I have been having so much fun with putting together jigsaw puzzles, it has become quite addicting! My love or addiction for puzzles started in 2020 when Covid hit and the ladies at church started a puzzle table. We all brought puzzles to share. After a while it was time to get rid of the puzzles so I decided to take the puzzles and start a puzzle library. This year I put together a whopping 70 puzzles while recouping from all our health issues including my torn ham string and broken ankle. I had to have something to do! One little interesting tidbit I learned this fall was that Queen Elizabeth loved to do puzzles. She and I could have had a lot of fun together!
This is a little rabbit trail, but my mention of Queen Elizabeth reminded me of another unique encounter of sorts with her. In July of 2004, Gene and I flew into Salt Lake City and drove north through Utah, Idaho, Montana to Calgary in Alberta, Canada to visit a processing facility that we were buying our compressed hay from. It was very interesting. After watched the slicing, compressing, and packing process, our salesman took us out to the huge warehouses where they stored large square bales of hay and told us to pick which stack we wanted. After considerable evaluation, Gene picked out his hay. The salesman said, “You can’t have that stack, it belongs to the Queen of England for her horses”. We touched the hay, paid our homage and took a picture!!!!
Now back to the puzzles…. all the following puzzles are in my puzzle library in our store for check out, just like you would a library book. To date, I have 156 puzzles in inventory; 300, 500, 550,750, 1000 and even one 48 (pieces are huge) and one 1500 piece. Someone recently added about 25 to my collection but before that I could say I had put together most of them. In counting this post, I did 75 puzzles this year. I had no idea I had done that many!!!
“Christmas in the Cabin” (a wooden puzzle by Mosaic Puzzles)-1000 piece, January 2022
This was a very challenging puzzle and you had to have patience and think differently. The worse part was the pieces did not connect together tight (from looking at them you would have thought they did) and I was constantly bumping them and having to fix the issue. When I first started it, I was overwhelmed. My sister-in-law was helping me and she was intrigued and kept saying we could do it. By the time she left she had done the left chair and I was working on the right one. I kept plugging and did it. It felt like quite an accompolishment and I didn’t want to take the puzzle down. And no, I do not have room to glue them together and hang on my walls/
This is a sample of the pieces to the wooden mosaic puzzle. They were all kinds of shapes. There is no need to do the edge first as you can’t tell what the edge pieces are! They just happen as you go.
“Home Sweet Home”-300 piece, January 2022
“Lakeside Cottage”-300 piece, January 2022
Amazing Natures “Hidden Birds”-1000 piece, January 2022
“Library”-1000 piece, January 2022
“Summer House”-500 piece, January 2022
“The Candy Store”-500 piece, January 2022
“Farm Scene with Round Bales of Hay”-500 piece-January 2022 (missing 2 pieces) by Golden Guild
“Mom’s Pantry”-1000 piece, January 2022
“Pasture With Horses”-300 piece, January 2022 (missing 1 piece) by Golden Guild
United States- 1000 piece, Janaury 2022, by Master Pieces
Snow-Deer-Bird Feeder-500 piece, January 2022, by Bits and Pieces
“Yoga Cats”-1000 piece, January 2022
“Cobble Walk Cottage”-500 piece, February 2022, by Eurographics Puzzles
Assorted Wild Birds-500 piece, February 2022, by Springbok
“Lures Fishing Tackle”-1000 piece, February 2022, by Charles Wysocki
“Beautiful Butterfly”-500 piece, February 2022, by Mega Puzzles. This one was not as hard as it might look. The two sides are mirror images. Usually if I found one piece, I would find the matching one also.
“Millside Picnic”-1000 piece, February 2022, Hometown Collection by Bonnie White
“Songbirds”-1000 piece-February 2022. This one was challenging. Almost gave up and then a burst of determination got me going again.
“Songbirds”-750 piece, February 2022, by Hautman Brothers Collection
“Frederick the Literate Cate”-750 piece, March 2022, by Charles Wysocki. Also have in 300 piece size.
“Country Meadow”-300 piece, March 2022, by Hautman Brothers
“Old Pumpkin Farm”-300 piece, March 2022, by Eurographics Puzzles
“Three Sisters”-500 piece, March 2022, by Charles Wysocki
“Rule the Rooster”-1000 piece, March 2022, by Lori Schory. I loved this puzzle. It is the onlyp puzzle I bought.
