Thursday, March 21, 2013

Lucy! You've got some scannin' to do!


When I was home for Marchmas, my Dad let me bring home all of the family photo albums to scan the pictures inside. I am insane about family photos so I was super stoked. Let me tell you - I've seriously got some scanning to do.




After I took this photo I realized that I left six whole albums out of this picture. Oh boy.


I realize that I may just be scanning until the end of time but I'm vowing to get it done. I haven't let myself look through all of the pages in the albums yet, hoping that seeing each photo as fresh and new will motivate me to keep turning those pages and keep scanning. I did take a few peeks though.


Me and my brother. Of course, pink for girls and blue for boys. Remember when the covers of photo albums had actual photos on them like the one with the landscape above? Swank.




My Dad's Army days. He was stationed in Germany and has always told us about how great the pizza was there and how there wasn't an ugly woman in all of Germany. I keep thinking that surely there must have been one or two! He and my Mom used to open up the family trunk and show me and my brother postcards with amazing castles on them and my Mom would always let me take whiffs of this fancy perfume set that my Dad sent her while overseas. It had a pretty box and maybe eight or ten tiny bottles of different golden hued scents, each tied with slivers of colored ribbons. I remember that they smelled pretty horrible but I'm going to chalk that up to how old they were. Surely my Dad could pick out nice perfumes - unless one of those beautiful German salesgirls was trying to make commission off of him and then all bets are off!



Seventies. Nothing but seventies as far as the eye can see. That's my aunt's A-Frame house. It was sweeeeeet. I'd love to have that house today. They lived back in the woods and her girls were the biggest tomboys. Once, one of them almost drove us into a pond while careening downhill on a go-kart. I was screaming like a loon. I think they knew that I was a wuss and that city girl could not hang with the rough and tumble crowd. Perhaps they were trying to kill me off so that they wouldn't be obligated to play sissy-pants dolls with me anymore.





Look at my beautiful Mom's sweet hair! I'm going to have to get her to teach me how to do that. I think that I was told that she had that photo taken professionally to send to my Dad to keep with him while he was stationed overseas.

I remember really loving that rick-rack and gingham dress. I had a pink one too! Everybody knows that I'd still wear those things today if they fit me.  I think it was a Sears portrait. My brother and I look seriously giddy! We look sugary sweet but I'm pretty sure we were being brats that day. It seems like we were brats every time that my Mom took us to a department store. I remember hiding under the clothes racks and trying to scare her into thinking that she'd lost us. Like she'd care! She would have probably been glad to have a few moments of peace!




I hope that this picture has faded - or else that means that my entire family used to wear pancake makeup. I didn't realize until after I took this shot but my Mom and I are wearing similar dresses!

I remember the day that we had this portrait made. I think that my family just bought this one shot but I remember the photographer making us do totally goofy stuff like leaning on a wagon wheel and looking wistfully towards the left. There was also a fake window that we leaned out of as if we were enjoying a light breeze on a fine Spring day. I'd give a month's worth of grilled cheeses to see those proofs again!

Do you have any family portraits? Have you been lucky enough to be made steward of the family photos, both good and bad? Do tell!

Until next time,
x's and o's,
Eartha



18 comments:

Voodoo Kitten said...

Yep, we have a pretty embarrassing Olan Mills family portrait. Thankfully, it is buried deep in my mothers garage far away!

OP SHOP MAMA said...

That's awesome you and your mum in nearly the same dresses!! Yep love those old photos. WE have mountains of slides to get done too.

I love the actual albums, esp those ones with the funky covers..

Now go scan!

Sara In AZ said...

How eerily fantastic that you and your Mom's dresses are SOOOO much alike! All of your pictures are really great...I esp. love that one of your Mom with the bouffant- completely awesome!

I only have one family pic with me in it...and yes it WAS the ubiquitous Olan Mills! hee!

RetroSandie said...

Oh my! What a job you have ahead of yourself!! But a job done with love, plus you get to see all of the wonderful old family photos. I have to say, you look just like your mom. Beautiful both of you!!!!

Jackie Jardine said...

What a lovely collection, Eartha. It's so nice to look back at family memories. Sadly, a lot of my family's vintage albums from my grandparents are lost to the ages. Maybe that's why I have such a fascination with other people's vintage albums. I have amassed a collection of photos myself and am in the process of organizing them.

