 kind of just sucked some of the motivation out of me. Hey guys! So let's continue on with the wintery theme. And to be honest, my puzzle collection doesn't really have many wintery Christmas-y themed puzzle sets. So of the very few that I have, I figured the next best one to do was one that I actually picked up from the thrift store. And it also just so happens to be from a brand that I have not tried before. And the brand that I am talking about is Bits and Pieces. This one is called Christmas Gathering. The artist is Joseph Holoduke. It is 1,000 pieces and it's 20 by 27 inches when it's completed. Now this is a fantastic image here. We obviously got ourselves a Christmas party. And with lots of parties, you know there's gonna be a lot of good food and presents I guess. I care more about the food really. And here we are arriving to the Christmas party. Looks like we're the last ones here. But that's okay. I'm sure the food is still hot. This party's banging. Everyone looks like they're having a great time. I love all the colors. It doesn't seem like it's gonna be a hard image to put together. Seems pretty straightforward. But then again we're dealing with a lot of snow here so I'm hoping that I don't get stuck on those areas. But aside from that, you know the house looks pretty easy and everything else looks all right. I do have to say though my main concern with putting this particular puzzle together is well like I said I picked it up at the thrift store. Now it was taped when I bought it. So my hope is that all the pieces are actually in here. If not I'd be kind of devastated and it'd be the first time that I've come across a puzzle without you know all the pieces in it. But you know what what can I do right? It didn't only cost me I think 50 cents in the end so no big financial loss. But anyways in regards to the brand itself as I said I've never tried it before so I'm really interested to see what the overall quality and experience is like. Let's just keep our fingers crossed that all the pieces are in here so it doesn't you know shatter my heart you know in the end. But anyways guys I'm really looking forward to putting this image together so you know what let's get this opened. All right let's get this one opened up. Now the previous owner did tape it on two sides so let's hope that that is a good sign that there aren't any missing pieces here. All right let's open this up. All right so all the pieces are loose in here just about all of them. Let's take those apart. Obviously this person worked on the puzzle before so I don't know. I'm feeling a little hopeful right now. But anyways let's see should I take this out of the box? Yeah why not. And most of them fell on the floor. Probably I'm going to be the one who ends up losing pieces. Oh nice. All right so let's see what we got here. Now unfortunately I'm not working in the natural light. It's kind of late right now so the sun is gone but I'm going to do my best here to make out what this print looks like. All right so the first thing I notice here is the glossy coating on these. So hopefully this isn't going to give me too much of an issue when I put this together. But in regards to the print the colors seem pretty good. Now I'm trying to figure out how to describe this because to be honest the print itself doesn't seem very clear. It almost kind of blended a little blurry to me with the colors if that makes any sense. But I don't know if really that has more to do with the nature of this image or the nature of the artwork you would say. I don't know I kind of feel like the image on the box looks very crisp very sharp and the puzzle pieces themselves don't seem that way. But then again I I don't know I think I'm going to get a much better idea as I start piecing this image together. We do have a very nice piece size and so far I'm also seeing quite a nice variety of piece shapes here. Got a nice random cut going on so this is going to be a lot of fun. Now in regards to the strength let's see what we have. It seems pretty strong. The piece thickness seems pretty good. The tabs do not seem weak really as long as you don't put you know beastly force on it. But even this little area here it's very thin but it's pretty solid which is quite nice. Very nice. I'm quite surprised actually with the you know the quality of the piece itself. The print I'm still not sure yet. To be honest the overall feel of these pieces kind of reminds me of Seco. So with that in mind I'm curious to see how these are going to fit and also how are these going to hold together. But like I always say whenever going to find out until I start actually putting this puzzle together so you know what guys let's get started. Alright so I didn't drive myself too crazy sorting this puzzle. So I got through it fairly quickly. So for the first tray of course I have the edge pieces. Second tray is anything that has like these dark blue pieces so it's going to be mainly from this the sky. And there's some white here as well but you can see that blue in there. Next tray is mainly snow pieces but as you can see here we have like some of the trees. Some of these have detail in them. I don't know I feel like that should be another tray. I'll put that there for the minute. But you know there's a lot going on in this one and quite honestly I'm pretty sure this is going to need resorting when I get to it. But anyways next tray is going to be anything I believe to do with the house. So it's mainly red and yellow from the windows. Next tray here is anything that had green. So it's going to be probably parts of her dress and anything to do with like the shutters. I also have pieces from this lamp post here kind of like the the leafy bit. So yeah for some reason I felt like green just had to be separated on it. So next tray this was kind of random and there's not much going on here but these pieces look to be from the sleigh. And we have some other random bits here that I just couldn't figure out where to put. This tray has pieces that had any details for I think the guy here the dogs this boy. Some from her as well and the horse and probably some other random stuff here as well. This is a bit of a mess to be honest but and anyways the last one here is snow pieces. But some of these do have very small features in there like some detail in there but it's mainly plain. Probably this will be the very last tray that I worked on. So yeah that's what we got going on here. I'm not really sure what to start with but I guess I'm just going to see what pops out to me the most. Hopefully I don't have to do way too much