This little puzzle has quite a bit of history. Well, it's not a little puzzle. It's 1,000 pieces and if you're like me and aren't really into putting puzzles together, that's about 975 pieces too many.
But Evan likes putting puzzles together and the first time we encountered this puzzle we were dating. Do you know how much time it takes to put together a 1,000 piece puzzle when you aren't living with the person with which you are putting the puzzle together? Do you see where I'm going with this? 1,000 piece puzzle = lots of hanging out with my cute boyfriend because, ya know, we've got to finish this puzzle. (But let's be honest. Evan didn't need to be persuaded to hang out with me. I'm quite the catch...)
So we embarked on the journey to complete Whistle Stop Dreams. Evan probably put together about 75% of this puzzle and I was completely content with my 25%. When it was finished, we glued it together. And that was it. I admit I did think it would be cute in a little boy's room. But because Evan and I were not yet engaged and talking about my future children with my current boyfriend seemed a little awkward, nothing really came of this puzzle. Until I left it in my apartment when I moved out to move into our first married apartment.
When I went back to my old apartment to inquire about a black trash bag that was in reality the home of this puzzle, the new tenants said they had not seen it. What really happened was the new tenants saw a black trash bag, thought it was trash, and threw it away. Natch.
So Whistle Stop Dreams was just that: a dream.
Fast forward 5 years. We have a 3 year old son who loves trains. And that puzzle that I thought would look cute in a little boy's room? Evan decided he was willing to buy it and put it together again. And this time he put the entire thing together by himself. In 3 days.
Evan finally got around to gluing it together. But this time the humidity was what was going to dash our dream of hanging this above Blake's bed. Evan had glued the front of the puzzle and flipped it over to glue the back when he noticed that the newspaper the puzzle was laying on was now stuck to the front of the puzzle. Even though he had let the puzzle dry for the allotted time, the humidity didn't allow the glue to fully dry.
Whistle Stop Dreams was quickly turning into a nightmare.
We had a few options:
-Buy a new puzzle and put it together again.
-Let go of our Whistle Stop Dream and throw it away.
-Try to somehow remove the stuck on newspaper without damaging the puzzle.
-Try to color over the newspaper with colored pencils so it matched the puzzle underneath.
The last one sounds crazy, right? I thought so, too. But that's exactly what I did. I summoned my inner artist and colored over the newspaper patches. And it actually worked. If you inspect the puzzle closely you can find a few of the retouched areas. But from a normal viewing distance, no one is the wiser. (Well, except the people who read this blog...)
Whistle Stop Dreams is now hanging nicely above Blake's bed. And I was right. It does look cute in our little boys' room.