“Chickens”-1000 piece, April 2022
“Home is My Sailor”-300 piece, April 2022, by Charles Wysocki.
“Lichtenstein Castle”-300 pieces-April 2022, by MB Puzzles
“Mountain Lake Lighthouse”-300 piece, April 2022, by MB Puzzles
“Prairie Wind Flowers”-300 peice-April 2022, by Charles Wysocki.
“Tea By The Sea”-300 peice-April 2022, by Charles Wysocki.
“Volkswagons”-1000 piece, April 2022 by Muchos Pieces.
“Morning Deliveries”-300 piece, April 2022, by Master Pieces.
“Old Cape Cod”-300 piece, April 2022, by Charles Wysocki
“Family of Owls”-1000 piece round puzzle, April 2022, by Lori Schory.
“Weekend Market”-1000 piece, April 2022, by Master Puzzles.
“1856 Country Store”-500 piece, May 2022, by Puzzle Bug.
“Old Store”-500 piece, June 2022, by Puzzle Bug
“A Day Out At the Farm”-1000 piece, July 2022
“Castle Country”-1000 piece, August 2022, by Hometown Collections.
“Dog Days”-750 pieces, August 2022,
“Dream Day First HOme”-1000 piece, August 2022
“Fireside Companions”-1000 piece, August 2022, by Charles Wysocki.
“French Estate with Vineyards”-1000 piece, August 2022
“Union Square”-1000 piece, August 2022, by Hometown Collections.
“Sunset on the Farm”-1000 piece, August 2022. (Borrowed from a friend. Not in my library collection).
“Quilts”-1000 piece, September 2022, by Arlette Gosieski at Ceaco Puzzles.
“Spring Fawn”-1000 piece-September 2022
“San Francisco Conservatory”-1000 piece, September 2022, by Hometown Collections.
“Spring Mill”-1000 piece, September 2022, by Abraham Hunter.
“Toadstool Cottage”-1000 pieces-September 2022, by TCG Toys.
“Wooden You Like A Ride”-1000 piece-October 2022, by Charles Wysocki.
“Family Pride”-500 piece, October 2022, by TCG Toys.
“Small Town Christmas”-1000 pieces, October 2022, by Charles Wysocki.
“Winter Treats”-500 piece, October 2022, by Bits and Pieces.
“Beauty and the Beast Falling In Love”-1000 piece, November 2022, by Thomas Kinkade.
“Cabin In the Woods”-1000 piece, November 2022, By David Maclean.
“Spring Patio”-1000 piece, November 2022, by TCG Toys.
“Sasha Salutes the Flag”-1000 piece, November 2022, by Linda Nelson.
“Summer Afternoon on the Farm”-500 piece, November 2022
“Toyland”-1000 piece, November 2022, by Master Pieces.
“The Bluebirds Song”-1000 piece, November 2022, by Country Life Puzzles.
“Sempione Italy”-1000 piece-December 2022, by Springbok.
“Labor Day”-1000 piece, December 2022
“Carpathian Mountains, Europe”-1000 piece, December 2022, by Mind Blogglers.
“Christmas Traffic Jam” (Corkboad back & scalloped edge)-500 piece, December 2022.
“Christmas Train”-300 piece, December 2022, by Gift Craft.
“Winter Barn”-1000 piece, December 2022, by Susan Winget.
“Rooster” (Mosaic Wooden), December 2022, by Mosaic Wooden Puzzles.
“Glow in the Dark-Family 8 Traditions”-300 piece, December 2022. If you expose this puzzle to 20 minutes of bright light it will glow in the dark. I forgot to try it!
And now for the fun gag gift this Christmas…..
My dear friends, Donna and Sheila, gave this to me as a fun gag gift. They designed and made even the packaging. They knew I would get a big kick out of it and I did! I was tempted to open it and try to put it together but decided to keep it instead. There are three canes in the package.
I love Christmas. I love the family time together, the special holiday baking and all the traditions that go along with it. But I try to stay focused on the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. Every year we put a star on the barn as a reminder to the community of the wise men that followed the star and found him. Are you following and searching for the true Light of the World? His name is Jesus, the Son of God who took on human flesh and lived among us to show us the way to God.
