As I sit here in my extremely empty office at work on the last day of 2019 with more time on my hands than work, I wanted to take a moment to reflect back on 2019 and what I accomplished as a puzzler and as a blogger.  Here’s what I came up with:

• My single biggest accomplishment was FINALLY, after 8.5 years, finishing Educa’s 24,000 piece Life: The Great Challenge.  While I only put together the final 3,000 pieces of Section 4 in 2019, I did layout the entire puzzle in 2019 and took a picture.  It will likely be the only memory I will have of it being together as one solid puzzle.  I will be mounting it in sections unfortunately as I do not have a single wall free from furniture, doors, or windows to put it.  Oh well, at least I can say I have completed a 24,000 piece puzzle now.  Read all about my build of this big, beautiful beast here.
• Completed my very first, but certainly not last 2,000 piece puzzle.  Aimee Stewart’s Winterland Fun was a delight to do.  I just love her puzzles.  The images are always so fun, colorful, and extremely detailed.
• I also finished:
  • 1,000 piece Star Wars fine art puzzle for Derek
  • 1,000 piece Owl Eyes (Buffalo)
  • 750 piece Raining in Paris (Buffalo)
  • 2 x 300 piece Charles Wysocki puzzles (my first of his – LOVE THEM!)
  • 3 x 300 piece Chef series (Ceaco)
  • 12 x 100 12 Days of Christmas puzzles (Ceaco)
  • 2 x 100 piece Harry Potter book cover puzzles
  • 2 x 500 piece Christmas puzzles (Snowman and Holiday Ride)
  • Several small children’s puzzles under 100 pieces (didn’t really track these)

Totaling approximately 12,000 pieces!

• Converted the Puzzle Momma blog from the old and archaic Blogger site to WordPress and I love it!  This was a pretty big accomplishment as I have been wanting to do this for years, but didn’t know how.  Found a reliable company that would do it for free as long as I signed up to have it hosted by one of their vendor partners for a year – well, sign me up!  ?
• I wrote more posts this year on the blog than I did for the last several years combined.  Thanks to the much easier to manage WordPress platform, I am way more motivated to write and share my puzzling adventures with all of you.
• Wrote my first guest blog post for Stacey @ My Jigsaw Journal on How to Glue a Puzzle with Modge Podge.
• I “met” some wonderful people through all of my Facebook puzzling groups and one of my favorite blogs, My Jigsaw Journal.  My friendship with Stacey has become a part of my every day normal routine through our numerous text chatting sessions, and it’s wonderful.  She is such a sweetheart and we have a lot of very similar tastes in puzzles, but with just enough differences to keep things interesting.
• Grew closer to my bestie, Gina, through puzzles this year as well.  We often text one another with whatever puzzle we are working on currently, and I even got her to join one my FB puzzling groups.  Woo hoo!
• And last, but certainly not least I opened a 42,000 piece puzzle called Around the World and dumped ALL the pieces together into one big plastic bin.  I am still sorting, and won’t be finished before the stroke of midnight tonight and the arrival of 2020, but I will be close.  ?

Seeing all the accomplishments listed here in one place makes me feel really good.  I achieved more than I thought, and am pretty darn proud of myself.  All in all, not too shabby considering I hadn’t really worked on anything other than the Life puzzle for years and years and still managed to keep up with a full-time job and two active little boys to boot. ??

Next year though is going to be amazing.  I want to get as much of the Educa 42,000 Around the World puzzle put together as possible while also tackling some of the smaller 2,000 piece and under puzzles that are quickly accumulating in my to do mountain.  Wish me luck! In the meantime, Happy New Year everyone!  May 2020 be your best one yet!