Frank Lloyd Wright: Imperial Hotel Peacock Carpet

Frank Lloyd Wright: Imperial Hotel Peacock Carpet

Love these Pomegranate puzzles - just wish they made them with more pieces than 1000.  This was interesting because of the strict symmetry.

Witches' Wardrobe

This was a very fun puzzle that we knocked off in a 2-3 days.  We wanted to get it done in time to glue together, cut up, and send to a friend as postcards - all before Halloween.

It's not by a standard puzzle making company, but was very good quality - we'd love to do more by them.

So then we glued the puzzle together, front and back, and then scored it for 10 postcards, and wrote out the story about Henry the mule, like this:

The individual postcards looked like this:

And all together were ready to mail out every few days like this:

Here's the entire story:

There once was a farmer who owned an old mule named Henry. One day the mule accidentally fell into the farmer’s empty well. The farmer heard Henry braying and desperately calling for help. After carefully assessing the situation and considering the cost of getting a crane to rescue the poor mule, the farmer decided that Henry was not worth the trouble of saving. Instead, he called his neighbors together, told them what had happened, and asked them to help him haul dirt to the well in order to bury the old mule and put him out of his misery.

When the mule heard what was going to happen, he became hysterical and began to bray even louder! The farmer and his neighbors started shoveling dirt into the deep well. When the dirt hit Henry's back, a thought came to him. It suddenly dawned on him that every time a shovel load of dirt landed on his back, HE WOULD SHAKE IT OFF AND STEP UP!

This he did each and every time the dirt was shoveled over him. “Shake it off and step up…shake it off and step up…shake it off and step up!” He repeated this to encourage himself and not lose hope. No matter how painful the loads of dirt felt on his back, or how distressing the situation seemed, Henry, old mule fought panic and just kept right on SHAKING IT OFF AND STEPPING UP!

It wasn’t long before the old mule, battered and exhausted, stepped triumphantly over the wall of that well! What seemed like it would bury him actually helped him . . . all because of the manner in which he handled his adversity.

THAT’S LIFE! If we refuse to give in to panic, bitterness, or self-pity, or let others put us down, then we create for ourselves a way to rise up to freedom.

Cinque Terra

This was a lovely puzzle of Cinque Terra Italy that we very much enjoyed. bear too, as he got to row in the boat in the harbor after it was done.

When we were done with the puzzle we glued it together, front and back, and then scored it to cut into 25 individual postcards:

Here's an example of one of the postcards, viewed closeup. Each one held an inspirational quote:

And another:

And another:

Pirate Bears

this puzzle was smaller than we usually do, but how could we resist?  our pal bear loved it so much, he had to get all dressed up in his own eye-patch too.  Here he is putting in the last piece, which is of course his favorite thing to do:

Then we glued the puzzle together, front and back, and scored it into 16 individual postcards to send to nephew Owen.  Note the really fun stamps too:

Here's an example of what one of them will look like up close:

In Paris - The Eiffel Tower

This was a wonderful puzzle, and with only black and grey tones - very challenging!  The Eiffel Tower.  Since bear put the last piece in, he of course had to get dressed up appropriately for the occasion in his top hat and bow tie.

After the puzzle was done, it became the new Art Installation in the guest bathroom.  We have a never-used bathtub that is the location of many a fantastic scene.  For this, we included croissants, escargot, French brie, champagne and glasses, a beret and every French book we had in the house...

and here's our art installation....

Proverbidioms

 We recently  finished a very fun puzzle with 300 proverbs hidden in them.  We have left it up for several months and we invite visitors to see how many they can guess.

Here is the complete list, which we found online:

PROVERBIDIOMS:

Ace in the hole
All ears
All work and no play makes Jack a dull
boy
An apple a day keeps the doctor away An axe to grind
An empty bag cannot stand upright Ants in the pants
At the end of one's rope
Babies must play Back seat driver
Bad news travels fast Ball game is over Banana nose
Beetle (bug)
Beggars can't be choosers
Behind the 8 ball
Best patch is of the same cloth
Beware of the door with too many keys Big as a barrel
Big fish eat little fish
Bird in the hand is worth two in the
bush
Birds of a feather flock together Bitch
Black as the ace of spades Blockhead
Blow one's own horn
Bone to pick with someone Bookworm
Breadwinner
Break the ice
Bridge over troubled water Broken heart
Burn the candle at both ends Butter someone up Butterfingers
Butterflies in one's stomach
Cauliflower ears
Call no man happy till he's dead
Can't see the forest for the trees
Cast iron stomach
Castles in the air
Cat got your tongue?
Cat's out of the bag
Children should be seen and not heard Chip off the old block
Chip on one's shoulder
Chiseler
Christmas comes but once a year Climb the ladder
Climb the walls
Cloud 9
Colorful language
Coming down in buckets

