While at times I got sick of looking at the same goals over and over again for my last 101 in 1001 list, I overall really enjoyed the format of setting 101 goals to try and meet in 1,001 days (roughly 2.75 years)—it meant that I could set more long-term, “bucket list” items than I might in a typical New Year’s resolutions list, but it also gave a finite deadline, which is always something I benefit from as a lifelong procrastinator (I’m working on it).

Going over the final numbers for my last list was fascinating for me—I saw areas where I could probably afford to “go big or go home” (like my financial goals, which I tend to do really quite well on), and areas that I needed to perhaps be more realistic about this current season of my life with small children (like traveling).

My last list also reinforced the power of setting a well-worded and measurable goal, as well as making sure that a goal wasn’t too big, too vague, or too all-encompassing. For example, one of my goals on my last list was to review our emergency preparedness and also make a will (as the same line item). Well, first of all, making a will should have been its own goal (which it is on this list!), and “reviewing emergency preparedness” is so vague that even I’M not sure what I meant by it–and I created the list! Therefore, you’ll notice that below, there’s an entire section devoted just to emergency preparedness that breaks down very specific, very measurable goals that I can definitively say, “Yes, I’ve done that” or “Still working on it.”

My categories for this one are similar to those of last list, with a few exceptions—Emergency Preparedness (which I mentioned already), Local Love (which is meant to help us really settle in and get to know our new area that we’re moving to), and Yard + Homestead Life (which is kind of a niche category to help us build our “mini homestead”).

I’ve commented on every goal below–so this is a long one!–but if you just want to see the general list without all the commentary, you can click on the 101 in 1001 tab at the top of the blog.

Note: There are affiliate links to products and services mentioned below, which means I may get a small commission on any purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you.

The Second 101 in 1001 List

• Start Date: October 20th, 2020
• End Date: July 18th, 2023

Financial

• 1. Open up a brokerage account
  • I’ve wanted to open up a brokerage account separate from any of our retirement accounts for years, largely because if we ever decided to have Matt retire before the age of 65, we would need something to cover our expenses in those first years of retirement. There are several stocks-based index funds offered at Fidelity and Vanguard that I’ve been eyeing for awhile, but many of them require minimums of $2-3K. I’ll have to do more research into this, but the rule with investing is, the earlier you start, the better, so we’d best get on this!
• 2. Buy and pay off a new vehicle to replace the Buick
  • When my grandma passed away in 2014, we ended up buying her old Buick from the estate, and it’s been a good second vehicle for us to have and for Matt to drive to work. However, as time goes on, the problems with it are getting more and more expensive, and after we just spent about $250 to get the A/C fixed (and then it still didn’t work), we’ve decided to just start looking for something used but nicer in the spring, when the weather starts getting hot again and the lack of A/C starts getting unbearable.
• 3. Get each kids’ savings account to $500
  • We’ve chosen to open up a savings account for each of our children at our credit union, which offers an okay interest rate for their kids’ savings plans. We’re not planning on adding a ton of money to these, but we want to build these up by the time the kids are all 18 just so that they have some extra financial help with serving a mission for our church (if they want to) or for their college educations.
• 4. Make an extra mortgage payment (not necessarily all at once)
  • It would obviously be gratifying to do this in one fell swoop to see the principal go down that amount all at once, but how this probably will happen is that we just pay a little over our mortgage amount each month to complete this.
• 5. Start contributing to my IRA again
  • We haven’t been able to contribute to my retirement at all since I quit teaching in 2016, and even if it’s $50 a month, I’d like to start contributing to this again! (We’ve already moved this over to a different account from my former employer so that I can just add on to my previous 401k.)
• 6. Max out Matt’s Roth one year
  • This seems so daunting right now, but we need to start making saving for retirement more of a priority. We had to take a few years off (and it doesn’t help that Matt’s work doesn’t offer any retirement benefits), but we’re determined to start making this more of a focus.
• 7. Complete a no-spend month
  • I did a no-spend month several years ago, and I loved how it really reset my spending habits for a long, long time after. I’m starting to slip into more lax spending habits, so this would be a good way to get back on track again.