Following are some of our family Christmas pictures.
We put three different puzzles together.
This puzzle was a Christmas present.
Pat and Ryan playing Splendor, a family favorite.
Emily and Ryan
Two games going at once: Azul and Eurorails
Christmas lunch.
Grandkid craziness. They called it yoga-ninja.
Jill told me Ryan wanted to learn to make bread. So he and I had a bread-baking afternoon.
Finished loaf of wonderful smelling, hot, soft bread. Good job Ryan.
My recipe
Obe rode with Gene to feed hay to the cows.
Gotta watch some football! Emily held down the fort while Gene fed his cows.
Family tradition: We have to listen to Peter, Paul and Mary’s Christmas Special every year.
We also watched “I Heard the Bells,” the inspiring story of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the author of the beloved Christmas carol “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” and produced by Sight and Sound. It was really good.
Two very short video clips of our crazy grandkids. They were a hoot. We really do enjoy our time together. We were missing Keith, Susan and Noah this year.
It was the last day of November, and I got a call from my sister, Ev. It was her birthday and I had planned to call her. But she had something pressing on her mind that turned out to be very, very interesting to me and my extended family. She had turned on the TV that morning to listen to the weather. She is not a TV person, so this was not something she normally did. They were airing a story about an adopted girl who was searching for her parents. She found her mom and had a relationship with her for about twenty years. But her mom took an important secret to her grave that left her daughter with a deep unfilled void in her life. She refused to tell her daughter, Deanna, her daddy’s name. Her mother did reveal two crucial tidbits of information; he lived in Richmond and was a Greek. It became an intense desire of Deanna to try and find her dad. One day while praying, God revealed to her his name was Gus. After years of searching, she found her dad. The story that was aired is “Woman adopted as a baby is caring for her biological father after lifelong searach for him: It’s the most incredible miracle.”
Ev found the story very interesting and amazing. Later in the morning she was mulling over the story and suddenly it hit her; Richmond, Greek, Gus. Could this possibly be the Gus that we knew, the long-time friend of our Aunt Ruth? She called me. My husband and I live on a farm about 30 miles west of Richmond and our Aunt Ruth had lived on the west side of Richmond. Ev knew we had a fair amount of contact with both of them. She started telling me the story and I was stunned. The only thing that raised a doubt was Gus being a ballroom dance instructor. I had never heard that, nor could I visualize him as one. We called a sister of Ruth, and she confirmed that yes, that was true and had taught Aunt Ruth how to ballroom dance. Oh me, oh, my! I immediately had to hear the story! This was too coincidental for it not to be the Gus we knew! I goggled and came up with the story. As soon as I saw the picture, I knew it was him. We very quickly learned some things about Gus that we never knew; a history that had never been revealed, a life he had kept secret. Did Aunt Ruth know? My suspicions are she did since a nephew on Gus’s side of the family knew where to point Deanna when DNA testing linked them together. Aunt Ruth passed away in March 2016 so we will probably never know for sure.
The story of Deanna that was aired, is not the story of our family except for the fact that Aunt Ruth was a friend of Gus Nicholas for many years, probably going back to the early 70’s. Living close to Richmond and being close to her, Gus became a part of our lives in special ways. To learn this story about him has intrigued us and made us reflect on the man we knew but didn’t know.
Gene and I were married in 1972. Aunt Ruth was a single aunt who never married. She was next to the oldest in a family of twelve children. She got her nursing degree and in February 1966 moved to Richmond to further her education at VCU and worked at MCV Hospital. She was an excellent nurse and nursing instructor, and her specialty was the cardio-vascular unit, helping with some of the first heart transplants in Virginia. Another aunt who was a younger sister of Ruth, Carolyn Reed, her husband John, and their two children Doug and Cathy, moved to Richmond in 1974. It was really special for me to have two aunts so close by. I will always treasure the times spent in their homes and the special family friendships we developed.
I don’t remember when I first learned about Gus. Ruth and Gus frequently came out to our farm to target shoot their pistols. Ruth always drove as Gus had an eye issue and did not have good eye sight. He loved to shoot but he was never as good as Ruth. She could hit the mark! On one of their excursions to the farm we were getting ready to feed the baby calves and invited them to help. Our daughter Jill was really little, probably around 3, and she wanted to carry the calf bottle. It was almost too big and heavy for her, but she hugged it to her chest and waddled down the hill to the calf barn. Gus thought she was the cutest thing and giggled and giggled at her. Once he started giggling, he couldn’t stop! He snickered and giggled like a little girl while feeding the calves. He had never done such a thing and it struck him so funny. For Aunt Ruth it brought back memories of when she was a little girl on her father’s dairy farm.
