:

This is a corner of our "great room" where the dining room table originally went.  You can't see it in the photo but off to the left by the chair is a desk and a tall bookshelf completely blocking this left side.  Then we put up the three smaller shelves to help block the area.  The kids have all been given specific instructions that this area is completely off limits.  The desk is Douglas', 9, so he is allowed, but all others are to keep out.  There really isn't anything to draw them in there anyway.  Hopefully this set up will keep more puzzle pieces in my puzzles than in small hands. :)

The table of course is large, though I wish I had about three more for LIFE.  We can pull the table out and sit on all sides if we need to.  Yes, there are three chairs at the table.  Mainly they are all for me so when I'm doing LIFE I don't have to drag a chair with me, I can just move around the table.  But for now, one for me, one for Mr. Man and one for Mom if she wants to help.

I was thinking I should come up with a name for our puzzling area.  Any ideas?

(The little thing on the table is a baby monitor in case you're wondering.)

500 Piece Puzzle That Doesn't All Go Together?

So, Mr. Man and I were trying to get a restart on putting some more puzzles together last night.  We pulled out a 500 piece puzzle.  It was new in that it was not opened, but old in that it looks like it's from the 80's.  Just the look of the box and picture made it seem older.   Something I had picked up at a rummage for a quarter.

We have a whole new great area specifically to put puzzles together in which I will show you in a later post, but we sat down with great light, lots of space and cut open the box.  When we dumped out the pieces we first notices that the pieces were all irregular.  Nothing about the shape was defining.  We could tell some of the edge pieces, but not all of them.  So right away that threw Mr. Man off because he doesn't really look at the picture a whole lot.  He looks more at the shape of pieces and then tries them in different spots.  I don't know if that makes sense, but in any case it screwed him up. 

Anyway, because of the irregular shapes it took us a lot longer than initially anticipated.  A 500 piece puzzle we can usually whip off fairly quickly.  I didn't time it, but I know it took a very long time.  We didn't bother starting with the edge because most of it was undefinable.  We just sorted by the main colors/areas and went from there. 

We were going along okay when I had most of the sky done and the sky's edge.  When I noticed that this so called edge piece was not going to go along the edge.  The color was too dark to go in the middle.  So I figured there was just this extra piece.  But later, we got down to the water and the rocks and, lo and behold, a missing piece.  We did look all around the floor, but since we just opened the box and we hadn't gone anywhere with it except the table, we knew it was just not there. 

Bottom line?  Extra piece AND a piece missing.  Very frustrating as usual to not finish a puzzle, but also surprising and interesting at the same time.

Extra piece at the top and missing piece at water's edge.  Notice the shapes of the pieces.  Very odd, but it did add a nice touch of difficulty to an otherwise potentially boring puzzle.  I welcomed the slight challenge.

Here is the cover of the box.

Check out the price..... $1.79.  I wonder if that was it's new price 25 years ago or if that was a thrift store sticker at some point.  Pretty good condition box for it's age.  We did notice that on the actual pieces that the laminate was cracking or something.  It made the pieces feel dingy.

Well, at least we get to check another one off the list.  Have a great day!

Puzzle Jokes

Most of the puzzle jokes on the web are similar to the one I posted before about some blonde or farmer putting a puzzle together in a long period of time when the box says for some young age.  When I first read that joke it was very cute and funny.  But it is the most common jigsaw puzzle joke out there.  So I thought I would search out a new one for you. 

Here is a cute one: (I'm blonde, so I can pick on them.)

A blonde calls her boyfriend and says "You've got to come over here and help me with this killer jigsaw puzzle! I don't know how to get it started!!" Her boyfriend asks "What's it supposed to be when it's done?" The blonde replies "According to the box, it's supposed to be a tiger."So her boyfriend comes over and the blonde shows him the puzzle spread all over the table. He examines the pieces for a moment and then looks at the box and says "First of all, I suggest you make a cup of strong coffee and then we'll put all these frosted flakes back in the box!"

source: http://www.jokebuddha.com/Jigsaw#ixzz21vwFXqB2


ENJOY!