Health + Beauty

• 8. Whiten teeth
  • I don’t need to do this professionally or anything—it’s just been a really long time since I’ve done any whitening, and you can definitely tell. I’ll probably just get some Crest White Strips or something similar and call it good.
• 9. Get back to pre-pregnancy weight
  • Now that my back is truly on the mend (knock on wood), this should hopefully be a bit more attainable.
• 10. Run in a race again (any length)
  • I would love to run in another half, but I have no idea how my back will do with long distance running, so training for and running ANY length of race right now will feel like a major win.
• 11. Complete BBG (on my own terms)
  • Considering that this is how I injured my back two years ago, I’m a bit wary of starting it up again, but I have to admit, I’ve never seen results as dramatic or as quickly as I saw them when I was doing the BBG. However, because of my last experience, I’m going to not follow the time constraints of each circuit and instead do each circuit twice through (rather than as many times as I can in the 7-minute time frame). Hopefully by slowing down, I’ll avoid injury.

Reading

• 12. Read 100 books in a year
  • This is a total stretch goal—the most I’ve read in any year since reaching adulthood has been 67, and that was amazing for me! However, I think I can do this, especially once my oldest is in school full-time and then Mathias is in preschool. I can dream, right? (P. S. Are we friends over on Goodreads yet? If not, you should add me! I love connecting with readers over there!)
• 13. Finish Les Miserables (unabridged)
  • This has been on my TBR forever, and even though people say to go with the abridged version on this, I’m totally weird about stuff like that and feel like I have to read the unabridged version in order for it to “count” as me having read it. Weird, I know. (And now a new translation has recently come out, so I also feel like I have to read BOTH versions. Ha ha, I’m so weird.)
• 14. Read 50 books I own
  • This is a repeat goal from my last 101 in 1001 list, but as I’ve bought even more new (unread) books since then…it’s a must 🙂
• 15. Start my Assigned Reading again
  • For a couple years, I “assigned” myself books over the course of a normal school year and then gave myself “grades” on how much of my assigned reading I completed. I have so many classics and other more difficult reads on my TBR, but it’s hard to prioritize those when I keep getting distracted by the new and the shiny. Assigning myself reading is the perfect way to make sure I don’t forget to challenge myself with my reading habits every now and then.
• 16. Do 12 read-alouds with Raven (and eventually include Mathias)
  • We’ve always been really good about reading lots of picture and board books with our kids every single day, but I’m super hit and miss with doing longer chapter book read-alouds. I’m hoping that setting this as a goal will help me to be a bit more consistent with this habit, especially while my kids are still young.

Spiritual

• 17. Reread Jesus the Christ
  • I first read this meticulously researched and cross-referenced book on my mission, and I learned SO much that I didn’t know before. It’s been over a decade now since I’ve read it, and I think I’d get even more out of it upon a second read.
• 18. Visit 3 new temples
  • Right now, most of the temples are currently closed because of the pandemic, but when things start opening back up again and operating like normal, I’m excited to cross this one off! I’m especially excited because our new house is closer to several temples that I’ve never been to, so that should make this one fairly easy to complete. (If you’d like to learn more about why temples are important in my faith and what we do there, you can click here.)
• 19. Read President Nelson’s biography
  • President Nelson is the current (worldwide) leader of our church, and he has lived an inspiring, fascinating life (he was a well-known heart surgeon before being called to church leadership). I already have such a deep respect and love for him, and I’m sure reading this biography will only make me appreciate him more.
• 20. Index 1,000 names
  • Indexing is a free genealogical service that anyone can do—you basically just type up names, birth dates, and other information from old records (like old census records, birth certificates, etc.) so that they’re searchable online for people wanting to know more about their family history. I LOVE doing family history and genealogy work, and doing this service is an easy way for me to help others! (Click HERE if you’re interested in learning how to help.)
• 21. Read the entire Saints series
  • In the past few years, my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) has started publishing a series of volumes about the Church’s history. I read about half of the first one but then got distracted with other books, so I’d like to pick that one up again and then finish the rest of the series as it comes out.

