Happiness is over 25 years of making puzzles for you!

Hi! We are Marvin and Margaret Jack. We live in Corvallis, Oregon and we personally design and make every wooden puzzle on our site! Yeah...We know it's hard to believe, but it's true! We love our life. Sometimes it can be hard working for yourself, but there are a lot of things we like about it, too. We love where we live. We feel lucky to have two great kids, our wonderful families and the friends we have. We like to ride our bikes and go for daily walks along the river. We cross country ski in the winter and make frequent trips to the ocean year round. We sell our puzzles primarily at Art Fairs throughout the Western United States, so traveling is a big part of our yearly experience too!

We started as a young family making toys and puzzles for our own children in the mid 1980's. One thing led to another and our hobby grew into what we do for a living! Now our kids are grown, but we still love working with children and people, like you, who support them.

We love getting to know our customers! They come from all walks of life, but all have one thing in common. That thing is an unwavering dedication to children in their lives. They know that the "puzzle-making stage" is a unique time in their child's life and take advantage of it with a passion. We love how connected our customers seem to be with their children!

We try as much as we can to give back to organizations who helped us out when we were a young growing family. Over the years, we have been able to donate 505 puzzles valued at over $12,500 to a local organization creating gift baskets and providing necessities for low income families. We were happy to do this because we used their services when we were a young family in need of help! Because of your support, we have been able to extend our donations to many other organizations that are doing remarkable things for those less fortunate than ourselves. Some of these can be found in our Services section of our links page. Please check them out...Maybe you might find one that inspires your support!

We hope that everyone who experiences our selection derives some of the same joys that we do in making and sharing our puzzles! We are proud of our emphasis on design and quality in the puzzlemaking process. We would like to continue this emphasis while exploring new forms of expressing our inspirations through the art of puzzlemaking!
Happy Puzzling!

-Marvin and Margaret

*OUR ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT*

We have strived to maintain a small ecological footprint since we started cutting our puzzles on a peddle-power scroll saw in the mid 1980's. Here's our progress:

*We cut our puzzles from a maple-faced laminate with a recycled (wood by-product) core. It is laid up with a Soy Glue binder. This is less toxic to the user (and the environment) than other more toxic glues.
*Backing boards for our puzzles are also made (using an eco-friendly Dry Press Process) from recycled wood by-products.
*All of our water-based finishes are earth and user friendly. They are non-toxic to our customers (children) as well as ourselves in the application process!
*Our puzzles are made to last. Many people tell us they keep or pass on puzzles we've made. This means they stay out of landfills.
*We use compact fluorescent lights in our shop, do a lot of our puzzle-making process by hand and converted our tools to 220 volt draws. We draw as little as we can from the power grid in making your puzzles.
*100% of our shop power comes from an investment we made in wind powered electrical sources.
*We strive to use only re-used boxes and (re-cycled material) mailers in shipping process.
*We get as close to 100% usage of our raw materials for our puzzles as we can. We donate wood scraps to an artist friend to use in his art. We also donate wood scraps for children to use in their art projects.
*We donate puzzles every year to an organization dedicated to fulfilling the needs of people less fortunate than ourselves.
*Finally, it is our goal to someday run our whole shop on 100% solar power.

PS: Want to get to know a little bit more about us? Here's a link address to an article written about us in our local Corvallis Gazette Times newspaper in December of 2010.

Please note and be aware; There are pictures of us in the article. In case you want to keep your fantasy of what we look like, you may choose to ignore!

Here's the link address (copy and paste it into your browser address box);
http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/article_b6c91fd0-0a4e-11e0-96da-001cc4c002e0.html

Yeah! Our site is powered totally by renewable wind energy!