P.S. Just doing an extended search of puzzles jokes and these two are the only ones I could find.  So if you have some or find new ones, please share!  I will keep looking though.

More "Other" Puzzles

I feel like I have a little bit of an OCD going on here that I'm insisting on getting these other puzzles done before LIFE.  But at least I am getting them done and getting them out of my house.  Nice thing is people are actually buying them at our rummage sale.  I'm not putting much on for prices: about $.50 for 500 pieces or less and $1.00 for 1000 or more.  Knowing that all the pieces are there I think those are phenominal prices considering you're paying around $10 for a basic 500 piece at Walmart. 

I refuse to buy brand new puzzles if I can avoid it.  When I go to thrift stores I always check the puzzles.  If the boxes are unopened I buy them regardless.  (Unless I really hate the picture, which is rare.)  If they are really cheap, I'm talking $.50 or less, then I might pick them up anyways on the chance that the pieces might not all be there.  That's why I have so many.

My husband likes to organize stuff. (He is a melancholy according to Florence Littauer.) So being that I am 6-months pregnant, I asked him to climb up into the closet to find the next lowest number puzzle I had and get it down for me.  While he did that, he sorted all the puzzles by piece-number size.  I almost wish he hadn't because he then told me that I had something like 20+ 500-piece puzzles.  WOW!  That's alot.  I know there are some 1,000-piece and one 5,000 piece as well.  So this project is going to take me awhile.

For now, here are some new puzzles that I've done recently:

500 Pieces 7-28-12

750 pieces 7-29-12  Mary Ann Falls, Nova Scotia

750 pieces 8-04-12 Carnival in Venice

1,000 pieces 08-08-12 La Muse

1,000 pieces 09-15-12 Countryside Pub

Gave UP on a Puzzle?

Yes!  I admit it!  I actually gave up on a measly 500 piece puzzle.  BUT with very good reason.  Most 500 pieces I can whip off in an evening.  However, when the quality of the puzzle is so awful the pieces don't stay together if you even breathe on it, there is no joy, no fun and no finished product.

The culprit? ......

This Encore!  brand is apparently by MEGABRANDS.  But their website does not show puzzles anymore.  The links are either broken or takes you to the MegaBloks website.  It was distributed by Greenbrier International Inc.  Seriously, I do NOT recommend trying to put these together.  God forbid you PAY for such an atrocity!

One of the places that I envision lots of puzzles being done is nursing homes.  I can't imagine the frustration of the potentially mentally problematic elderly trying to do these!  THAT annoys me the most for some reason.  Poor dears.

After attempting (and not finishing out of pure annoyance) the cute kitty one, I knew I had some more of this brand and simply put them out at the rummage sale.  I probably should just throw them in the garbage, BUT if someone were to put it together on a soft material like a puzzle roll-up mat, it MIGHT work.  I'm not promising anything.  The best part about it all is that I knocked these three out of the line-up!  YAY!


Okay!  Enough ranting.  I'm going to be working on a different brand tonight.  One that I am already familiar with and I know that it works fine.  I should have pictures of that soon.  On to bigger and better things!

Other Puzzles

Have been doing some other puzzles while "LIFE" is put away.  I'm mainly doing them quickly to make sure pieces are there, taping them up and selling at our rummage sale.  If the pieces aren't all there, we put them in the free box.  Here are a few we've done lately:

500 pieces

 1000 pieces

 500 pieces

 500 pieces

 500 pieces

500 pieces

 500 pieces

200 pieces

250 pieces

250 pieces

500 Pieces

250 Pieces

500 Pieces 7-27-12
The numbers are approximates since I don't remember exactly.  I know there is nothing remarkable here, but still a good way to keep track of what we have done.  As soon as these odd ones are done, I'm jumping back into LIFE.  I really can't wait. :)