Blogging

• 22. Blog 20 times or more in a month
  • I *almost* set a goal to blog every single day in a month, but how discouraging would it be if I happened to miss just one day? Anyway, this is a goal that will be challenging and that will be reminiscent of my old blogging days, but it’s also a bit more achievable than saying I need to post every single day.
• 23. Complete Module 3 of EBA
  • I bought Elite Blog Academy a couple years ago and was eagerly working my way through the course, but then two babies later, I’ve definitely let this fade to the background. Once school looks a little more normal (aka, once we’re able to stop homeschooling), I’m hoping I’ll have a bit more time and focus to work on this again!
• 24. Complete Module 4 of EBA
  • I would be SUPER impressed with myself if I was able to complete this final module of EBA (as it’s a huge challenge and the “homework” is pretty daunting), but nothing ventured, nothing gained!
• 25. Reach 1,000 people on my email list
  • Once a month (or once a quarter), I send out an email just to subscribers that’s a little more personal, with everything from book recs to good quotes to life lessons. I hate spam and I don’t like my inbox being flooded, and when you sign up for my email list, I promise that I won’t do either. If you haven’t yet signed up to receive that yet, you can do that HERE.
• 26. Update featured photos on all posts
  • If you happen to go waaaay back in the archives, you’ll notice that there aren’t any featured photos up at the top by the blog post title. When I switched to a new blog theme, all my previous featured photos went away, so this is just kind of one of those time-consuming tasks that is going to be put off forever unless I prioritize it somewhere. So here ya go.
• 27. Try vlogging
  • I’ve started watching some homemaking-type vlogs on You Tube, and I kind of love the format. Posting here is still going to be my priority, but I thought adding some vlogging on the side might be a fun way to further connect with you guys. I’ll let you know as soon as I have any videos up!

Photography

• 28. Upgrade to a better tripod
  • Funny/not funny—I had “buy a tripod” on my LAST 101 in 1001 list (a goal that I completed). However, that same tripod has now broken twice…in the same spot. I got a pretty inexpensive one for about $125, so I’m thinking I’d better just bite the bullet and get a more durable one that will last me forever. Any recommendations?
• 29. Buy a full frame camera
  • This has been a dream of mine forever (including on the last list). I could totally make this happen if I was really consistent with putting the majority of the money I make from shoots into my separate business account (rather than just adding it to the household account). If you’re curious, I’ve got my eye on this one.
• 30. Post to Instagram every day for a month
  • I have a personal Instagram account (you can follow me HERE), but I also have an account for my photography business that I would like to build up a bit. (You can follow that one HERE.) First step? Being more consistent with posting!
• 31. Take an online photography class 
  • After taking an online photography class for my last list, I was forcibly reminded of the importance of continuing education (and not just sinking more and more money into equipment). I’m debating whether to go through a membership site like Creative Live or Master Class–which have multiple photography classes I could watch within the year for the price of one annual membership–or if I want to just pay class by class through photographers I admire (although that route will likelier be pricier). Decisions, decisions…
• 32. Take an online Lightroom class
  • Ditto as above.
• 33. Photograph a wedding
  • Okay, truth time–I’ve only ever photographed one wedding, and I kind of hated it. Talk about STRESSFUL! However, it was also when I was *very much* starting out as a photographer, so I was still totally unsure of myself in a lot of ways. Now, I’m not going to lie and tell you I think I have it all figured out when it comes to photography (because trust me, the better you get, the more you absolutely notice every flaw and nitpick every last thing), but I am much more experienced now than I was back then. So I thought—why not shoot a wedding? Every year, I always get a few people asking what I charge for weddings, and I’ve always turned them down. So now, if I’m given the shot to do a wedding, I’ll take it. I still might hate the stress of it and decide to stick to what I’m already doing, but I also might find that I love it. I’ve gotta try!
• 34. Make a gallery wall in our house of my photography
  • You know the saying about the shoemaker’s kids always going barefoot? Well, I’m absolutely dreadful about getting my own stuff printed and hung up…as in, it has almost never, ever happened. So I need to just make a design plan for a gallery wall and get printing already!
• 35. Create family photo albums through 2020
  • I printed out the photos of the first few years we were married and put them into books, but I want to catch up on printing out some family albums until at least through this year.