This was in the early 1980’s.
Usually after they were done shooting, we would sit around the kitchen table, chatting and eating a snack while catching up on our lives. Gus was always friendly, chatty and fun to visit with.
I don’t know what attracted Ruth to Gus or how they met. They were so different in their family heritage and traditions, faith, lifestyle, ethnic background and education. But they found in each other a friendship that lasted forty or more years. There were times of frustration for Ruth and along the way there were several other opportunities that blossomed but never bloomed. Did she know his sorted past and wondering eye? They never shared the strong bond of a common faith and she never wanted to marry him. He was a friend and they enjoyed doing things together and the companionship it provided.
Gus’s favorite hat; the one he always wore. When I saw this on the video link at the top of the page I said, “Yes, that was his hat-the one he always wore.”
In her later years, Aunt Ruth moved to a retirement home in Harrisonburg. Gus took the move hard; he needed and depended on her, but Ruth’s mind was made up. After her death, I called Gus and told him of her passing. I made arrangements to pick him up and take him with me to the funeral. At the last minute, he backed out. He was not getting around well anymore and felt it was too much for him. I lost contact with him soon after that.
I realize we never really knew much about his personal life except his name was Gus and he was Aunt Ruth’s friend. I thought I had lots of memories of him but when I started to write I discovered time had stored the specifics of them on the unretrievable files of my mind. I will treasure the few I have.
Gus passed away on December 6, one week after the story broke. I was able to contact Deanna the following day and she told me the news. I asked if he had made peace with God and accepted Jesus as his Savior before he died and she said yes. Gus’s story is not about us or even Aunt Ruth but a daughter who found her dad and was able to make peace with her heritage, her past, and her dad at just the right time. It is an amazing miraculous story for Deanna and Gus. Their story was especially fascinating to us because Gus had touched our lives through Aunt Ruth.
We simply knew his name was Gus and accepted him for who he was, Aunt Ruth’s friend.
Other memories…..
My cousin, Doug Reed, who was Uncle John and Aunt Carolyn’s son writes the following memories of Gus.
I don’t remember the first time I met Gus. He was just so present in my life for my formative years. Our family moved back to Richmond, VA when I was about seven, and we spent quite a lot of time with my Mom’s sister Ruth. Gus was Aunt Ruth’s companion. In a family where respect for elders was strictly enforced, we were forbidden to address our Aunts and Uncles by first name only – “Aunt Ruth” always had to have the “Aunt” in front of it, despite the fact that she was such a familiar presence in our home. Gus was an exception. He was never “Uncle” Gus – he was pretty much the only adult we could address on a first name basis.
I remember him as a raconteur, telling stories around the dinner table – often hilariously off-color for our straight-laced household. He always included me in conversations, making my young self feel included in the foreign world of the adult’s table. I remember him sneaking me away from the dinner table and heading down to the basement for games of ping-pong. Gus had sharp reflexes, and I usually lost. Gus showed me how to put spin on the ball, twisting my wrist instead of just smacking the ball head-on. My ping-pong game improved after that, but he still usually beat me. He was a constant in our home for many years, coming to all of our Thanksgivings and Easter dinners. As a kid who enjoyed irreverent humor, I saw in Gus a kindred spirit. He was a man of good humor, with a smile for everyone he met. I am glad to have known him, and happy he found family and a home at the end of his life.
On December 27, 2022 there was a Celebration of Life for Gus by youtube. Below is the link posted by Deanna Shrodes.
I am a country gal who enjoys writing, gardening, baking and my family. My husband and I own a retail feed store and it keeps us active and busy. We love living in the country and on our beef farm. We retail natural, Angus, dry-aged beef in our store and a local "natural" store.
My writings, called "From A Grandma's Perspective" are mostly inspired from our five delightful grandchildren. These along with "Life Perspective" can read on our web page at www.hffinc.com under the "Who We Are" tab.
By the way, I love hearing from people who read my blog!!!