In case you’re new around here, I’m currently working on my second 101 in 1001 list, which is a list of 101 goals or things I hope to complete/do in 1,001 days (which translates to about 2.75 years). This format for goal-setting has been highly motivating for me because it combines the power of a deadline with an extended period of time to complete the items, which kind of makes it feel a little like a bucket list, but with a timeline.

You can read the final numbers for my first 101 in 1001 list HERE, and you can read a full explanation for each of the items on this second 101 in 1001 list HERE. As for this post, I’m just giving updates on the things that I’ve actually made progress on thus far.

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

My (Second) 101 in 1001 List

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

Financial (7)

• Open up a brokerage account (completed December 2020)
  • If you read my post on our current financial goals–which basically just talks about these goals in more detail as their own post–you’ll already know all about these first 7 items. In case not, the quick version is that we just opened up our first brokerage account through Fidelity in order to have options to draw from in case we want to have my husband retire before the typical age.
• Buy and pay off a new vehicle to replace the Buick (completed January 2021)
  • We ended up purchasing a Mazda secondhand from my in-laws last month, which was an amazing deal for us. We’re still working on selling the Buick, though I’m hoping that that will be done in the next couple weeks.
• Get each kids’ savings account to $500
  • We have made progress since the first update, but we’re still not quite there. We’re getting close, though—we’re about 2/3rds of the way!
• Make an extra mortgage payment (not necessarily all at once)
  • Our mortgage payment (which includes escrow) is just over $1400 a month, so the goal is to make extra payments equalling $1400 to the principal. I’ll be calculating the exact progress soon for the upcoming update on our financial goals, but we have made progress on this—I put in an extra $100 the past few months, along with some change.
• Start contributing to my IRA again
• Max out Matt’s Roth one year
• Complete a no-spend month

Homestead Life (6)

• Get a second type of animal
• Preserve three types of food (aka, tomato sauce, applesauce) all by myself
• Plant an apricot tree
  • This originally stated that I wanted to plant two fruit trees, but looking around at how many fruit trees there already are on our new property (apple, pear, peach, nectarine, plum), the only other one I really want that we don’t have is an apricot tree, so I’ve officially amended this goal. I’m hoping to order one this month!
• Plant strawberries + blackberries
  • Since you generally want to plant blackberries when they’re still dormant (late winter or early spring), I’ll need to order some of these soon, too. I’m hoping to get these in the ground by early March. As for strawberries, I’ll probably plant those around April. (Or at least, that’s the plan!)
• Purchase part of a cow
• Buy a better food dehydrator (completed Dec 2020)
  • My mom and stepdad bought us this dehydrator as a Christmas gift this last year, which was exactly what we wanted. I’m excited to put it to use this coming harvest year!

Emergency Preparedness (4)

• Create a will
• Complete Evernote profile
  • This is a free service provided by our financial advisor, and it’s basically a place where you can put all your important info (financial and otherwise) so that if something were to happen to you, your loved ones would know how to access your bank accounts, make sure the bills get paid, etc. I started on this and filled out some last fall, but it’s been a long time since I looked at it!
• Buy five-gallon buckets for food storage (at least 12) + fill each with staples
  • We’re mainly focusing on our short-term food storage at the moment (check out my food storage series if you haven’t already), but I’m hoping that we’ll be able to start on some of this long-term stuff by the summer.
• Buy an emergency water drum + spigot and make sure we have an adequate emergency water supply

Health + Beauty (4)

• Whiten teeth (completed Nov 2020)
  • I haven’t drastically whitened my teeth or anything, but I had a half box left of the Crest White Strips and just used those. At any rate, my teeth are whiter than they were, and they no longer bug me!
• Get back to pre-pregnancy weight
  • I unexpectedly got closer to this by losing a bunch of weight in December (basically from stress, but I have managed to keep almost all of it off). At the beginning of the challenge, I had about 20 pounds to lose, and now I have around 12.
• Run in a race again (any length)
• Complete BBG (on my own terms)

Spiritual (5)

