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Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Reviews of California Jigsaw Puzzles

Working a California Jigsaw Puzzle Together is a Great Family Activity


Reviews of California Jigsaw Puzzles
California jigsaw puzzles are beautiful. Working them together as a family can help children and adults develop or refine many important skills. These include management skills as the family plans who will work on which part of the puzzle; organizational skills as one sorts pieces; and spatial relations and analytical skills as one begins to learn and predict which pieces will fit together and why. Learn more about the benefits of working jigsaw puzzles.

Adults will find that working puzzles may help ward off senility, since both sides of the brain need to work together while completing a jigsaw puzzle. Working puzzles exercises the short-term memory as you try to remember just where that piece you saw that will fit in the hole is, or where the hole is that a piece you have in your hand will fit. It's a more complex version of the card game Concentration.

As families sit around a table and put puzzles together, they not only develop brain skills, but they also have plenty of opportunities to talk to each other. We often don't spend much time getting to know our other family members because we hardly ever make time to sit down with each other in a relaxed setting. Working puzzles together is an informal way for children to spend quality time with parents and siblings or wives with husbands. If the conversational well needs priming, one can always talk about the puzzle working process.

 Why California Puzzles?

So why work jigsaw puzzles with scenes of California on them? Why not? California is the third largest state in America. It has some of the most famous amusement parks. It is a large producer of wine. It has scenery that encompasses mountains, deserts, volcanoes, beaches, rugged coasts, large cities, growing fields, orchards, and a variety of fauna and flora. As a family works California puzzles, children can learn a bit of geography, no matter what state or country they live in. Adults can see places they've never been, or families can remember and reminisce about places they have visited as they work puzzles with the photos of those places on them.

California is home to some of the most beautiful places in America. Of course, I may be a bit biased, since I'm a native Californian. I currently live on the California Central Coast, but I used to live in Southern California and was one of the first visitors to Disneyland when it was built. My dad helped build it.

Now I live among the vineyards in Templeton.  I often walk the downtown area of Paso Robles, as well as its vineyards. I love walking the boardwalk of Cambria and the beaches of the San Luis Obispo County South Coast. I never go anywhere without my camera.

 I enjoy sharing the beauty of my state with others. I share photos of my local area of Templeton and Paso Robles in my blog, Capturing the Paso Robles Area with My Camera, and I love making Zazzle puzzles of some of my favorite local scenes, especially of the coast, the trees, and the missions. You can see all these puzzles together from this Zazzle link. 

Zazzle puzzles come in two sizes. Both come in lovely gift boxes with the image on the top so you can see what the finished product should look like. The 8" x 10" size has 110 pieces. The 11" x 14" size has 252 pieces. Both are suitable only for those over three years of age. Below are some photos I have used on the puzzles you can access from the link above. I took these photos at the Santa Barbara Mission. They are just two views of this mission I put on puzzles.

Reviews of Jigsaw Puzzles with California Scenes
My Favorite Puzzle of the Santa Barbara Mission, © B. Radisavljevic



Reviews of Jigsaw Puzzles with California Scenes
This image appears on my most popular Santa Barbara Mission Puzzle from Zazzle
Below is one of the many beach scenes I put on puzzles of the California coast.

Reviews of Jigsaw Puzzles with California Scenes
This photo of the rocky coast of Cambria also appears on a Zazzle puzzle. © B. Radisavljevic
I have even more puzzles with scenes from the Paso Robles wine country. These are mostly of vineyards, tasting rooms, and even grape processing. In my puzzles grapes are shown on the vine both green and ripe and even withering when left on the vines after harvest. Vineyard jigsaw puzzles show vineyards in summer when  they are green and in autumn when their leaves turn lovely shades of red and gold.  Some of these would be just right to work while you are waiting for a midnight toast on New Year's Eve at home. Here are a couple of favorite photos I used on these puzzles.

Reviews of Jigsaw Puzzles with California Scenes
Vineyard at Harvest Time, © B. Radisavljevic

Reviews of Jigsaw Puzzles with California Scenes
Patio of Croad Tasting Room in Paso Robles, © B. Radisavljevic

Although I love making puzzles at Zazzle, they may not be big enough to satisfy some people. Amazon's jigsaw puzzles feature California places I have not visited with a camera.  Some puzzle pictures feature art work rather than photographs. The topics for which you can find 1000-piece puzzles give you many choices. Here are some of my California puzzle favorites.



Next time you want to spend quality time with your family without leaving home, plan a family puzzle party. Pop corn, make hot chocolate, and work a California  jigsaw puzzle. Pick up one now while you are thinking about it. You won't be sorry, because you never know when  the next rainy day or next power outage will occur. Be prepared.

9 comments:

  1. What a wonderful idea to put your California photos on puzzles, and what a great gift idea for anyone from California! I love these. Beautiful!

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    1. Thanks, Susan. I've always loved puzzles, and they are more useful (and easier to wrap as gifts) than posters.

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  2. Your California photo jigsaw puzzles are great for Californians, as Susan said, but also for anyone who has ever lived there and moved away (and misses it) or visitors who would enjoy puzzles with scenes of places they saw on their trip. Great memories to be relived through puzzles! Having once lived on the California Central Coast, I naturally am drawn to the Cambria coastal scene (a place we visited often on weekends) and Morro Rock, which we could see the tip of from our house in Los Osos! You bring back fond memories for me with this post, Barbara!

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    1. I admit I love living here, and here is great material for Zazzle products. I just wished the Zazzle previews were larger.

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  3. Puzzles definitely provide a great opportunity for family fun! Your photos are certainly beautiful and would sure make lovely finished puzzles. My favorite is the rocky coast of Cambria. I would imagine it would make a very challenging puzzle to assemble too.

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    1. The Zazzle puzzles are pretty easy, since they don't have too many pieces. They are great for those who don't have a lot of time to work a larger one. They are also a convenient size to glue together and frame to hang later.

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  4. Puzzles with California scenes would be great gifts for everyone who loves California. Some of these pictures are beautiful

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    1. Thanks, Aysha. if I lived where you did, I'd have an even greater variety of California scenes than I have been able to photograph yet. When I lived in So. California digital cameras weren't in use much.

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  5. Your photographs would make perfect jigsaw puzzles and once they were put together they could be framed. I enjoy puzzles for the same reasons that you have stated. When my MIL had a stroke part of her therapy was putting together puzzles.

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