Cool cat
Counting sheep
Cracked bell can never sound Croaked
Crutch
Cry one's eyes out
Dead men tell no tales
Dear John letter
Dime a dozen
Doesn't have a leg to stand on
Dog (he or she is a)
Don't bite off more than you can chew Don't count your chickens before they
hatch
Don't judge a book by its cover
Don't let the grass grow under your feet Don't look a gift horse in the mouth Don't put all your eggs in one basket Don't put the cart before the horse Don't put your foot in your mouth Don't throw a monkey wrench into the
machinery
Don't throw out the baby with the
bathwater
Down in the dumps Drinks are on the house Drop in the bucket
Eagle flies alone
Ear to the ground
Early bird catches the worm
Easy street
Eat your heart out
Egg in the face
Eighty-six it
Empty barrels make the most noise Even the devil will swear on a stack of
bibles
Every family has at least one black
sheep
Eyes in the back of his head
Face of the mountain
Feeling blue
Finger licking good
Flat as a board
Forbidden fruit is the sweetest Forked tongue
Four eyes
Frog in the throat
Fruit of one's labor
Full of baloney
Full of hot air
Funnier than a barrel of monkeys
Get under one's skin
Getting on someone's back Gingerbread molding
Give him enough rope and he'll hang
himself

Give him the needle Go fly a kite
Go through the roof Going downhill Greenhorn
Green thumb
Hands are tied
Hand that rocks the cradle rules the
world
Handwriting's on the wall
Hang dog
Head in the clouds
Heard it through the grapevine Hedges have eyes
High chair
Higher they rise the farther they fall Hit the sack
Hitch your wagon to a star
Hole in the wall
Home is where you hang your hat Home sweet home
Honesty is the best policy
Horseless carriage
Hot pants
Hotter than a $2 pistol
Hung out to dry
Hungry enough to eat a horse
I was framed
If the hat fits, wear it
If the shoe fits, wear it
I'll eat my hat
Imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery In a stew
In it up to one's neck
In hot water
In one ear and out the other
In the dark
Iron curtain
It's a dog eat dog world
It's no use crying over spilt milk It's written all over your face
Just because there's snow on the roof doesn't mean there isn't fire in the furnace
Keep your head above water Kick the bucket
Killing two birds with one stone Knock on wood
Knockers
Lean over backwards
Lemon
Leave one's mark
Let the chips fall where they may Let's call a spade a spade 

Life has its ups and downs
Life is a two-way street
Light my fire
Lightning never strikes the same place
twice
Lighting the candle at both ends Like father, like son
Like day and night
Long and winding road
Look before you leap
Lose one's head
Make hay while the sun shines
Man who is his own doctor has a fool
for a patient
Man's home is his castle
Many hands make light work
Melt into someone's arms
Men seldom make passes to girls who
wear glasses
Mushroom (man or men)
Music hath charms to soothe the savage
beast
My heart has wings
Needle in a haystack
Never cross a bridge until you come to
it.
Never hit a man below the belt New brooms sweep clean
Nightcap
No strings attached
No one knows what goes on behind
closed doors Nut
Off one's rocker
On the tip of one's tongue
One man's meat is another man's poison Out on a limb
Out to pasture
Over a barrel
Over the hill
Pain in the neck
Painting the town red
Pearls before swine
Picture tells a thousand words Piece of cake
Pig
People who live in glass houses
shouldn't throw stones Playing second fiddle Poison one's mind
Pot belly
Practice what you preach
Pretty as a picture
Printing press is the mother of errors Pull up a chair
Pulling one's leg