• Reread Jesus the Christ
• Visit 3 new temples
  • We just moved literally right down the street from a temple I’ve never been inside before, but all temples are currently closed because of the pandemic. (For more information on why temples are important in my faith, you can click here.)
• Read President Nelson’s biography
• Index 1,000 names
  • I’ve indexed 8.
• Read the entire Saints series

Blogging (6)

• Blog 20 times or more in a month
• Complete Module 3 of EBA
• Complete Module 4 of EBA
• Reach 1,000 people on my email list
  • My email list has been steadily growing by about 5-12 people a month, but now the trick is getting back into the habit of actually sending out the monthly emails. (You can click HERE to join my email list if you haven’t already! I don’t spam your inbox, and I send out exclusive content that doesn’t end up on the blog that’s just for subscribers.)
• Update featured photos on all posts
  • Back when I redid my blog design, all the featured photos were no longer saved, so now I have to go back and add them all back in. I did a few months’ worth back around October or November, and I’ve now updated back to the last quarter of 2014. Progress!
• Try vlogging
  • So, I’ve actually shot content for a couple videos, but I have no idea where to start with editing. So there they sit.

Photography (8)

• Upgrade to a better tripod
• Buy a full frame camera
• Post to my photography Instagram every day for a month (completed Nov 2020)
  • I did this back in November and posted daily (sometimes multiple times a day) for the duration of the month in order to grow my photography Instagram. It’s still pretty small, but I definitely grew it by a decent amount during that time! (If you want to check it out, you can find it HERE. If you want to follow my regular account on Instagram, you can click HERE.)
• Take an online photography class 
• Take an online Lightroom class
• Photograph a wedding
• Make a gallery wall in our house of my photography
• Create family photo albums through 2020
  • I started this goal with my LAST 101 in 1001 list, but I finally made some (more) progress on it this time! I’ve finished selecting and editing all the photos for the 3rd album (which covers 2014-2015), so…baby steps.

Personal Development + Skills (9)

• Take a floral arranging/design class
• Mend at least one piece of clothing
• Alter at least one piece of clothing
• Learn to French braid
• Reupholster a piece of furniture by myself
• Find a go-to gluten-free pie recipe
• Find a go-to gluten-free cake recipe
• Try 12 different gluten-free cookie recipes (1/12)
  • I haven’t been baking nearly as much as before because gluten-free baking definitely has a learning curve to it and tends to call for some fiddly ingredients and techniques, but I did try out a new monster cookies recipe that is my new favorite of that cookie type.
• Make 5 new recipes out of each of my cookbooks (+ donate the ones I don’t get to)
  • I copied down the names of all the cookbooks I currently own and am making tick marks every time I make a new recipe out of one of them. I currently own 34 cookbooks, which translates to 170 recipes, and I’ve only made 3. I’d best step it up if I don’t want to be donating a whole bunch of those!

Family/Service (9)

• Sign Mathias up for preschool
• Sign both Raven and Mathias up for swimming lessons (+ have Raven complete through level 4)
• Start teaching piano to Raven
• Create chore system for the kids
• Get family pics taken three times
• Donate at least $100 to the local library
• Donate at least $100 to a charity
• Donate to five different Go Fund Me accounts (2/5)
  • I donated to two families I had connections to when they both experienced some terrible tragedies.
• Make birthday boxes to donate to the local food pantry

Local Love (11)

• Take the kids to 5 different parks/playgrounds
• Go on 3 local hikes
• Find a pediatrician (completed January 2021)
  • So I technically didn’t find a pediatrician, but that’s because it’s pretty hard to find medical specialists down here since we’re in such a rural area. We did find a general family doctor though who practices right down the street from us, which is convenient.
• Find a dentist for us and a dentist for the kids
  • Ugh, I thought the dentist I found would work for both Matt and I and for the kids, but it turns out not. So now we have a dentist, but I need to keep looking to find a pediatric one.
• Find an OB/GYN
• Find a general family doctor (completed January 2021)
  • Same doctor as above.
• Try out 5 local restaurants (1/5)
  • We tried a local Mexican restaurant a couple of times when we were neck-deep in home projects and too tired to cook. It was okay.
• Go to a community event
• Go to storytime at the library + get a library card
  • The library card has already seen a lot of use in its first month, but storytime won’t be happening again until the pandemic has died down significantly. I might have to modify this goal further into the challenge if conditions don’t change in the next year or so.
• Find or start a book club (completed January 2021)
  • I have found one…but I haven’t gone/participated in any of the meetings yet, and I probably won’t until they resume doing in-person meetings again rather than Zoom meetings. But I’m counting it as complete because I’m on their roster and will join up soon!
• Make purchases from 5 local businesses (2/5)
  • We’ve made purchases from two local hardware stores that are family-owned businesses.

