CHRISTMAS GIFT

It's been a while since Christmas but I've been meaning to share with you the gift we put together for my parents. Sometime in the spring of 2010, my mom gave me a box of 8mm film and some slides. My husband and I found a local business that transfers 8mm to DVD and approached them about how we could find out what was on the film. They let us use a viewer for a $50 deposit. We took home the viewer and watched all of the film in one night. The quality was terrible but what I saw was amazing.

I had over an hour of footage from the time I was born to about 5 years old. The footage included almost all of my family members, my parent's first house, my extended family in Tennessee, and the cookie store my parents owned when I was born. That is what you see above. That's my mom out front of the shop at 25 years old, you wouldn't believe me but in the last 30 years she's aged about 10 days. My dad is filming their Victorian themed cookie store called Grandma's Cookies. The year is 1982 and I'm in the back eating cookies (not shown on this clip).

I can't describe seeing a movie of your life before you can remember. There was even footage of my mother breast feeding me which just blew me away. We knew this would make the perfect gift. So I went through and discarded the film that didn't need to be transferred and then had the rest put on dvd. It wasn't cheap, about $250.00 total, but it was so worth it. Then, my husband used imovie to edit and add music.

I probably don't have to tell you that it was a hit with everyone. There may have been a few tears involved. I wish I could share the whole movie with you here but you'd probably get a little bored of the gratuitous baby shots of me.

If you have 8mm hanging around, I would run to the nearest converter and get a dvd made.