Photos - Life's Embellishments

Wow, time has a way of flying by when you're having fun! Well, the past few days haven't been exactly fun, but, they are behind me now so. . . on to better things! Right? I'm feeling the need to embellish quite strongly today and will soon have to give in to it! I have been scanning my family's slides and have been enjoying my trips down memory lane along with some side trips of my parents. What has been most surprising is the quality of the slides that are more than 60 years old! The colors are still lovely and the scenes are remarkable. Here's a shot taken in Brooklyn, NY after the major snowstorm in December 1948: Nice hats! 

My dad is the guy in the snow holding up my cousin who was 3 at the time. My parents lived in Connecticut but were home visiting for the holidays. Who would have guessed that they would be in store for a week's stay! Aren't the colors still great? I love color!!!!

How about this shot of Niagara Falls from my parents' honeymoon in October 1947, how majestic:

These are the rough copies before any clean-up of dust etc. but I love them just the same. Photos embellish your life as well as record its moments. How wonderful to be able to really look back and see what was seen during another moment in time. They say that time waits for no man but we have photographs to freeze our special moments and I'm ever grateful that I do!

I'm finding inspiration for recording my family's life journey with each box of stray photos I review and will see where they take me in the coming months. I'm afraid that the quality of most of my photos is not the greatest. The 60's and 70's with their Instamatic cameras with cheap lenses, square photos and less than ideal processing have not been kind to memory lane. Tons of orange and bluish - greenish photos filled my photo albums or got that way over time. The albums themselves, were destructive if the magnetic pages were made from the wrong stuff. Who knew? Anyway, I digress. The memories are intact, if not the photos. Thank goodness we have so many ways to "fix" some of the mistakes we made. Now I wish that more of my early married life was documented in slides. They at least, have withstood the test of time. I am blessed with a good memory and each set of pictures or slides that I scan, brings back a rush of memories of happy times and special people who have colored my life. I hope and pray to have them recorded in some way, so that future generations can enjoy visiting the past, see the ancestors and revel in the warmth of family connections.

Next stop  . . . a few recent scrapbook pages created by me to remember Christmas 2007. Stay tuned if you're curious . . . 

Have a sparkling day!!!!

Do you use photos and films to embellish your life too? I am interested in how they affect you too. Please leave a comment!