Recreating Old Photos - Mother's Day Gift 2015

My mom always tells us not to get her gifts. We usually don't listen to her and buy her something anyway. This year we decided to take a different approach. Over the past few years, I've seen people online recreate a picture from their childhood where they try to mimic clothing, expressions, posture, etc.  I thought it would be funny if we did that this year, but with a few different pictures. There is no shortage of pictures from my childhood with my two sisters, many of which are embarrassing.  A couple months before Mother's Day, my sisters and I went through old photo albums and established the list of a few pictures that we would use for this project.

Then came the hard part of trying to recreate them.  We needed to find outfits that would mimic what we wore in the original pictures. Considering the pictures were taken 30+ years ago, and we were small children at the time, this wasn't an easy task.  I spent many hours scouring different stores and shopping online, trying to find pieces that would work. After working on the outfits, I also wanted the backgrounds to be as similar as possible. I bought some props and planned the locations. Once we had all that lined up, my sisters and I met up on a Sunday afternoon, about one month before Mother's Day. My hubby served as the photographer, with original photos in hand, making sure we had the right posture, facial expression, and arrangement. We went through many wardrobe changes and spent a lot of time getting the backgrounds right. The results were awesome. Hilarious, embarrassing, and awesome.

We tried to really pay attention to detail with this one. My oldest sister wore a plaid shirt, purple shorts, and socks with sandals. My middle sister found an outfit that was a pretty darn good replica of what she wore originally, and then had the socks with sandals. I couldn't find a white shift dress with a picture on it, so I bought a white swimsuit cover-up, added a sticker, and pinned on some white ribbon for the straps. I then added socks and pink sandals, and mimicked the hairstyle, facial expression, and posture. I bought some fake tulips and stuck those in the ground behind us.

This picture featured just my middle sister and me, in outfits that weren't too complicated. I bought some pink footed adult pajamas and my sister wore a simple white shirt and shorts. We spent a little time on the background, trying to mimic the striped couch, random toys strewn about, and brown carpeting. The hardest part was trying to position myself on top of her in the same way I had done 30 years ago!

I feel I need to apologize for making you see this picture, but it was too funny not to share. I wasn't thrilled about recreating a picture where I was originally wearing a diaper, but I wanted to be a good sport and give my mom a laugh. My oldest sister had an easy outfit to recreate, just a purple shirt and shorts. My middle sister's outfit took a little more work. We had a hard time finding a spaghetti strap tank top with bright diagonal stripes, but finally came across a full length sleeveless dress with bright horizontal stripes. That would have to do!  She actually tucked the dress into the back of the shorts, to make it look like a top. We were able to find pink shorts with a white trim on the bottom, but needed to add white duct tape to the top to make them look like they had a white band. The final touch was the binoculars around the neck! For me, I came across the red and blue striped shirt while perusing the boys' section at Target. It's not an exact match, but came pretty darn close!  I used white shorts, tucked up to look like a diaper, to complete my outfit. We made sure to pay attention to hand placement and facial expressions on this one. I think we nailed it!

This picture featured my oldest sister and my middle sister, when she was a small baby. We thought it would be pretty comical to have them recreate laying together on a tiny baby blanket, now that they're both full grown and my middle sister is actually 4 inches taller that my oldest! My oldest sister got a white sundress and added butterfly stickers to make it look like the design in the original. We then used ribbon to add straps to my middle sister's tube top to mimic the outfit she wore as a baby. We found a baby blanket similar in style to the original and then had some random toys and flip flops strewn about. It's funny seeing how much space they took up on the blanket when they were little as compared to now!

Last but not least, this pic was fun for us to recreate. I donned the adult footed pajamas from the earlier pic, and my oldest sister wore a white shirt with red sleeves, with a sticker pinned on to mimic the design on the original shirt. She "held" me between her legs, while I grasped a blue block. My middle sister just needed to sit in the corner with her mouth open. Ha!

We didn't give my mom any warning as to what the true nature of her gift was, but simply told her we wanted to compile some pictures of the three of us, some old, some new, as a walk down memory lane. When she opened the photo album and saw the first (original) picture of us three young girls in front of the tulips, she said, "Awwww" and got nostalgic. Then she realized the pic next to it was us at our current ages, and she couldn't control her laughter. We got it on video. It's a pretty great reaction!

Needless to say, the laughter continued for each subsequent page. She got a big kick out of the end result, and my sisters and I had a really fun time putting it all together.  Happy Mother's Day, Mom!