Have to share

[New England Eeyore]

I mentioned in another thread that I've been working on scanning all my mom's old slides from the 70s, which has turned out to be incredibly entertaining, and for more than just the laughable fashion!

I always said that my Mom would have SO been a scrapbooker if it had been popular when she was alive. She kind of did a couple pseudo-scrapbooks and was fanatic about photographs in general. In the slide boxes, there is a kind of table of contents where you can put a brief description of each slide. She was meticulous about that, and I'm smiling as I'm reading some of these "captions" she came up with. Picture of my Dad lifting a "boulder" at Universal Studios is "Muscle Man," lunchtime picture is "Taco Time." Tell me those aren't scrapbook page titles? Then there's this one that I just can't wait to ask my Dad about. "House in Pasadena - Pat Nixon used the bathroom." I really hope there's a funny story about that and my Mom wasn't some sort of Pat Nixon stalker! And what a difference a few decades makes - there's a reference to a building at USC as "home to OJ's trophy" - the days when OJ was famous just for football!

Some of these picture are almost 40 years old - so, I guess my point in sharing this is to reinforce that everything you're doing to preserve your family's memories will be much appreciated by your children and grandchildren!! (And, for those of you on the Ban - it doesn't matter how much pretty paper or fancy embellishments you use - the pictures and the stories are the stuff that will mean the most. )

 

[PinballFamily]

What a treasure!

I suspect your mom would have been as pleased as punch that you are following in her footsteps and documenting the fun and important things in your life!

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Very cool story! Yes, she would have been a scrapper for sure!!

How is that scanner working? I need one too as was wondering if it's worth the investment.

 

[Michellepooh]

So glad you are able to preserve those memories!!!

 

[lovingthemouse]

Whether the person whose memories you cherish passed years ago or recently, the stories you recall are wonderful! My mom is 98 now, just got out of the hospital today, but while under some medication, she told some awesome stories. I suspect most of them are true, nobody could make them up!!
How is your new scanner? My sister just had 16mm movies that are close to60 yrs old, made into a DVD. Amazing to see them in that format. I am thinking that I might like to have all my vhs tapes converted for my daughters.

 

[party of 3]

How nice that is. I'm sure that your Mom is just so happy
to see that you are enjoying them. I'm sure she would have
been a scrapper. My mom just like to buy me scrappy stuff.
I think because it made me happy and probably because of what
I was doing with it. I'm sure that it must be bittersweet to
look at all of them but I hope they bring you some comfort
seeing all the happy times. I had our 8mm movies into
a VCR tape a while back and my dad has worn his out watching
it so I had mas tape put on DVD for Christmas.
Hugs to you. What a great project to work on!

 

[TinkerBean]

NEE, what a great project to work on - just think you can scrap those photos using your mom's "titles" or journaling.

 

[morgansmom2000]

What a great way to reinforce our mission!

Have fun going through those, Suzanne!

 

[pjlla]

First of all... thanks for sharing such a great story and for reminding us WHY we spend all our spare time scrapping!!

Second of all... nice job on the scanning. DH and I started scanning my family's slides and old photos a few years ago, but I guess we got sidetracked and never finished. In fact.... I'm not even sure where the scans are saved! They aren't on the computer we just replaced and they aren't on the old laptop we were originally using with the scanner. I'll have to ask DH where they are saved. It is just SO time consuming. We were actually doing it on vacation! We brought the laptop, scanner, and slides along on vacation and set it up on the main level of the vacation house. Whenever we were walking through we would throw in a new batch of slides and start the process... then as we walked by throughout the day we would just keep going. We rarely just SAT there unless we were waiting for lunch or something. How many slides does your scanner do at once??.........P

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Whether the person whose memories you cherish passed years ago or recently, the stories you recall are wonderful! My mom is 98 now, just got out of the hospital today, but while under some medication, she told some awesome stories. I suspect most of them are true, nobody could make them up!!
How is your new scanner? My sister just had 16mm movies that are close to60 yrs old, made into a DVD. Amazing to see them in that format. I am thinking that I might like to have all my vhs tapes converted for my daughters.

I hope you wrote them all down!!

 

[Lisa]

NEE, what a treasure having your Mom's memories.

Caroline, just what kind of stories?!!

 

[ddavis860]

NEE- How cool that you have your mother's thoughts and titles with your slides! Great pages will come from those slides!

I have a cookbook that has my mom's writting in the margins, and some recipes she wrote on index cards. I love to look at that little bit of her I have left.

Enjoy your project! Like PO3 said, bittersweet, but so wonderful!!

 

[New England Eeyore]

To answer the questions about the scanning - well, I do have a scanner - an "Epson Perfection 4490 Photo", which is great quality, but like pjilla said is SO time consuming. So I just wasn't using it that often. For Christmas I got a "Wolverine F2D 35 mm Film to Digital Scanner." It's free standing - doesn't need to be hooked up to a computer (saves to a memory card), so I can use it while watching TV - takes me about 45 minutes to do a tray of 160 slides. You feed them through the scanner 1 at a time (4 fit in the holder) but it captures the image in seconds. It's not as high of a quality as the scanner, but it's pretty darn good (says 5 megapixels on the box), and if there's a particularly important image, I can always go back and use the scanner to get the higher resolution. As always, dust is the enemy so the more careful you are with that, the less editing you will have to do post-scanning. Right now I'm just thrilled that I am getting these done quickly so I can see these images that have been trapped in boxes for years.

The Wolverine also handles negatives, but the quality isn't quite as high as it is for slides. Some images are great, but anything with less than perfect lighting, etc will need a lot of tweaking after the fact.

But if you're looking for a true scanner, I do recommend mine. It uses an attachment for negatives and slides - holds 4 slides at a time or 2 negative strips, but for regular photos you can put as many as will fit on the bed (4 4x6, more smaller ones) and it will "know" that they are separate images and scan them separately. Once I conquer the slides I have to start with the old photos that don't have negatives. That will take a loooooong time.

 

[StitchIsOurHero]

NEE, that is so awesome! What a wonderful thing to do, and I bet it is such a blessing to see all of those!!

 

[JandJ]

What a treasure you have in those slides! Thank you so much for sharing! My mom made a few scrapbook pages. I took her to a CM class and she really enjoyed it and bought everything but never finished a whole book. I wish now that I'd taken more time to scrap with her. The pages she made mean so much to me now.

This reminds me, NEE has her mom's handwriting on those slides, which cannot be replaced! To all moms, grandmas, aunts, kids - everyone - please journal in your own handwriting on at least some of your pages. My mom didn't like her own handwriting and preferred to have her journaling typed or all in stickers, but she did journal at the CM class, and those few pages with her handwriting are priceless to me!