2014 oh, what will you bring?

2014 has crept up me very quickly and silently this year, I had many plans for time for reflection of 2013 and for the future, but life is so busy it has been cast to one side, although I have a few hours of time for reflection now, so here goes...

2013

It has been really fun to see how the blog has developed properly over the last year. It was my New Year's Resolution in 2013 to do at least one blog post a week on this blog, which I have done and seem to have more people actively following me and reading my blog which is really exciting. I am pleased people enjoy my rambling and random research!!! I started with 2 followers at the beginning of the year (my husband and father-in-law!) and how have 18, which is amazing.

It has been nice to follow other genealogy and personal family history blogs as well to gain ideas and knowledge as well as actively see what what is happening on an everyday basis in the world of genealogy. I have started to use BLOGLOVIN' to follow other's blogs.

I had aimed to finish The Davidson Family as a blog page and as a book to give to family members for Christmas but I have failed to meet that deadline with other work and life commitments, but my aim is to sort it for 2014 Christmas!!!! The written work is finished but I realised if I wanted to make it into a proper book, then I needed to properly reference it, so I'm finishing that at the moment which is taking forever. It has been a challenging project which I will be really happy to finish but I have learnt so much by taking that challenge and writing it.

I have loved getting involved with Julie Goucher's, The Book of Me, Written by You and seeing what that brings up, alongside researching and sharing with you all some of the things within Family History which really make me tick, such as Surname Saturday's, some useful tips for beginnings to researching.

Some of my favourite posts from 2013 are:

• Origins of Surnames in the UK
• Finding a Marriage, Birth and Death Certificate series
• Surname Saturday's

Towards the end of 2013, I found I was spending so much time blogging that I was not having enough time to finish writing and researching so this is where I can start to tell you about what my resolutions are for family history research and blogging into 2014...

...2014

• My main challenge is to finish The Davidson Family and to have it in a physical book format for the end of the year.
• I am not going to pressure myself to do a blog post each week, but am going to share when I discover some interesting research, whether that ends up being 3x a week or only once a month, so be it, but I will continue blogging and sharing what I discover.
• I would like to visit Kew at some point in 2014 but we shall see what becomes of that.
• I would like to visit a local Family History Fair.
• Break down lots of BRICK WALLS!
• Carry on with the Book of Me, Written by You as this is becoming a great way to explore my own personal history and to share it with others.
• For Christmas I received a beautiful hard bound book called "The Book of Me" (no link to Julie Goucher's the Book of Me, Written by You) but a similar idea which has space for me to record ME now with hints and prompts about me in a physical format which I intend on working my way through slowly. I would to love to be able to put really personal information into the book and treasuring it for my future generations.

The Book of Me - which I look forward to writing in :)

Lastly I want to thank all my regular readers and follows of Ruth's Ancestor's for continuing to read my posts and follow me. I would to hear my from you so feel free to leave comments with any ideas or anything you would like to see covered on here into the future.

Here's to 2014, may it be a great one!