Valerie Abenroth

Valerie Abenroth is the co-founder and co-owner of Large as Life Puzzles, a Boise, Idaho-based company that creates life-size animal trivia puzzles. The company launched in 2024 with three puzzles - a red panda, a king penguin, and a koala - each with a trivia question printed on the back of every large puzzle piece.

Before launching Large as Life, Valerie ran her own photography business out of Boise for nearly four years. She specialized in commercial and brand photography, school portraits, food, and lifestyle work for a range of product and editorial clients. Her background in visual storytelling shaped the Large as Life brand from the oversized animal graphics to the trivia element woven into every piece.

The idea came from Valerie's sister-in-law, Courtney - a mother of four and a teacher. While visiting Yellowstone National Park, Courtney kept noticing the "don't get too close to the bison" signs and thought it would be fun to bring a bison home, life-size, in puzzle form. She pitched it to Valerie, and together they built the company around that idea: puzzles big enough to lay out on the kitchen floor and see the scale of the animal up close.

Since launching on Amazon in June 2024, Large as Life has generated roughly $30,000 in revenue and expanded into three puzzle brands - Large as Life for animal puzzles, Learn About Life for general trivia, and Laugh With Life for joke-themed puzzles - all tied together by a shared mission to turn puzzle time into family time.