Still a Bit Puzzled

Growing up, my siblings and I would complete puzzles for fun.  The activity provided us children with some bonding time and I suppose it gave our parents some peace and quiet.  

Fortunately, Mother would be nice enough to get the puzzles framed when we were done.  These framed puzzles would then be put up on the wall like certificates of completion.

We had a lot of nice puzzles.  (If you search on "puzzled" in the blog, you will find them.)

During one of the garage sales here, I picked up this puzzle because I just found it so adorable.  Plus, I wanted to replace a picture that was hanging in the downstairs bathroom wall that came with the place when we purchased the house.

Then COVID-19 hit and as you may know, we ended up doing puzzles at the height of the lockdown.  I found a puzzle of the world map on FB Marketplace and after it was completed, I wanted to put it up.  It would be a two-fold reminder of Cebu Avenue  since we had a big world map in the study room and we had lots of puzzles around the house.

We purchased a second hand frame for it but the glass broke as we attempted to frame the puzzle.  MacGyver got a plastic roll and we cut up a rectangle to act as a pseudo frame cover.  After a bit of tucking and taping, we managed to put up the map.

Unfortunately, since the plastic cover was not rigid, the plastic would sag and the puzzle would lean forward.  We would smoothen out the puzzle once in a while to make sure the pieces would stay in place, but at a certain point, several puzzle pieces got displaced and if we wanted to retrieve the fallen piece to complete the puzzle, we'd have to disassemble the whole thing.  At about the same time, I chanced upon a Christmas themed puzzle on Marketplace.  

I fell in love with this puzzle despite the missing piece.   This was the picture that was posted on FB.   Fortunately the missing piece is not smack in the middle of the puzzle.

 I reported to the office on the 15th of December and met up with the seller during my lunch break.  Even if I knew we were unlikely to complete the puzzle this Christmas season, I figured with a Christmas puzzle in the same size as the map puzzle (50 cm x 70 cm), we could have different puzzles on the wall at different times of the year.  With this in mind, I was resolved to buy a decent frame for the puzzle.

I found one at K-Mart the next weekend.  I was hoping to install the puzzle in the new frame during the week and surprise MacGyver before coming home from work, but as it turns out, I was the one surprised at how difficult it was to disassemble the old frame.  

In the end, MacGyver and MyGirl worked on the installation.  

I could not resist taking some photos of them as they worked.   These are special father-and-daughter moments.

There were two pictures stuck on the wall.  The old frame was hung against these two picture frames which we thought were glued to the wall because the wall had been painted AROUND them.

MacGyver managed to pry the pictures out and install a hook on the wall to hang the new frame.

So now we have a better view of the world.