Alchemist’s Cabinet

Alchemist’s Cabinet is a 1000-piece puzzle from eeBoo. It features the curio cabinet from one of the rooms in The Alchemist’s House puzzle, which I have done previously. The image is a fascinating collections of books and various objects the person must have collected over the years.

I really enjoyed this puzzle. I like the quality of eeBoo puzzles. The pieces are very smooth and a nice size. It is hard to move sections because the fit isn’t very tight, but I found I could use the poster to slide under a section and move it where I wanted it to be.

There are two more puzzles in this series – Alchemist’s Library and Alchemist’s Kitchen. I have already purchased both of them and plan to do them later this year. Love this series!

Cat Balloon Race

Cat Balloon Race is a 750-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games. I am participating in a Spring Hopscotch challenge in the Casual Puzzler’s Facebook group and needed a puzzle for the Air Travel space. As I was scrolling Amazon under that topic, this one really caught my eye.

This was a very enjoyable puzzling experience. The image was too busy to easily sort pieces, so I just pulled out the edges and flipped the rest of the pieces over and put them in sorting trays. I missed a few pieces on the initial edge sort, but they turned up eventually and didn’t cause any problems.

Towards the end I did do a bit more sorting as there were a number of pastel pieces which were a bit harder to place. Overall, this puzzle provided a nice level of difficulty. The only real drawback was a ton of puzzle dust – more than I think I have seen before!

So many fun details in this puzzle! And I loved the image even though I would never go up in a hot air balloon myself. I’m too afraid of heights!

Colorful Peacock

Colorful Peacock is a 1000-piece puzzle from B Creative, which is another new brand to me. It was a little pricey, but I just fell in love with the image and was sure I would enjoy it a lot.

Sure enough, it was pure joy the entire time. I did it in one sitting and absolutely loved the experience. Of course, I sorted by color and started with the smallest pile – the purple. I found that even with the colors that had more pieces, it was easy to separate them into different shades and different textures. Even the in-between pieces had something on them; there were virtually no solid yellow pieces at the end.

Look at this beauty!

I am definitely going to keep an eye on this brand for other images that I like because the experience was so good and the quality was great.

What I’m Reading – April 2024

What I’m Reading Now:

What Is Love? by Jen Comfort – I think this was a free book from Amazon First Reads. I just started it and it looks like it will be cute, if formulaic.

Revelation for the Rest of Us: A Prophetic Call to Follow Jesus as a Dissident Disciple by Scot McKnight with Cody Matchett – I just started this one but I like it so far.

What I Recently Finished:

Sunshine of Your Love by Kirsty McManus – I got this book for free from Stuff Your Kindle Day. The premise was a bit odd – two people have to job share for three months to compete for a job. It’s a typical enemies to lovers story.

The Irish Cottage: Finding Elizabeth by Juliet Gauvin – Another free book. This is about a woman trying to find herself after losing a mother figure in her life. I really enjoyed it.

Airborne Hearts by Maggie Louzella – Another free book. A cute romance.

She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky – 5 stars to this one. It is written to mothers and daughters specifically. I don’t have a daughter, but I was raised with a lot of harmful teachings in this area, and this book was very helpful in recognizing and addressing those issues.

Return to Serendipity by Liza Lanter – Another free book. A standard story of a woman who both gets a divorce and inherits property from a deceased relative. Not bad.

Cottage at Bella Beach by Kate Wentworth – Another free book. Another divorced woman who inherits property, this one also includes three friends who all move to the location where she inherits property over the course of the next few books. I enjoyed this one enough that I kept reading the series.

Bakery at Bella Beach by Kate Wentworth – Book 2 in the Bella Beach series

Bookshop at Bella Beach by Kate Wentworth – Book 3 in the Bella Beach series

Lighthouse at Bella Beach by Kate Wentworth – Book 4 in the Bella Beach series

Payback in Death by J.D. Robb – This is book 57 in the In Death series. I love these books, and this one did not disappoint. The series centers around Eve Dallas, who is a homicide detective in futuristic New York City. So good!

Where We Meet: A Lenten Study of Systems, Stories, and Hope by Rachel Gilmore, Candace Lewis, Tyler Sit, and Matt Temple – I read this Lenten devotional in conjunction with a virtual Bible study led by my pastor. It was very good. It dealt with a lot of topics that are new for me to consider and showed me areas that I need to learn more about.

The Worst Christmas Ever? by Rebecca Paulinyi – Another free book. Woman gets cheated on and runs away to find herself. Ends up starting a new business and a new relationship within a few weeks.

What I’ve Added to my TBR list:

The Last List of Muriel Beaumont by Laura Pearson

Secrets of Bella Beach by Kate Wentworth

Return to Bella Beach by Kate Wentwortj

Christmas at Bella Beach: A Novella by Kate Wentworth

Random in Death by J.D. Robb

Passions in Death by J.D. Robb

Lawyers and Lattes by Rebecca Paulinyi

The London Flat: Second Chances by Juliet Gauvin

If you’re on Goodreads, feel free to add me as a friend. I’m always looking for new recommendations!

Edible Flowers

Edible Flowers is a 1000-piece puzzle from Galison. It’s so pretty – I love it!

One of my other new friends from church, Suzanne, came over to puzzle with me, and she picked this from my to-do shelf. She started with the border, which was challenging because it is mostly black. After a while of doing that, she worked on the signs for each flower.

I started with the words in the center of the puzzle and then moved onto different flowers depending on which color had the smallest amount of pieces. Once we each had a few things completed, we started putting them into position. This picture shows how far we got that evening.

I asked her if she wanted me to set it aside until she could come back and work on it some more, but she was fine with me finishing it up. So I did that the next day! Here’s the finished puzzle – isn’t it pretty!

I really enjoyed this puzzle. It was a nice level of difficulty and was good quality. The colors and textures were easy to separate into the different flowers. There wasn’t too much solid black, and the border was pretty easy once the rest of the puzzle was completed. Highly recommend!

Brick Fest

Recently I had the opportunity to attend Brick Fest, which is an event designed for Lego fans of all ages. I went with my friend Jessyca, and we had a great time!

There were a ton of builds to see, including some very large scale ones, and there were also many interactive areas. We did quite a few of them:

• Meet N Greet with two of the stars from Lego Masters
• Derby, where you build a car on a provided base and then it is raced against other cars down a short track
• Coloring with Lego markers and Lego gel pens on coloring sheets they provided
• Building a section of a mosaic based on a template you were given
• Playing in a brick pit (Jessyca did this – I don’t have a picture)
• Jessyca had a VIP ticket, so she got to do a custom build which was a little robot and get an event pin and sticker. She was able to get doubles of those to share with me.

The Meet N Greet was with Manny and Patrick from the show Lego Masters. I haven’t seen the show, but Jessyca is a huge fan and was really excited to meet Manny especially. She took a picture of me with them:

Here are some of the builds we saw:

Here is the car I built and the derby track:

Here’s my coloring page and the other swag I got:

And here is the mosaic tile I built along with a picture of the mosaic in progress:

There were other areas where you could build with different types of bricks, but we didn’t do all of them. We spent about 3 hours there, which we were happy with.

If you are interested in attending Brick Fest, check out their website for other locations and dates.

Difficult Donuts

Difficult Donuts is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cozytime Puzzles. I got it second-hand from the puzzle box in my area.

It lived up to its name of difficult! It wasn’t impossible, it just took more time than other puzzles I have done. It took me several evenings to complete, but it was very satisfying to see it all come together. Also, the quality was good on both pieces and fit.

Are you a donut fan? I enjoy them but can’t have them very often since I became diabetic.