missing one piece...

I finally finished our 1000-piece puzzle - or more accurately, 999-piece puzzle - of this famous photograph, "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" circa 1932.

I had started the puzzle once before a year or so ago at my old house (my parents' house) and had given up after finishing the easiest parts (which includes the border, the bottom left corner and the pieces around that long cable that extends from top to bottom). After that it just kinda sat around until the desk that it was sitting around on needed to be cleared for my dad, who moved back from Korea.

Then the puzzle pieces migrated to my then-boyfriend (now husband)'s house, where he said confidently that he'd work on it and finish it within the week. Yeah right. I kept telling him that he was wayyy overly ambitious and that it would take much longer, to which he'd respond by saying,

"What, you don't believe in me?"

To which I had to answer, "Of course I believe in you honey. But you just haven't done jigsaw puzzles before. It's not easy. That puzzle will take us a minimum of two months. Black and white is especially hard. It's not you. It's the puzzle."

And of course I was right.

So about 4 months pass and we have a finished puzzle! Contributors include: Kevin (I think he got like 100 pieces), his cousin who managed to put together lots of the people, and me. The puzzle will be framed ('cuz it's such cool photograph to begin with) and hung in our guest/computer room. It goes well with the black and white decor we plan for that room.

But like I mentioned, it's missing one piece. It's the piece that has the third-from-the-right-guy's left armpit. I think we figured out at around 200-pieces-to-go that it was missing.

So how are the Lee's going to solve this problem? By making our own puzzle piece, of course!

We're going to outline the piece and cut out some layers of thick paper to fit. And we're going to make it our own unique piece. Nothing tacky or anything. Maybe add just a little accent to it, that makes this puzzle ours and ours alone.

I hope we can tackle life's little challenges, it's "missing pieces", in the same way. 'Cuz life sure isn't going to always provide us with all 1000 pieces we thought it promised. In those cases, we'll try to find an opportunity for creativity and team work...