resorting. I mean probably have to anyways but you know what let's let's move on. So before I really got to work on this set I hopped on over to the bits and pieces website to see what that was all about. So they started out in 1983 as a mail order catalog and still offer their catalog along with the online shop which from what I can understand seems to be the only way you can purchase any of their puzzles. I don't know how true that is but I love catalogs. I'm going to sign up for it. I love getting that kind of stuff in the mail. But anyways not only do they carry a large range of jigsaw puzzles but they also carry a selection of puzzle tables and accessories along with a bunch of other random products that don't really have anything to do with puzzles. But looking back to the puzzle side of things my goodness the range of piece counts is fantastic and the image selection is amazing. I mean the real estate listings were unreal oh my god this is perfect. Look it's my two favorite things put together a victorian and a lighthouse. I'm sorry I'm supposed to be looking at puzzle sets not potential vacation homes. Anyways the overall price range is pretty good. Looks like 500 to 1000 count sets average from about 15 to 18 dollars which is not bad really and they even have a sales page which is fantastic if you're looking to stock up on the cheap. They offer 100 satisfaction guarantee and are available 24-7 to take care of any issues you might have with your purchase. And there's a ton more info and items to look through here so I'll make sure to leave a link to their website down below if you want to check it out. So back to the puzzle after starting out with the super easy details at times I felt like I kept getting stuck in areas that I thought would be easy. Alright I feel like I'm not as far as I should be with this. I've been doing this for hours and for some reason I don't know why it was a struggle to start. But anyways we got most of the main details done here like the house and we have the people here the sled I'm working on the horse now and I don't know why but I have this growing suspicion that this piece here is missing. Now I still have to check my floor again because I know when I did the unboxing a lot of them fell on the floor but I mean they wouldn't have gone far. I mean I'm sitting where most of the pieces fell but I don't know I just I can't seem to find this particular one so I don't know this might be my first puzzle where I'm missing pieces but yeah I kind of feel like I should be a lot farther along considering how long I've spent on it so far. But anyways here's what I have left I have all what I think are the edge pieces that's not even the tray that I'm showing you. These are all the blue ones we still have all those white ones to go through. Trees here are the edges but yeah I don't know I feel like I'm actually gonna be missing stuff here so you know what let's just move on and hope for the best. Another reason why I think I felt hindered with my progress was the fact that the only time I really had to work on this puzzle was mostly late at night which meant I had no natural light and I tend to work best in that setting so I think that probably would have helped me figure out where some of these annoying pieces went. But by this point I kind of felt myself losing motivation and it wasn't because of the image this image is beautiful but it was that nagging feeling that I wasn't really going to completely finish this puzzle because of the possibility of that darn piece missing. I was feeling discouraged but you know I kept pushing on of course and try to work my way through more challenging areas. Alright it's the next day it's night time I came from work earlier I'm having a snack now but as soon as I was done with dinner I decided to start attacking this and I'm still pretty darn sure that this darn piece here is missing I can't find it anywhere. I almost feel like there's others missing but I don't know I don't want to jump the gun yet it's bad enough that there's possibly one missing so I'm just gonna try to not think about that too much but anyways for some reason I still seem to be struggling with this one and I don't really know why. I don't know if it's just you know the the print on the detail you know on each piece is it's not exactly clear but then again I don't really think that's the fault of the you know in terms of quality or anything I think it just has more to do with you know the nature of the image but it looks so much more sharper here. I don't know I keep going back and forth with my thoughts on this experience but anyways I started moving on to edge pieces because I figured you know that might be something I can get done quickly and I have a little bit but in terms of like filling in the gaps I mean this is the hard part now this is just like the snow in the image and then up here we have to finish the snow on the roof and then do just the the blue sky here which I don't think is going to be insanely difficult but then again I said that before and I've been struggling with this puzzle but anyways let me stop complaining let me finish my snack here and let's just continue on with this so after my delicious snack I finally got to resorting the tray with the blue pieces and even started piecing sections together in the tray now the great thing that I quickly took notice to while putting this together even early on was the hold for the most part I was able to pick up and move small sections about without them falling apart so that was very helpful and made me feel a bit better about the whole experience just don't try this with much bigger sections it won't work out too good but that's okay a little hold is better than none at all it's another day I just got back from work and as you can see with the light shining on my face it's still early outside so I have to be out of this house again in like another hour and a half so I want to try to squeeze in 30 40 minutes before I have to go again to try to get more of this puzzle done now what I did to get a little bit of a head start last night and I didn't film this I did decide to take all the white pieces that I had the snow pieces and resort them by shape I kind of feel like I should have done this way early on during the completion process I kind of feel like I got lazy midway and I didn't you know do any resorting like I said I probably should have done in the beginning but you know what it is what it is let's just push through the last bit here and see you know how many other pieces I have missing because I don't for sure I