Puppet
Pushing up daisies
Put a feather in your cap
Put our heads together
Put that in your pipe and smoke it Put your money where your mouth is
Queer as a $3 bill
Raining cats and dogs
Rat race
Rock's in one's head
Roof over one's head
Rooted to the spot
Roots (to have them somewhere)
Sawing logs
Self-made man
She stole his heart
Shoot one's mouth off
Shot in the arm
Sit on it
Sitting on a fence
Sky is falling
Sky's the limit
Slow but steady wins the race Something up one's sleeve Something's rotten in Denmark Sour grapes
Small world
Smoke so thick you can cut it with a
knife
Snake in the grass Snugasabugintherug Stabbed in the back
Stag party
Stay in one's shell
Stewed
Stitch in time save time
Stone face
Stoned
Stones throw away
Straight from the horse's mouth Strawman
Stretch one's legs
Strong stomach
Stubborn as a mule
Stuffed shirt
Sweep it under the rug Sweetest grapes hang highest
Tails on a coat
Take the bull by the horns
Tall tale (tail)
Tee-shirt
Ten-foot pole
That rings a bell
That's a horse of a different color That's how the cookie crumbles That's icing on the cake

There are more ways to kill a dog than by hanging
There is no fool like an old fool
There's more than one way to skin a cat Thorn in one's side
Throw in the cards
Throw in the hat
Throw in the towel
Tied up
Tighten one's belt
Time flies
Toadstool
Tongue hanging out
Too many cooks spoil the broth
Two heads are better than one
Under the weather Up against the wall Up in the air
Variety is the spice of life
Wallflower
Walls have ears
Watched pot never boils Watchtower
Water (passed) under the bridge Way to a man's heart is through his
stomach
We can make beautiful music together Wear many hats
Weight of the world on one's shoulders When clouds are seen wise men put on
their coats
When one door shuts another opens When the chips are down
Where there's smoke there's fire When poverty knocks at the door, love
flies out the window. White elephant Window on the world Woman driver
World on a string
Would look alright with a bag over his
(or her) head
You are what you eat
You can't be in two places at once You can't have your cake and eat it too You can't keep a good man down
You can't put an old head on young
shoulders
You can't take it with you
You have a screw loose
You have to take the good with the bad You hit the nail right on the head
You would forget your head if it wasn't
screwed on.

Charley Harper: The Rocky Mountains

Charley Harper: The Rocky Mountains
Pomegranate
1000 pieces


Amusing enough I suppose

Rejects

Here are puzzles we took one look at and sent back:

Educa - Zodiac-4000Pc

The pieces fit poorly and the colors were too much the same.

The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel
5000 pieces
Ravensburger

 Our first 5000 piece puzzle - and quite the doosey!

This took us about 3 months and we really loved it.  Love the Ravensburger quality.

We got a 1/4" birch plywood board and slipped this puzzle onto it, and it became our dining room table for months...

In process:

From Wikipedia:
The Tower of Babel is the subject of three oil paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The first, a miniature painted on ivory, was painted while Bruegel was in Rome and is now lost. The two surviving paintings depict the construction of the Tower of Babel, which according to the Book of Genesis in the Bible, was a tower built by a unified, monolingual humanity as a mark of their achievement and to prevent them from scattering: "Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'" (Genesis 11:4). The person in the foreground is likely Nimrod, who was said to have ordered the construction of the Tower.

Bruegel's depiction of the architecture of the tower, with its numerous arches and other examples of Roman engineering, is deliberately reminiscent of the Roman Colosseum, which Christians of the time saw as both a symbol of hubris and persecution. Bruegel had visited Rome in 1552-1553. Back in Antwerp, he must have refreshed his memory of Rome with a series of engravings of the principal landmarks of the city made by the publisher of his own prints, Hieronymous Cock, for he incorporated details of Cock's Roman engravings in both surviving versions of the Tower of Babel with few significant alterations.compare 2nd image below The parallel of Rome and Babylon had a particular significance for Bruegel's contemporaries: Rome was the Eternal City, intended by the Caesars to last for ever, and its decay and ruin were taken to symbolize the vanity and transience of earthly efforts. The Tower was also symbolic of the turmoil between the Catholic church (which at the time did services only in Latin) and the polyglot Lutheran Protestant religion of the Netherlands. Although at first glance the tower appears to be a stable series of concentric pillars, upon closer examination it is apparent that none of the layers lie at a true horizontal. Rather the tower is built as an ascending spiral.
The workers in the painting have built the arches perpendicular to the slanted ground, thereby making them unstable and a few arches can already be seen crumbling. The foundation and bottom layers of the tower had not been completed before the higher layers were constructed. Lucas van Valckenborch, a contemporary of Bruegel's, also painted the Tower of Babel in the 1560s and later in his career, possibly after seeing Bruegel's depiction. Both were part of a larger tradition of painting the tower during the 1500s and 1600s.[5] The influence of Northern artists can be seen in the careful attention Bruegel paid to the painting of the landscape.