Personal Development + Skills

• 36. Take a floral arranging/design class
  • Finally starting to bring my cutting flower garden dream to life this last year has totally lit a fire under me to just dive into all things flowers and flower arranging. I think a class like this would be so much fun!
• 37. Mend at least one piece of clothing
  • You guys, I am TERRIBLE at sewing and mending and anything to do with wielding a needle. However, it’s also a skill I want to get a lot better at, just because it’s wasteful to throw away clothing if a simple repair would fix it up just fine. Waste not, want not!
• 38. Alter at least one piece of clothing
  • Ditto as above.
• 39. Learn to French braid
  • Is it embarrassing that I don’t know to do this? I’m a little embarrassed by it. So, time to You-Tube it up!
• 40. Reupholster a piece of furniture by myself
  • Now, when I say “reupholster,” I’m not talking about full-on needlework and sewing here, people—just your basic “cover with fabric and staple” thing. Baby steps.
• 41. Find a go-to gluten-free pie recipe
  • My husband was diagnosed with celiac back in March and I go off gluten every time my autoimmune disease flares up, so we’ve been doing a lot of GF cooking over here. I’ve tried some baking but not a ton, and I would really like to develop a few go-to recipes that I can just pull out year after year for special events and holidays. If you have any amazing gluten-free baking recipes that fit these categories, please drop the links below!
• 42. Find a go-to gluten-free cake recipe
  • Ditto as above.
• 43. Try 12 different gluten-free cookie recipes
  • Yes, even with us eating gluten-free, I am still the cookie monster (and have the Pinterest board to prove it). Time to bake!
• 44. Make 5 new recipes out of each of my cookbooks (+ donate the ones I don’t get to)
  • I *almost* set the goal to cook through another cookbook again this time, but I’ll admit, I felt like my other cookbooks got a little neglected during the last 101 in 1001 challenge, so I want to spread out the love a bit :). Plus, this will help me to declutter my cookbook stash, which is getting a little out of hand!

Family/Service

• 45. Sign Mathias up for preschool
  • The thought of Mathias being in preschool is currently a bit laughable for me just because he still seems soooo little, but I’ll be signing him up for it in less than a year! Eek!
• 46. Sign both Raven and Mathias up for swimming lessons (+ have Raven complete through level 4)
  • Raven loooooved the swim lessons we put her in before my third baby was born, and we really want her to have a super solid swimming base, esp. as she’s starting to get a little older (she’ll be 8 when this challenge is over…crazy!!!). And we’ll need Mathias to start taking the beginner levels by the end of this challenge, so I’ve just wrapped it all into one goal.
• 47. Start teaching piano to Raven
  • I’d planned to start at the same time we started (unexpectedly) homeschooling Raven for kindergarten this year, but I quickly saw that putting SO much on my plate at the beginning would just be a recipe for disaster. Now that we’re more settled in our homeschool routine and then once we’re finally in our new house, I’ll probably look into starting this. (Note: We’ll be starting with these piano books if you’re wondering.)
• 48. Create chore system for the kids
  • The kids are still eager helpers and love to help with all things chores right now, but I know that by the end of this challenge, that might not always be the case. I also want to start teaching them (Raven, especially) to do harder tasks as they’re getting older, so I imagine I’ll need to come up with one of these in a year or two.
• 49. Get family pics taken three times
  • We were lucky to live by our friend who takes pictures during my previous 101 in 1001 challenge (and so I would just do a photo swap with him and take pictures of his family and he would take pictures of mine), but I haven’t established any new connections with photographers down where we’ll soon be living. The ideal scenario for this would be a trade-out, but I’m willing to put aside money to pay someone, too. Family pictures are something you never regret getting!
• 50. Donate at least $100 to the local library
  • We are BIG fans of the library over here, and with us moving to a small town with a small library, I feel like our donation will mean a little more. If nothing else, it’s the least we can do with how much mileage we get from our library cards!
• 51. Donate at least $100 to a charity
  • I love the mission of The Lemon Tree Trust, but we’ll definitely look into our options.
• 52. Donate to five different Go Fund Me accounts
  • We’re trying to be more generous with our money and our time as we’re able, so hence the reason for these last three line items.
• 53. Make birthday boxes to donate to the local food pantry
  • I first read about the idea of donating a “birthday box” (which has cake mix, frosting, birthday candles, a birthday banner, and small treats for the birthday boy/girl) from The Big White Farmhouse blog, and I have not been able to stop thinking about it since. I just love this idea so much, and I think our kids would LOVE putting some of these together.

