New Year, New Changes!

So, a new year is upon us - 2016 will hopefully bring much promise for more fun discoveries on the ancestor front!

Also, I plan to give my blog a bit of a make-over. I feel I need to create a more fun, light and airy look to my blog. I think the current theme has served its purpose, but it's time to give it something a little more youthful. Please keep a look out for some new design changes! Again, I design all of my backgrounds and banners with Photoshop, so this will take some time!

Some new and exciting things for the upcoming new year in my life:

Europe - Did I just say Europe??!! - Yes, I am embarking on a nearly 20 day trip to Europe next May 2016. I have my passport, 100 Euros in my pocket, train tickets booked, flight booked. Sadly, it will not be primarily for ancestry searching, but I will nevertheless be stomping similar grounds that my ancestors walked many years ago, especially in London, which will be our first stop.

Joining Online Societies aimed at Younger Genealogists - I view myself not quite the cookie cutter genealogist. I like to tell a story on my blog rather than give the very minute (and mundane) details that some genealogy bloggers tend to get lost in. I want to find like-minded "younger" genealogists who can tell a great story about their ancestry findings and blog about it without making me yawn through the first paragraph.

Do Some Clean Up & Download Important Documents - I hope to spend this year to do some continued clean up work on my family tree that got a little out of hand over the last few years. I also intend to download some important documents from Ancestry.com so I can keep copies of them offline as well as online. I have read it is very important since many important documents can easily be removed by whoever uploaded them. However, most documents that are uploaded directly by Ancestry.com will likely never be removed, but those are still important to download, as well.

A Travel Blog!! - I have designed a new blog, one for travel. I am looking forward to keeping this blog up and seeing where it takes me. It will mostly focus on California travel and, of course, any travels that lead me out of California. I will post the link on here once I get the blog on its way!

What are your New Year Resolutions regarding your genealogy?

(Genealogy) New Year's Resolutions

So, a new year is here. 2014 seemed to come and go so much faster than years before. I have a feeling 2015 will not be any less forgiving - darn, we're already going into our 2nd week of the year.

With that, I do have some genealogy related New Year's resolutions - ones that I hope I can stick to. Also, I feel having an itemized list will be beneficial for me - i.e. if I feel like I am running dry on blogging ideas or just need a little inspiration, I can always come back to this post to see what my hopes were for genealogical reasons (and blogging reasons, too)!

So, here's a go at it  -

1) My Irish Ancestors - I feel I am really neglecting this side of my roots, and I have quite a few tales to tell. Fact of the matter is, I need to hunker down and get more research done on my Irish ancestors. Things can often run dry in that area since many Irish records are still becoming digitized, but I will make it an aim to delve in this area a little more throughout the year!

2) My Father's Side - Recently, my Dad's sister has been writing me beautifully written accounts of her childhood (with memories of my Dad and the other siblings) and what she remembers of our grandparents and her parents and so on. These are priceless and I am protecting them like gold. They are all hand written, which to me, makes them even more special. I need to firstly digitize them so if they ever do get lost, I will always have a digital copy. Then, I would like to transcribe them into a word document. As for my blog, I would like to share more of my father's side. There is much to be revealed.

3) Use more Writing Prompts - I'd like to use more writing prompts to spice things up on here a bit more. I see quite a few websites that do a very good job of this and share their prompts with you. I aim to try some out and see what I can unearth in the process!

4) Network - I want to do a little more blog networking. I aim to give more comments on people's blogs or write a note of thanks for their knowledge. I'd like to see my blog in the future as a resource, in some ways, on certain genres of genealogy, especially the Black Sea Germans, which I feel my most comfortable with and have the most background in (which is why you see many related articles on them on here now and sure to see more in the future) - I am hoping my blog will bring in more Black Sea German researchers who are looking to share their memories or thoughts on the topic.

5) Noticing Interesting Patterns Interweave - Sometimes I find some interesting patterns during the migration of my ancestor's.  I'd like to focus more on these patterns and similarities as it's fun to point them out and make interesting connections. Some that I will focus on are two different waves of German colonization my ancestors were involved in - The Black Sea Germans to North Dakota and the Germanna Colonization in Virginia.

This is all for now - but maybe a year from now, I will be glad to have seen I met all of these goals.

Happy New Year to you all!