It is a fact that the story of the Tower of Babel (like that of the Suicide of Saul) was interpreted as an example of pride punished, and that is no doubt what Bruegel intended his painting to illustrate. Moreover, the hectic activity of the engineers, masons and workmen points to a second moral - the futility of much human endeavour. Nimrod's doomed building was used to illustrate this meaning in Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools Bruegel's knowledge of building procedures and techniques is considerable and correct in detail.compare 3rd image The skill with which he has shown these activities recalls that his very last commission, left unfinished at his death, was for a series of documentary paintings recording the digging of a canal linking Brussels and Antwerp.[8]
The Tower of Babel is on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Another painting of the same subject The "Little" Tower of Babel, c. 1563, is in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Bluebird

Bluebird
by Josephine Wall
MasterPieces
1000 piece

This looked like it might be pretty hard, but it was actually very straightforward and fun to do.  The pieces are irregular shapes and well constructed.

Tibetan Buddhist Mandala

Tibetan Buddhist Mandala
Pomegranate
1000 pieces

The original is in the collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico
Hasbro
1000 pieces

Surprisingly fun for a little cheap puzzle.  Pieces fit together just fine, even though they are way more thin and flimsy than the high quality Ravensburger and Pomegranate that we love.

Mexico

Mexico

Hasbro
100o pieces

Surprisingly fun for a little cheap puzzle.  Pieces fit together just fine, even though they are way more thin and flimsy than the high quality Ravensburger and Pomegranate that we love.

Oceanic Wonders

Oceanic Wonders
Ravensburger
3000 pieces


SUPER fun puzzle !!!  we both really loved this one.

Joseph Stella - The Voice of the City

Joseph Stella - The Voice of the City
Pomegranate
1000 pieces

I don't know why, but this puzzle was only semi-interesting to do.  Not great...

In the opening decades of the twentieth century, New York stood as the grandest expression of the United States's technological and financial world dominance. Joseph Stella's monumental painting The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted, a panoramic, five-paneled view of 1920s Manhattan, evokes the dizzying dynamism and awe-inspiring spectacle of the city. Measuring more than twenty feet long, The Voice of the City presents key Manhattan landmarks at night, starting on the west side with the Battery, then moving to the middle of the island with Broadway's Great White Way (featured on this puzzle) and the skyscrapers, and ending in the east with the Brooklyn Bridge. Below are tunnels for trains, electricity, and plumbing. Stella (1877-1946), who immigrated to New York in 1896 from a small town in southern Italy, interpreted American technology in religious terms, conveyed by the altarpiece format and deep, saturated colors that give the appearance of stained glass windows.Purchased in 1937 from Stella's Newark-based gallery, Rabin and Krueger, The Voice of the City reflects the Newark Museum's commitment, dating from its founding, to educate, inspire, and transform individuals of all ages and the local, regional, national, and international communities it servers.The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted: The White Way 1 (detail), 1920-1922 by Joseph Stella (American, b. Italy, 1877-1946). Puzzle size 20 x 29 in. (50.8 x 73.7 cm)

Road Trip USA

Road Trip USA
Ravensburger
1000 pieces


This puzzle flew together.  So fun!

Cinque Terre, Italy

Cinque Terre, Italy
Ravensburger
2000 pieces

Now we're getting more serious !

The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel
Pomegranate
1000 pieces


This was actually a bit challenging.  Also got us hooked on the concept of the Tower of Babel

The Bedford Hours, now among the finest treasures of the British Library, is one of the most magnificent illuminated manuscripts in existence. Produced in the fifteenth century over a period of twenty or more years in the studio of the Bedford Master-whose identity remained a mystery for several centuries-the manuscript contains scores of elaborate medallions and miniature scenes surrounded by painstakingly detailed scrollwork, initials, line-fillers, and other artistic adornments. The image reproduced here, one of the Bedford Hours' major painted pages, is a depiction of the Tower of Babel story from Genesis. Assembled puzzle measures 20 x 29.