Local Love

• 54. Take the kids to 5 different parks/playgrounds
  • We will shortly be moving down to a brand-new town and a brand-new part of the state that we’re very unfamiliar with, so with COVID making widespread travel a little uncertain, I figured I would put most of our focus on putting down roots in our new community. Going to new parks has always been something we’ve enjoyed, and it will give us an easy way to start interacting with neighbors and getting to know the ins and outs of our new county.
• 55. Go on 3 local hikes
  • We are fortunate in that, again, we are moving to a place where there is a canyon right down the street from us. We love hiking as a family, so I’m excited to put this one on my list (again)!
• 56. Find a pediatrician
  • I’m so sad to need to find another one because we LOVED our pediatrician in Northern Utah, but it’s a necessity to have our pediatrician be closer than a three and a half hour drive away, so the search begins!
• 57. Find a dentist
  • Okay, confession—Matt and I are seriously tempted to keep our dentist, even though it means making a crazy-long drive twice a year. Why? Because in the case that you do have cavities, this particular office uses LASERS to treat them, rather than you needing to get a shot and be numbed up and feeling weird. There are so few places in Utah that offer this, so we’re seriously considering just making that drive for the two of us twice a year. However, for the kids? We’ll definitely be looking for something closer to home, as we should be able to find a decent pediatric dentist most anywhere.
• 58. Find an OB/GYN
  • Not gonna lie, I’m super nervous about this one–with all my delivery and pregnancy complications, I definitely am not going to be going to the small hospital that’s closest to us (at about 25 minutes away), but rather to the larger hospital that’s about an hour away. Finding a new OB and dealing with the logistics of delivering a baby so far from home was one of the main concerns I had with moving where we’re moving, but I guess we’ll tackle this when we come to it.
• 59. Find a general family doctor
  • I feel like I’m needing to find a new doctor like every other year to be our general practitioner, so this should be easy, right? (ha ha)
• 60. Try out 5 local restaurants
  • Admittedly, this might be trickier than you’d think since it’s not a very populated county and we need to find a place that serves gluten-free food. But we’re determined to find any and all that are within a 30-minute drive of us!
• 61. Go to a community event
  • We already know about the Lamb Days festival that the county hosts every July, so that would be an easy way to complete this one, but I’m also hoping to go to something new to us as well (as we’ve been to Lamb Days before with my stepdad’s family).
• 62. Go to storytime at the library + get a library card
  • Because duh, it’s me.
• 63. Find or start a book club
  • Ditto.
• 64. Make purchases from 5 local businesses
  • I’m trying to consciously put more money into the businesses local to me, even if it costs more. In a county that has such a small population, I’m hoping that keeping those dollars local will have even more of an impact.

Fun/Travel

• 65. Visit the Children’s Museum in Salt Lake
  • I still can’t believe we’ve never taken our kids here! I’ll have to research how they’re operating during the pandemic and decide if it’s better to go now while we live close or wait until things have calmed down a bit more.
• 66. Go on a family vacation
  • The lesson I learned from my last list? Travel with small children is not easy to make happen, and especially not now! Making ANY family vacation happen at this point will be a win, even if it’s somewhere right here in Utah.
• 67. Go on an overnight trip with just Matt and me
  • Now that the baby is sleeping through the night (yay!), this should be easier to manage.
• 68. Do something memorable for our 10-year anniversary
  • We were REALLY wanting to go Montreal for our 10-year anniversary next year in 2021, but who knows if that will even be a possibility? We shall see. At any rate, I want to do something memorable that we’ve never done before.
• 69. Attend a musical
  • We’ve been worlds better about going on dates in general, but they’re often not super planned—usually just your typical “dinner out” thing. We both love going to musicals, so once shows start opening up again, I want to look more into making this happen for one of our date nights.
• 70. Go camping
  • I’m not a huge fan of camping myself, but I do want our kids to have the experience. (To clarify, I love the OUTDOORS part of camping, but I’m not as big of a fan of sleeping on the ground!) This shouldn’t be too hard (in theory) to make happen, as one or both of our families often plan at least one camping trip during the year.

