Puzzle Addiction

 Hi, my name is Angels4Kids and I have a puzzle addiction (among others).

This is my latest acquisition.  

MacGyver so kindly picked it up from Strathfield during the week. 

I am hoping to have it hanging in the wall by the end of April.

After I had bought it, I discovered that the puzzle was called "Bicycles in Amsterdam."

Oh! Sunshine lives in the Netherlands now.  

Maybe I can collect puzzles with themes from places where my sibling live.

    What a good excuse for getting more puzzles.

Rainy Days and Mondays

You would not believe the amount of rain we had last week. 

This is what it looked like on Sunday.

It was not much better on Monday.

We looked forward to Wednesday.  

The weather forecast was sunny.

Yes, it was a beautiful day indeed.

Thank God. 

(This is for my kids in case they do not know the song and may have no idea who The Carpenters are.)

Ant Umbrella

GI stayed over last night.  We went to the mall at about noon to get chicken and vegetables.  In the afternoon, he roasted the vegetables and baked the chicken for his meals for the coming week.  

After the food cooled, he packed them up and prepared to leave.  He realised it was still raining and found himself without an umbrella.  

When he said he wanted to borrow an umbrella, I assumed he did not want one of the big umbrellas because it would be difficult to handle considering he would also be carrying his food.  I gave him two choices -- a small compact umbrella and a brand new Kathmandu commuter umbrella.

Thinking that a smaller umbrella would be easier for him to handle, I held up the compact umbrella and said, "This one is small."  

"OK, I'll take this one," GI replied, opting for the compact one after seeing that the Kathmandu umbrella still had the tag attached.

He opens the umbrella then gasps, "Oh!  It IS small.  This is for ants, Mom!" 

"This is for ants," I chuckled and whacked his butt with the small umbrella after we had swapped.   

I had never heard of such a thing and GI must've realised that because he sent me this youtube link soon after he left.

La Perouse

We picked up GI at about 4PM then headed to La Perouse.

It was a beautiful, memorable day. 

Yes it was.  It was yes.

 

Nailed It!

When we were doing puzzles back in May last year, I saw one on MarketPlace that I really liked.  It was called a gradient puzzle.  I was tempted to get it but held back because the kids seemed to prefer the puzzles that had actual designs.  In fact MyGirl left most of the shark puzzle to me and RD because the sea of blue did not really appeal to her.  

Fast forward to December 2020.  During one of my trips to the mall, I spotted the same gradient puzzle on sale.  At the time, we were desperate to get something for MyGirl and although I knew her Christmas wish list had indicated 1000-piece Ravensburger puzzles, I felt she MIGHT like this design despite it not being the brand that she had specified so I purchased the puzzle.  In the end, she asked for the 23andme test, so the puzzle was tucked away as a potential birthday gift for her in January. 

As her birthday approached, I hesitated to give her the puzzle because in my heart I knew that I was the one that had fallen in love with the design and that I did not want to project my bias for the puzzle upon her.  I was not 100% sure that it would be a puzzle design she would have wanted or chosen for herself.  

When her birthday arrived, I did not end up giving her the puzzle but I decided to bring it out of the closet anyway and suggested we work on it.  I was elated to find that the two kids liked the design and were happy to work on the puzzle with me.

The edges were easy to finish.

We each worked on different corner colours.

The violet corner moved ahead.

School had not yet started but MyGirl had an internship at the city so RD and I refrained from working on the puzzle during the day to allow the three of us more time to work on it together at  night.

We had finished more than a quarter by the 27th.

We had bridged the middle gap.

And by the 28th we were half done.

This was from RD on the 29th as we were approached the completion of the puzzle.  

 

Another beautiful puzzle completed.

It was then that I remembered that one of the reasons I had not started work on a new puzzle was because we did not have a working frame.  As you may know, we were able to put up the world map puzzle in December as mentioned in Still a Bit Puzzled.   What you may not know is that the adhesive hooks on the back of the frame gave way and the frame fell down in early January.  The corner of the plastic acrylic sheet got ripped so we could not put the puzzle back onto the frame and had to pack up the World Map puzzle. 

MacGyver and I took a trip to IKEA and got ourselves a couple of frames last weekend.  

Given the number of fallen frames we've had, we bit the bullet and MacGyver drilled holes on the wall and placed nails to secure the puzzle frame.  

This will hang on the wall until we decide to work on a new puzzle.