Picture of the Week

I've written a post every day. Apparently, that's only happened in my mind. We're back to Thursday, so I thought I'd share a quaint little thing I did back when my kids were babies. When Laura was born way back in 1987, someone (my mom?) gave us a Polaroid camera, and it was decided (a request perhaps?) that I would send both my mom and mother-in-law a "picture of the week". Oh, and then I would mail these pictures.

Quaint, right? In this day of digital photography, I suspect grandparents are now inundated with photos on facebook, instagram, and in their email inbox on a daily basis.

But, you know, back in the old days, we had this stuff called film that had to be developed and frankly, sometimes you just didn't know what you were getting. The first commercial "instant" camera was unveiled in 1948, so they had been around for awhile. One of the great things about these pictures, is that the frame around them can be written on.

Anyway, last year, I brought home my mother's collection, and scanned them, primarily to preserve them. Some were fading quite a bit. And now, on throwback Thursday, I'm going to share one of them. Yep, just one.

On this day in 1989, Laura was taking a train ride in Wheaton Regional Park in Wheaton, Maryland, not far from our house. She's wearing an adorable shorts outfit, that I made her. Those objects in the cotton print are cows.

Hope you had a wonderful Thursday today and back in 1989!

Throw Back Thursday

I bet y'all know all about this "throw back Thursday". It's all over the twitterverse, instagram and facebook. Don't know when or how it started, but hey! Better late than never. Today is the perfect day for me to start because yesterday, I spent a little time scanning slides. What?

I have the Epson Perfection V330 Photo scanner that I bought a couple of years ago to easily scan the pattern envelopes for my Etsy shop. It's great! I highly recommend it. Of course, you would now have to buy the newer model. The scanner also came with this weird little holder device thingie which, if used correctly, scans slides (positive film) and negatives. I haven't given it a test run of the negatives, but even if doing moderately correctly, does a great job of scanning the slides. Like when you have the slide in the projector and the words are backwards and upside down... if you only guess when you put the slides in the thingie, sometimes your scans come out that way too.

Here's what the thingie looks like:

The long, narrow part on the left is where you would put a negative in.

And, if it has been decades that you took any photos with slide film, this is what might turn up (the first 2 had what appeared to be a 1985 date stamp on the frame):

What? Something you would now delete if you were using a digital camera! Unretouched, by the way.

 Elliott (I think). Photo only cropped.

And finally, a stray slide that I scanned, with a 1970 date stamp, truly a throwback!

It appears to be me on the left, but I do not remember that jacket or that haircut, and you think you might remember something like that. It is definitely my sister on the right. Those are some groovy sunglasses!

It takes about 4 minutes to scan 4 slides, so this isn't a super quick process, but the discovery is fun. Unless I unearth a few more boxes of slides, I only have about 5 more rolls to scan.

Have a great Thursday!