I take a lot of photos. Such a statement surely is no surprise to regular readers of Grandma's Briefs as I've shared thousands of them here since starting this site in July of 2009.

Those are the photos on my blog. Then there are those I have saved on my computer, a collection that's at least ten times what I've shared on the blog. Seriously. (Reminder to self: Back up my photos... soon!)

All the photos stored on my computer were taken since 2005. Reason being that it was in 2005 that I first began using a digital camera. Before that, photos taken in the earliest years of my adulthood were shot first with a 110 Instamatic (remember the cartridges!) then eventually, through a variety of camera upgrades, a 35mm film camera.

Even in the tightest, most budget-crunched years, I found the will and a way to eke out the money to print the many pictures I took. Other than the hundreds in frames around my house, those printed photos now fill boxes and binders I keep in my "photo closet."

Except, that is, the oldest of photos I've taken, those shot in the earliest years of our family (yes, mostly with the Instamatic, some even with a Polaroid). Those are stored in a trunk in my study.

Clearly I take and have a lot of photos. Needless to say, the lives of my children and grandchildren — plus many other relatives — have been well documented. There is no lack of pictures, in print or pixel, for my progeny to peruse or choose to take and display in their own home... or trunk or photo closet.

As for myself, though, I have very few pictures of my childhood. I possess 10 or so photos taken during my years from middle school through high school. Of my time before that, say ages 10 and under, I have about half that.

Yet in that handful of pictures documenting my earliest years, there's one that especially makes me smile. It's this one — that's me on the far right:

This photo makes me smile because, well, I'm not a fashionable grandma. I wasn't fashionable before becoming a grandma, either. Not as a teen, not as a young woman, not as an old(er) woman. I was, though, for one brief shining moment. And that moment is documented in that photo.

The photo isn't dated, but judging by the age of my youngest sibling pictured — born after her were a set of twins (boy and girl) and another sister soon after that — I was probably 6 or 7 years old. I'm pretty sure it was Easter time, and I'm darn sure, based on the look on my face and my sophisticated pose, that I considered myself mod as could be in my smart yellow spring dress and my matching yellow flats.

Truly my most fashionable moment.

I'm grateful that despite there being very little photographic documentation of my youth, there's at least proof I did at one time know how to put together an admirably natty ensemble.

Today's question:

What was one of your favorite outfits from your past?