Saturday, November 20, 2010

the olden days ....


this is a picture of my olden days .... recently scanned, put on boy.beck.artist's computer ... and emailed to me ...
i am two .... the one in the basket ... my oldest brother is on the tandem behind mom, next oldest is in front of dad, and i'm in the handlebar basket ... it had a seatbelt ... though, clearly, no back support! ..... when my little brother was born, we all got pushed back a seat, and my oldest brother moved onto his own bike ... my parents sent bike christmas cards for years .... this was actually one of dad's campaign pics for his short political career while he ran for school board ....

so ... what have i been doing instead of painting? boy.beck.artist and girl.beck.artist are in eighth grade.... and i needed to make yearbook memory ads ... well ... sadly , they were born moments before the digital age started ... the first four years of their lives are all photos in boxes .... i got my first digital camera right before little.e.beck.artist was born, so her entire life is digital .... the twins have boxes and boxes of childhood photos ... i needed to find the right ones and then scan them and make my ads ....

buy you can't just reach into the box and pull out the right photo ..... you have to go through all (or most) of the boxes and relive those babyhood moments .... so that's what i've been doing ....

i used to have a scanner .... it made me cry more often than not when i tried to use it ... it was probably ten or more years ago ... then i decided a scanner was not worth it ... no more tears ....through that bad boy away and have been living a scan free life ever since ....

i went to cvs to scan my kid pics ..... one by one i scanned 50 pics (i need fewer than a dozen for my ad project, but i had trouble picking) .... it took me nearly an hour to scan them all ... i could have written a book on cvs customers ... i sat in a chair, at the front of the store, at the scanner ....and for each minute of scanning, i watched customers .... the nice ones, the whiny ones, the loud ones, the silent ones, the ones that came in for one thing, the ones that had a cartful ... i eavesdropped on lots of conversations ...

why oh why does the scanner have to warm up EVERY time? shouldn't it be warm after that many pics? mid-scan, i called my pal ashley.... ashley, why on earth do you love scanning so much ... ashley, how can you possibly find joy by the scanner .... well, come to find out, ashley scans at walmart ... and wal mart has a scanner that recognizes multiple photos .... she wasn't scanning one at a time ....

yesterday, i went to walmart.... with about 300 photos from the olden days (olden days only means pre-digital here) .... and i walked up to the glorious scanner and was stymied .... at least the cvs scanner was completely intuitive ... easy peasy lemon squeezy .... so i asked wal mart kim (my new best friend) how to do it .... i was holding a dozen kid pics in my hand ... and had 300 olden day pics in my bag .... kim said, here, i'll show you .... and in three scanner swipes in three minutes, she scanned all my kid pics and showed me how to crop and turn them .... she asked if i wanted prints or a cd .... and i said, OH, i have more first .... i showed her my bag .... yikes!! we better get going, said kim .... and she stood there with me, i worked one scanner, and she worked two at a time (she's just that good) ... and she scanned hundreds of pics with me ... every once in a while she'd go help another customer ... but she always came back .... she got me through it ...

i now have hundreds of pics on cd to make into a slide show for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary party ... if only i could get my cd reader on my computer to work .... (deep breaths, one step at a time) ......

yesterday, i also took delivery on 6 dozen glass ornaments that i'm painting for christmas gifts for teachers, pals, friends, and kim at walmart ..... so i have some painting to get to ....

how 'bout you? what have you been working on? are you planning any holiday arts and crafts? do you have a scanner? i'm thinking i need one? maybe someone can give me a scanner for christmas ... hmmmm .....

4 comments:

Ashley said...

I love scanning...and especially scanning at Wal-Mart! I will go back to meet Kim next time, but I really liked the lady who helped me too...need to find out her name! :-)

artmom said...

What have I done for the holidays? Well, I was the one who picked out the 300 olden days pics ( there ARE NOT 300!!!!) for the slideshow E is planning for our anniversary. t was quite a job having to live through each event in each box, file, album! But Fun! can't say our life in those days was quiet or boring! Isn't now either!!!!

And yes there are arts and crafts projects ready for the girls do do after thanksgiving.....no black Friday shopping for this grandma! Hurrah for catalogs and internet shopping!!!!

And Dinally, I love my all purpose printer/scann er/fax....never fax though....And the scanner sometimes does strange things like present different messages when I press the same buttona second time.....oh well, maybe someday it will all come clear to me!

Happy thaknskgiiong to All!

Darla said...

Good for Walmart! Yes I have a scanner/printer(HP) and it was working fine until I bought a new laptop (HP) which came with Vista and it doesn't recognize my HP scanner. Strange enough it recognizes the Printer part of my Printer/Scanner. WHAT??? HP Help tells me my scanner/printer/fax is too old - and it is about 5 years old at the most. Someone told me I may be able to do a work around going throught the "Paint" program. So - if you buy one be sure it is compatible... just saying.

Darla

cath c said...

oh boy, i need to do something like that, too, esp since my parent's 50th anniversary is coming up amidst the holidays, too.