Homestead Life + Yard Projects

• 71. Get a second type of animal
  • Matt’s rooting for a pig, I’m rooting for a pair of dwarf goats. We’ll see who wins.
• 72. Preserve three types of food (aka, tomato sauce, applesauce) all by myself
  • I’ve preserved several different things with help (usually from my mom), but I want to be able to completely know how to do the entire process from start to finish on at least 3 different things all on my own. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot more than just that, but three will be a good start!
• 73. Plant at least two more fruit trees
  • The house we’re moving to currently has nectarine, peach, apple, and plum trees in the backyard. We’re planning on planting at least one apricot tree and one pear tree, though we might need to do more depending on whether we can find self-pollinating ones or not.
• 74. Plant strawberries + blackberries
  • The house already has some raspberry bushes, but we LOVED having blackberries at our old house, and we keep holding out for a strawberry variety that will actually produce a decent amount for us. (Any recommendations? Please send them our way!)
• 75. Purchase part of a cow
  • We’d probably have to go in with multiple other families, but I would love to do this one year (and possibly plan on doing it every year, if we could afford to).
• 76. Buy a better food dehydrator
  • We inherited my mom’s old dehydrator, but the trays are falling apart, and it tends to dehydrate unevenly. You can get a highly rated dehydrator for around $100, so I’ll definitely be scouting around for a good replacement.
• 77. Grow dahlias
  • I thought 2020 was the year I would make this long-held gardening dream of mine happen, but alas, the move made it not so. Next year for sure!
• 78. Build more garden beds
  • The yard currently has four, but I want to plant at least 2-4 more, largely for all the cutting flowers I want :).
• 79. Build sandbox
  • I was sad we had to leave the one Matt built for the last challenge behind at our old house. The kids played in it all the time, so we’ll have to build another one ASAP at our new place!

Emergency Preparedness

• 80. Create a will
  • You guys, it’s SO BAD that we haven’t done this yet! We absolutely must make this happen soon, because this is bordering on just plain irresponsible, what with us having 3 kids and all.
• 81. Complete Evernote profile
  • Our financial advisor gives us free access to an Evernote plan, which is basically a site that you can add all the info you would need to pass on to your loved ones in case of death or becoming incapacitated (think: financial account info, location of important documents, etc.). I started filling it out ages ago, but the process seemed so daunting that I just got behind and forgot about it. I just need to devote like an hour a day for a week to get this totally done, because it would give me a TON of peace of mind!
• 82. Buy five-gallon buckets for food storage (at least 12) + fill each with staples
  • I was trying to come up with a way to quantify “add to food storage” to this list, and this was the most solid way I could come up with that gave a specific, measurable amount. We will be adding plenty of other things to our food storage (as we always have), but this is something we don’t currently have that would also add a lot of peace of mind if we’re hit with another year like we all were this year.
• 83. Buy an emergency water drum + spigot and make sure we have an adequate emergency water supply
  • You can buy these 55-gallon water barrels from Amazon or from emergency supply stores to make sure that your family can survive an emergency for at least a few days until you can get to an adequate water source. Many times people just stock up on food when they’re preparing for an emergency, but often storing enough water is totally neglected. At minimum, you should plan on 2 gallons of water per day per family member, and you ideally should store enough for at least 72 hours.

Home

All right, you ready for the fun stuff?! At least, it’s one of the sections I’m most excited about, and you’ll notice it’s by far the longest as a result. Getting ready to close on our new house next week has me dreaming and scheming all sorts of things, but here is the (short) version below. (If you want the longer version of many of these updates, check out this post I published last week on the updates we’re hoping to make before we move in.)

