Cheap Summer Fun

Sharing is caring!

Did you miss my post last Thursday? Sorry about that, but I decided to take the day off from my usual writing routine being as it was Independence Day here in the US. Hubby and I also decided to take the time to do something we haven’t done in quite a while. We decided to work a puzzle. This is a great way to spend some quality time with your loved ones and it doesn’t have to be expensive. I bought this puzzle at our local Goodwill store for $2.99. It was one of two identical puzzles they had but for whatever reason, the other one was marked at $4.99 and the back of the box said “3 missing”, so I took it as a sign and bought this one. Now you might turn your nose up at a “used” puzzle, and ask how I could be sure that all the pieces were there. Well, I had to take a chance that they were and decided to ask if it could be returned if we found that it wasn’t all there. Shockingly, I was told I could return it with my receipt within 14 days. So that kind of motivated us to get busy and work it. The 90-degree temps we have had here in the midwest lately was motivating too, along with the new ceiling fan we install in the living room. Note we pushed the table with the puzzle directly under the said ceiling fan and did so mostly for the lighting, but knowing we could stay cool didn’t hurt either. As we began sorting the pieces to find all the edges, I decided this had the potential to be a sharable experience, so I took photos along the way just to share with my readers. It occurred to me that maybe not everyone works puzzles the way we do, and if you don’t perhaps this will help you rethink the way you have always worked them or encourage you to start working them for the first time.

So here is the puzzle in its box. I have to tell you this is of the particular type that Hubby and I really enjoy working. It is a fun picture with so much chaos going on in it. Every time we work it, we will see different things.

So when I met Hubby’s family and they asked if I liked to work jigsaw puzzles, I said sure. Then they pulled out an assortment of every baking sheet and pan they owned and started laying out the pieces. I was in shock. Who does this? It changed the way I work puzzles. Hubby got the stack of six lined and matching cookie sheets from his mother as a gift one time. It is super handy to have all the puzzle pans the same size and stackable. The lining was needed because the pans are slick Teflon coated and without it, the pieces would slide all over the place. The white also makes the pieces stand out better in my opinion.

Just start setting the pieces out on the tray close together, keeping the edges out to work the frame first.

This is what a full tray looks like.

This was a 1,500 piece puzzle and six trays were NOT enough, even with the edges removed. So the pieces on the table are the edges we found. We thought this was all of them, but, of course, we were wrong. The ones left in the box would need to wait until we made room on the trays to spread them out too.

I personally gather a bunch of similarly colored pieces together and start trying to fit them together. In this case, I was looking for the sand colors. I have found that it really helps to turn them all the same direction. In the photo above, note that all the flat edges are up.

In the photo above we were looking for the puffs of smoke along the road. It would be easier to have all the sand color going in the same direction.

The basic frame is complete, or mostly anyway. We always keep the box nearby to reference, especially with the chaotic picture puzzles we like to work.

However you work the puzzle, from here on out, it involves searching the tray for pieces you need then looking at the next tray. This is nice because several people can be working the puzzle at the same time and everyone can be searching a different tray for the pieces they are looking for.

I began to wonder if it would be a good idea to kind of sort the various colors on different trays, so I made this tray of red, pink, orange and similarly colored pieces. it was a bit chaotic, and this drove Hubby crazy, but I kind of liked knowing that if the piece was even a little bit in the red family, it would be on this tray. I kind of tried to do the same with the greens and browns, but Hubby was on to me so I had to act like that was purely accidental.

As the trays got emptier, we condensed the pieces and set the empty trays aside out of the way. As the puzzle gets closer to being worked, it gets easier to find the right piece because there are so few to look through. In the case of this used piece, we kept thinking all the way until the end that there would be missing pieces. Two were missing when the trays and table were empty of loose pieces, so we looked on the floor and all around the area where we were working. Eventually, we found the other two pieces. We had many days and hours of puzzle time both together and individually. What a bargain! We will most definitely work this puzzle many more times over the next few years.

I almost forgot to tell you that when you take this puzzle apart, you take off the edge pieces and keep them separate from the rest of the puzzle pieces by storing them in a plastic bag or large envelope to make the start of working the puzzle again that much easier.

This has been my “take” on cheap summer fun. Do you work puzzles the way we do? If not, let me know what you think of our method, or share your way in the comments below. Maybe we can learn something new from you. Enjoy! If you don’t have a puzzle to work, you can always borrow one of ours, we have a couple dozen to choose from.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Take
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Sharing is caring!