Every holiday and on any vacation- especially a mountain cabin or a beach house sort of vacation – a puzzle is in mid-progress for our family.

We’ve got out favorite brands but we’re not all that particular.  Usually we pick a puzzle with more than 500 pieces and we like best the 1000 piece puzzles but we’ve tried all sorts – including a round globe puzzle that intimidated me but the kids whipped it together in no time and have now assembled it multiple times.  One of the favorite puzzles the kids enjoyed was an educational life sized reversible floor puzzle of the human body – one side being the bones and one side being the internal body features.

Why do we love puzzles?

1.  Everyone can participate.  As kids age and mature and change, family activities can be hard to be one size fits all.  A puzzle pulls in every age.  Younger kids can search for edge pieces.  Older kids can tackle one tough area – those pesky trees that all look alike.

2. Opportunity for family bonding.  Yeah, it sounds cheesy.  But I don’t care.  It’s nice to all be doing the same thing together.  There’s an opportunity (if anyone takes it) to say “good job” and high five the finding of a difficult or troubling little puzzle piece.

3. It’s not all consuming.  Unlike the game of Monopoly or Risk, if you walk away from puzzle mid-build to answer the phone or get a bowl of ice cream or answer the doorbell or heaven forbid use the bathroom, everyone at the table isn’t angry at you.  You aren’t impeding progress or causing en entire game to wait for your task to be completed.

4.  It’s memory and tradition building.  For Christmas every year one of our family gifts is always a puzzle.  We often open it last and, like clockwork, we usually begin the assembly process on the morning the day after Christmas, at that slow and late breakfast after the chaos of Christmas has settled right down.  And, if the puzzle purchaser is on their A game, that year’s puzzle reflects something from the year.  The year we took a cross country adventure, the puzzle was a compilation of the fifty states license plates.  The year a kitten joined our clan, you guessed it – a puzzle featuring a lazy but well-read kitten.  We’ve had puzzles with landmarks or just hobbies one of us enjoys.  One year it was a bird puzzle for our budding ornithologist.  You could even go so far as to match the puzzle to the occasion. Beach trip?  Pull out the impossible conch shell puzzle.  Mountain cabin with the grandparents?  A gorgeous scenic puzzle with snow capped alpines.

How can you build up your puzzle collection?

Luckily, puzzles are not all that expensive.  You can also look for sales and specials at Hobby Lobby or other craft stores and use their weekly 40% off coupons.  However, not everyone assembles a puzzle over and over and often, once they’ve completed the puzzle once, it sits on a shelf until some grown up kid donates it to the local thrift store.  So, yes – you can search out your thrift store.  The puzzles are certainly cheap there.  But – they are also risky.  And, not many tasks are more disheartening than putting together an entire puzzle to find one (or three) pieces completely vanished from the face of the earth.  A slightly safer option is to look to your fellow puzzle loving friends.  When you have finished your puzzles and they have finished their puzzles – have a puzzle switch.  You send yours to their house and they send theirs to your house.  Ta-da.  New puzzles at no cost.

A few other tips.

Some time in college I ended up in a drafting class and a required purchase was a lightweight large drafting board that was able to be carried from class to class.  (Not comfortably and not while looking cool in any manner, but carry-able nonetheless.)  I saved mine for some reason.  (Yes – it’s more than twenty years old, has weird college quotes on it and my maiden name written in loopy letters.)  It’s the perfect puzzle board.  It’s almost the exact size of most puzzles.  We start the puzzle right on it and then can easily move the entire puzzle board off the table when it’s time to eat.  If you’re lucky – you own two tables in your home and one can keep a puzzle going while the other is occupied for dining. We’re not currently living in a house like that, so our the puzzle board is a good resource.

Play some music and create an inviting atmosphere to make puzzle building appealing.  Maybe there will be snacks involved.  Every task is more fun with a side of snacking.

Don’t be too rule oriented.  Yes, every person should know that the edges are always built first on a puzzle, but if your kids or friends insist on working on that eye catching scene before they find the edges, relax already.  Nothing will guarantee that you are the only person assembling the puzzle than an insistence that there is only one right way to put the puzzle together – YOUR way.

Some people like to glue their completed puzzle and frame it.  As a kid, my mom and I put together a puzzle I loved back then.  I remember it clearly.  It was a teddy bear tea party in a lot of lavender tones.  I adored it.  We glued it together, had it framed and it hung in my childhood bedroom.  (I have no idea where that puzzle is now.  I’m sort of glad.  I wouldn’t want it on my wall now, but I have strong feelings of guilt in disposing of childhood memories so it would be hard to part with it, even if I thought it looked silly.)

Puzzles typically don’t work for road trips.  (I mean, they’re great to pack on a road rip to use at your destination but can you imagine assembling one in the backseat of your car?  The idea makes me chuckle if it’s happening in your car, and makes me cringe if it’s happening in mine.)  A great alternative for road trips are paper puzzle books.  I Spy sort of puzzles and Hidden Pictures puzzles.  (Like this sort from Highlights.)  (Which, by the way, reminds me of a fantastic journey our family once took to the Highlights Retreat Center ….)

Is your family a puzzling family?  (Well, aren’t we all?)  Of course I mean – does your family like puzzles?  Have you had any favorites?

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