<3 Jackie @ Let's Go Thrifting!

Dolly the Bird said...


I love that little pinafore! Why don't little girls dress like that anymore, I ask you?!
I've been scanning family photos (many of them in the exact same albums you have!) off and on for the last 2 years....and I'm still not finished! My mom's side are pretty well done, my dad's side about 3/4 done, and my and my parents' photos are only about 1/3 scanned. Sooooo many photos!! And then there's the massive bin full of clippings....UGGGHHH! Pretty sure I'll be scanning till Jesus comes back!

Dana@Mid2Mod said...

My mother kept a HUGE Olan Mills portrait of my brother and me on the living room wall. I was in the 5th grade when it was taken, and he hadn't started school. It was still hanging there when I got married and moved away. So embarrassing!

Karen S said...

Love your photos. Scanning will be a lot of work but worth it to have them preserved.

I'm the oldest of 4 kids. When I was a baby my dad took pictures of me, then switched to slides. He took pictures when my sister came along, some when my brother did and by the time my baby sister came, there's nary a picture. A couple of times a yr he would pull out the projector and we'd spend the evening looking at slides. Good times. I have the slides now and used a converter to turn them into digtial pics so me and my siblings could all have copies.

Anonymous said...

There is a giant portrait of me on the wall of my dad's house, probably taken circa 1974. I was a toddler and, in the days before car seats, allowed to crawl around on the backseat/floorboards of the car. I had on little white tights that had turned black on the knees due to the aforementioned crawling. The photographer somehow made the knees of my tights magically white again but this was before photoshop, so I think he used paint. All I know is that I have insanely white knees in that picture compared to the rest of me and my father refused for years to take it down. Now I kind of like it, ha ha.

Kate H said...

OK, I love the baby pictures. You look like the photographer just told you something that shocked your socks right off. (Of course, at that age, pretty much all the world is one big surprise after another.) And your brother looks like he's thinking, "Yeah, tell me another one, Photo Guy." Kate H

Kate H said...

Love the baby pictures. You look like the photographer just said something that shocked your socks off (although, at that age, pretty much the whole world is a surprising and sometimes shocking place). And your brother looks like he's saying, "Yeah, tell me another one, Photo Guy."

SUZY8-TRACK said...

Adore that photo of your mom's hair! Awesome! I have a photo of my aunt whose hair resembles Annette Funicello's from her Beach Blanket Bingo Days....need to find that one, there was an amazing amount of hairspray to create that look.

Mollie D said...

I was put in charge on both my mom and dads side and made a blog for each so others could see

http://photosfromcatherine.blogspot.com/
http://iowakings.blogspot.com/

Rob and Monica said...

these are AMAZING , I want my family pictures but my mom seems to think I will mess them up or lose them!!!! (monica) I can not wait to see them!

cheshirecat666 said...

Oh honey...don't get me started on the joy of old family photos AND scanning. When I first came back home and got my very first comp that came with a scanner as a package deal,I was in Heaven. And in a separate heaven,I was reunited with COUNTLESS amazing scary and wonderful family albums

Cut to 2006,I found Flickr. I joined just cos I wanted to comment on a pic,I never really even thought about sharing anything. Then after seeing that people had posted so many old funny family pics as well as joyous memories pics,I was like...hey,Ive got DECADES worth of this stuff!

I totally feel your joy!

Jen said...

These are awesome. I love old family photos—they can bring back (and dredge up—*80s perm* *looked like a Cocker Spaniel* *cough* *ahem*) so many memories.

Dad & my aunt and uncle have been cleaning out Grandpa's house. In the dresser, they found an envelope of old family photos Grandma had put up for each of the grandchildren when she passed away 20 years ago...what a beautiful, beautiful surprise. Dad brought them down when he had a business meeting here, and we sat on the floor going through them, with him telling me who some people were. These photos are a treasure. Embarrassing or no! Have fun scanning, Miz Kitsch. ;)

Greener Pastures--A City Girl Goes Country said...

That's the same dress!

I cracked up picturing your family leaning out the fake window catching the spring breeze. You are so friggin' funny.

Melissa said...

These are so great. My grandparents have a guest bedroom for each of their daughters (they didn't grow up in that house) and she keeps baby & kid photos of the grandkids for each room. My brother and I have blue and pink photos, too. I guess all those 70s kid pics are similar.