Month in Review - February & March 2011

The very fact that I am reviewing February and March together hopefully tells regular readers that I have been busy. The work front cranked up several notches during February and March and then a tweak to my job role happened mid March. I also have been a bit unwell, which has resulted in my normal alert brain and thought process becoming sluggish and sleepy!

That said I have been writing and posting and do have a few posts to still proof read and tweak!

February

During February I undertook the Family History Writing Challenge. Here the idea was to write everyday during February at least 250 words about a section of my family history. I did manage it, although I have three posts to proof read and post, along with the review post.

I also submitted a post to the Thyroid Literary Challenge during February which was hosted by Dear Thyroid.

I also took part in a post for Save our Libraries early in February and a post to commemorate Waitangi Day in New Zealand.

I continued writing the 52 weeks of Personal Genealogy through February and into March.

My Ancestor of the week posts are behind. I have a few unfinished posts due to the fact that I have managed to misplace, not loose some papers that I need in order to finish two posts, which is very frustrating. Normal service will be resumed shortly!

March

During March I committed to writing a series of posts in commemoration of Women's History Month called Fearless Females. I have got a bit behind, but will post them over the next few days.

In March I submitted a post for the Carnival of Genealogy - Female Genealogy. You can read that post HERE.

I was invited to review several books for The Bookworm Blog. One review is complete with the other one waiting in the wings! I was also approached directly by one author for a review of their book, so watch the blog for the review posting.

Regular posts Sorting Saturday - Twitter Style and Treasure of the Month have continued and March's offering will be posted over the weekend.

I was approached to contribute a post to GeniMates and you can read that post HERE. I was also awarded the One Lovely Blog Award once for Anglers Rest and once for the Grave Encounters blog.

All in all, it has been a busy couple of months and hopefully April will simmer down just a little!

Month in Review - January 2011

January is always a funny month, and is often depressing, the anti-climax from Christmas. The Festive season in this house passed by fairly quickly. The workload in the run up to Christmas was huge in the day job and compounded by the dreadful weather. I was glad to have the early part of the month on annual leave, especially as there is always a strange feeling when one is in the middle of their notice period. In addition to that,the cold and flu season was dreadful with Stuart getting flu, yes proper flu not "man flu" despite having the flu vaccination. After the flu followed an infection and now 5 courses of antibiotics later there might just be some improvement. Meanwhile I did not remain cold free, Stuart's cold ping ponging its way back and forth between us, and I have had three colds since November, stress and weather driven I suspect. Also, as I have mentioned elsewhere, my Aunt passed away on 29th December and the funeral was on the 11th January. So we started off the new year, that I had high hopes for on a rather sad note.

I had two books turn up, unannounced from the publishers - thank you!

1. South Riding by Winifred Holtby
2. Seperate Beds by Elizabeth Buchan

I've not started reading them yet, but they are high on the agenda.

I had a rather good month on the blog and genealogy front. Firstly, I was approached to have my Grave Encounters blog featured on the Graveyard Rabbits blog. At the end of January I was asked to write a guest post on the Geneabloggers blog about Robert Burns Day (Burns Night) for 25 January. I was Inspired by the post on Twigs of Yore in commemoration of Australia Day on 26 January, which doubled up as my Ancestor of the Week post.

Since the beginning of January I have been posting two regular themes.

1. Ancestor of the week about an ancestor, which is actually a good way of taking stock of what is known about an ancestor.I am attempting to post every Saturday, even if they are a bit late.
2. Treasure of the Month is attempting to discuss an item each month which is considered a treasure by me. Posting will usually be on the last Saturday of the month. (January post is a week late!)

Following my creating Grave Encounters and loading some photos onto the site I decided to add some extra details to the graves that I featured, which are those relating to the Bowring family. I then received an email from the editor of the Bangalore edition of Time Out which asked if I had some further information about Lewin Bentham Bowring.

This blog was nominated for an Ancestor Approved Award by Allin at Australian Genealogy Journeys.

On the whole, the month ended on a good note and from where I am standing February is looking to be good too!