• 84. Update flooring in kitchen
  • Rip up linoleum, install LVP.
• 85. Paint kitchen cabinets
  • Will probably just be going with a white, just because the kitchen has no windows (I KNOW!).
• 86. Paint main floor walls
  • Replace the brownish-beige with a nice neutral (and brighter) greige.
• 87. Update curtains in front room
  • The current lace curtains over the large window and the too-short cream colored ones over the others are not doing the room any favors. I’ll be employing the old “hang the curtains near the ceiling and wider than the window” trick to make the big windows in the main rooms of the house appear even bigger. (Plus it will be nice to just have the curtains be consistent throughout the main spaces, since they’re all different right now.) I’ll probably go through IKEA for this and hem as needed.
• 88. Update at least one light fixture
  • We’ve already purchased two of the light fixtures we want to replace (this one for the front entryroom and this one for over the dining table), and I’m in the process of purchasing the recessed can lights for the kitchen, which is like a dimly lit cave right now. Super excited to see what kind of difference these lighting updates are going to make!
• 89. Add recessed lighting in the kitchen
  • See above.
• 90. Update flooring in guest bedroom
  • We have two bedrooms on the main floor (one of which is the master), and two in the basement, which means we’re going to be putting our kids in the basement (don’t worry–it’s not a scary basement at all!). The other bedroom on the main floor will serve as our office space and guest room, and right now, it’s probably the ugliest room in the house (next to the main floor bathroom)—-we’re talking blue carpet from the 80’s, dark brown walls…yeah, it’s not my favorite. Updating the flooring and paint should make a big difference (and might be all that we really need to do).
• 91. Paint guest bedroom
  • See above.
• 92. Update laundry closet area
  • I’ve seen some really cute and fairly easy DIY laundry closet makeovers that I want to try my hand at. I figure I might as well enjoy my laundry closet since I’ll be seeing the inside of it on nearly a daily basis anyway!
• 93. Figure out an organizational system for master closet
  • We’ve definitely never had a master closet, so this is new territory for us, although “master closet” is somewhat of a misnomer for what that space currently is, which is kind of an odd dressing-room type thing with two built-in closets in it. I don’t know exactly what we’re going to do in there, but something must be done for sure because it’s just kind of an awkward use of space right now.
• 94. Buy rug for master bedroom
  • The master bedroom is the only flooring on the main floor (out of six different types) that I’m okay with, because it’s the original hardwoods of the house. We don’t currently own any rugs, however, so that will need to change, and hopefully soon.
• 95. Safely remove gas heater in basement
  • We have a gas heater in the basement that is not super safe and not necessary since there is forced air heating in the basement as well as throughout the house. We need to figure out a safe way to remove that heater, as well as the gas line attached to it (which is currently on a closet floor…yeah).
• 96. Buy/make decor for each season and major holiday
  • I’ve never been good about decorating for different seasons or holidays other than Christmas, but seeing how much my kids light up about stuff like this, I’m absolutely determined to get more into holiday decor. I’ve already bought some fun Halloween and fall things (and plan to buy more when it goes on deep discount after Halloween is over), and it will be fun to continue adding to it throughout these next couple years. The kids are going to love it!
• 97. Paint the kids’ dresser
  • With a recent win under my belt when it comes to refinishing something, I’m ready to take on a bigger project–the free dresser we just got for the kids’ room! Wish me luck.
• 98. Update master bedroom
  • I don’t mind the master bedroom too much, but it definitely has more of a rustic/cabin feel than I personally go for. I’m hoping to stain some of the knotty alder panels in there a different color and freshen up the paint so that it’s a bit more modern.
• 99. Start making updates to main bathroom
  • The main bathroom is a piece of work…it really could use just a full-on gut job, but we likely won’t have the money for a huge makeover. We won’t know until we move in how much is worth saving, but I think we’re probably for sure going to want to replace the toilet, flooring, broken door, and leaky plumbing/hardware, as well as update some of the other features in there, especially as it’s the only bathroom in the house besides the master.
• 100. Buy outdoor furniture for the deck
  • The yard and deck are what sold this house for us…now we just need to get furniture for out there so we can actually enjoy it!
• 101. Declutter 1,001 items + post updates
  • Ever since doing my 50 Weeks to Organized project, I’m always looking for ways to pare down and declutter, and I think 1,001 items will be a true challenge, but not impossible. I also plan to do updates similar to how Ashley does it over on her blog.

And there you have it! The new 101 in 1001 list! EEK! I’m so excited 🙂