got one and really the whole point of sorting it by shape when you're dealing with areas like these is to cut just kind of help you pinpoint exactly what you need in certain areas especially if you have ones that are you know basically staring right at you so I already know which pile I'm gonna look at for this one and that one and then from there you know you kind of just work your way as best you can through these gaps but at least you get an idea of what kind of piece you need so yeah I definitely recommend you try this if you're stuck with pieces that pretty much all look the same it really did help me push through piecing the final challenging areas in this image an image that felt more challenging than it should have this puzzle took me about eight hours and 45 minutes to complete or not complete what a bummer I just knew it but anyways what are my final thoughts to this bits and pieces experience all right I'm not gonna lie that was a bit of a bummer and I did go into it expecting that I was going to be missing pieces but anyways let's let's move on with the review so aside from the missing pieces which isn't the puzzle's fault the overall quality I have to say is actually not bad the fit was great it went in very nicely it was not crumbly which is a huge pet peeve of mine this brand does have a pretty good hold to it and I'm not saying you could pick a big sections off your table and you know move it to the other side you can pick up small sections it's really dependent on the pieces in that section it's not everything is going to hold but for the most part I had pretty darn good luck with it I did have some glare issues at times and again you know it's really dependent on what kind of lighting you're using and where it's positioned it wasn't so much of an issue on the rare occasion when I was working on it with the natural light outside because you know that that spreads off nicely across the whole room and on the puzzle itself but you know when you have that ball of light above you it's just hard to kind of get yourself in a position where you're not seeing it on the image which you know is like another pet peeve of mine but you know it is what it is now in regards to the print quality on this the colors are great they're very bold they're very true to the image on the box but there were several instances where I kind of felt like the print was not very clear and I'm not really sure if that's the way their print looks or if that just has to do with the nature of the artwork which is probably the case because you know it's just gonna print however it looks from however the artist painted it or did what I don't know but you know what I mean but again other than that the colors were great and the pieces felt great they weren't weak they had a nice firmness to them and you know it's quite telling as well considering that it's a used puzzle who knows how many times it's been passed around and again all the pieces were in great shape and of course I did the pickup test and I must say this held on really well and of course I did like my typical you know take it apart in sections for like storage but that didn't hold up well in the end and it wasn't surprising because I think that had more to do with the pee shapes which I must say for bits and pieces there was a great variety of pee shapes but anyways I'm not planning to save it I'm not planning to display it because again it's missing pieces but this one will be one that I will end up donating I didn't have any spare ziplock bags around so I had to just put the pieces straight back into the box but I made sure I taped it very well and I figured you know what let me leave a little note in here and I made sure as well to leave a note on the front of the box saying that it was missing two pieces just so that the next person is aware. Now are these puzzles worth the price that I mentioned to you earlier? Would I pay the price? Um if it's a great image I think I would knowing me I probably wait till like there's a sale or something like that so that I could pick it up for cheaper but if I had to pay the 15, 18 dollars for like a 500 or 1000 count set I think I'll pay it especially if it's a fantastic image that I just can't resist. You're still getting an overall good quality puzzle and speaking of sales if you put in your email through their website they will send you a newsletter that I swear I think I've gotten emails nearly every day of different sales going on. So it's a great way to snag these sets at a much cheaper price and you know it makes it even more worth it at least to me. I would be more willing to pay that price for bits and pieces puzzle than probably for like a Robinsburger set. Is that a very controversial statement? I'm sorry if I made you mad but you know what you know let's put that comment on hold a second. What I just said just just try not to take that in too much. As I said before I do need to work on more Robinsburger sets to kind of get a better feel for their overall quality. I just based that statement off my first experience but anyways I want to know down below what are your overall thoughts on bits and pieces and hit that like button if you're a fan. I think for my next bits and pieces set I do actually have another one or two U sets in my collection but I think I need to try a brand new set. I think I need to get a much better feel of the overall experience because you know to be honest it was a little tainted by the fact that I was missing pieces and I know that may sound extremely silly to some of you but that's just me. I still absolutely love this image and it wasn't the it wasn't the image's fault it wasn't the quality's fault. I think it was just mainly the fact that knowing that I didn't have all the pieces very early on kind of just sucked some of the motivation out of me because I knew that in the end it wasn't gonna be fully complete and of all pieces it had to be one of the one of the pieces had to be the one with the pie on it. You can't have a good dinner without some nice dessert but anyways guys if you'd like a place to share your own puzzling experiences I do have a puzzling community that you can join and I'll leave the link down below to that video so that you can check it out and if you're new here and if you want to see me work on some other puzzles from different brands that I haven't tried before be sure to subscribe so that you can join me on my puzzling journey but anyways guys thank you for watching I hope you are all doing well hope you got some good plans for the new year and I will see you in the next one