Family and Filmbox

Before I get to today’s post I want to remind any auction winners that it’s time to fill out the form if you haven’t yet. You can find the form HERE.

On Sunday I invited my siblings and spouses to my house.  You might remember that I discovered the app called Filmbox that took old negatives and turned them into pictures.  Well, I had the family negatives and thought it was my place to share them with the rest of the siblings being that now there was a way to do that.

What better way to do that than to have a family get-together?

I didn’t know how many others wanted to put the app on their phone so I figured I would be the one to take most of the photos of the negatives so which left me unable to jump up and keep up with the food and being I was the hostess, I would need to figure out what to make for food that could “manage itself”.

I made… chili…

I made Pozole.  Find the recipe HERE.

I made Chicken Wild Rice soup.  Find the recipe HERE.

I got meat and cheese for a meat and cheese tray.  Cutting all of that up was quick and easy.

I made homemade biscuits in case anyone wanted them with soup.  The recipe can be found HERE.

I made my Chocolate Chip cookies only I used these instead of chocolate chips only.  Find that recipe HERE.

To top it off, I made Cinnamon Rolls as they would be arriving earlier and leaving later.  I thought the cinnamon rolls could be our appetizer.

My sister-in-law took this picture of us all.  Left to right, my brother Jule, me, Jim, Jay, and Judy.  Yes, we are all “Js” and our last name was Johnson.

We had a good time.  It was fun to see the pictures and hear many of the stories that went along with them.  I am the youngest, sixteen years younger than my sister…So many things happened in our family that I never knew about being I’m the youngest.

When I was born, my Dad was already 45 years old.  He was past the age of wanting to get down on all fours and push me around the kitchen in a box.  There were lots of pictures of Dad doing that with my older siblings.  I’m not bothered that there weren’t those pictures.  I did other things with dad and remember him very fondly…sadly, there just aren’t as many pictures of me.  But, being I had five kids myself I know and understand that we change as adults and we change a bit from kid to kid that we raise.

All of my brothers were a little sad they didn’t have their original toys shown in the Christmas presents they got.  Many are worth a lot of money days.  They are collectors and love antiques though so they have already collected some of them.  I hope they get the chance to develop some of the pictures of themselves and put them next to the pieces they have collected.

We didn’t get a chance to get through all of the pictures.  We got through Jay and Jims and the family pictures.  We didn’t get through Judy’s or Jule’s or mine…or the ones of Mom and Dad.  I hope to get through those in the near future so I can send them all copies of those as well.

Long term I want to make Shutterfly books for my grandkids from the farm I grew up and tell my story.  I think there is enough that I might be able to tell a kids’ farm story of my Dad too.  I am a bit of a storyteller and would like things recorded even if it is a simple book like, “Grandpa Carl had ducks on his farm” and then show pictures of the ducks regardless of who is in the picture with the ducks.  I might make it more like a kids’ reader.  If I word it right, my siblings could use it for their grandkids too.  I’d love to make one of us siblings growing up on the farm too.

I’m so thankful that I kept the negatives.  At the time, no one else wanted them and I thought just on a whim, I am going to keep them.  I’m so glad I did.  I’m so excited about the potential to make them into photos and to make the photos into some nice books.

For now, I want to work on getting the negatives we didn’t get a chance to see made into photos so I can get them sent to the rest of the family.  After that, I can start tinkering around and trying to write a book with all of the pictures.  That’s going to be the fun part!!

For those of you who missed it, the app I used to make the negative into photos is Filmbox.  You can read my blog post about it HERE.