Fun/Travel (6)

• Visit the Children’s Museum in Salt Lake
• Go on a family vacation
• Go on an overnight trip with just Matt and me
• Do something memorable for our 10-year anniversary
• Attend a musical
• Go camping

Yard (3)

• Grow dahlias
• Build more garden beds
  • We’ve basically decided where these are going to go and the sizes, and we’re planning on using a chunk of our tax return this year to buy the materials. Hopefully Matt will have these built by April or so!
• Build sandbox
  • Ditto on the sandbox—this will be the next priority after the garden boxes.

Home (18)

• Update flooring in kitchen
  • We have ripped out the majority of the tile down to the subfloor, and there we sit, as the portion of subfloor by the back door needs to be fixed before we can move on with this.
• Paint kitchen cabinets (completed January 2021)
  • We painted our oak cabinets white, and it makes a huge difference in how the space feels. Eventually I’ll share pictures, once we actually have a floor in!
• Paint main floor walls (completed Nov 2020)
  • We painted the majority of the main floor Agreeable Gray to replace the orangey-beige it was before. I like it a ton better.
• Update curtains in front room
  • We did hang up some different curtains on one of the windows and just removed the ones on another (since it had blinds), but I’m still trying to figure out the curtain situation for the huge window. This isn’t top priority right now, but I do hope to complete this sometime this year.
• Update at least one light fixture (completed Nov 2020)
  • We’ve updated four, actually—we installed two of these in our master bedroom, one of these in the front entry room, and one of these over our kitchen table.
• Add recessed lighting in the kitchen (completed Nov 2020)
  • Of all the house projects we’ve completed thus far, none has been quite as dramatic as this one. Before, the kitchen was dark and cave-like, and now it’s bright and well-lit and about a million times more inviting.
• Update flooring in playroom (completed January 2021)
  • We have two bedrooms on our main floor, one of which is our master. The other we’re using as a combo guest bedroom and playroom for the kids. Before the room had blue carpet, dark brown paint, and ghastly white lacy curtains that I immediately removed. We updated the flooring with this luxury vinyl planking, which is the same color we put in through the family room area too (and eventually the kitchen).
• Paint playroom (completed Nov 2020)
  • We painted the playroom in Agreeable Gray and Alabaster, and that together with the flooring makes it look like a completely different room. Now we just need to come up with some organizational scheme for the toys so it’s not a disaster area!
• Update laundry closet area
• Figure out an organizational system for master closet
• Buy rug for master bedroom (completed February 2021)
  • We actually just bought FOUR (not all for the master bedroom, obviously), which is crazy to me considering that one month ago, we owned ZERO rugs. We were only able to do this thanks to a nice tax return! (In case you’re wondering, these are the four we bought–and at a great deal too thanks to a President’s Day Sale and a nice cash back by going through Rakuten— 1, 2, 3, 4)
• Safely remove gas heater in basement
• Buy/make decor for each season and major holiday
  • I owned almost no holiday decor other than Christmas until recently, but it’s been really fun (for the kids especially) to decorate for other times of the year as well. I don’t really have anything for spring or summer yet (I tend to wait until it’s on clearance after the fact), but we’re getting there!
• Paint the kids’ dresser
• Update master bedroom (completed Dec 2020)
  • We brightened it up considerably with new paint and two new light fixtures (mentioned above). And the rug is coming tomorrow!
• Start making updates to main bathroom
• Buy outdoor furniture for the deck
• Declutter 1,001 items (465/1001)
  • I’m actually blogging about this process, which you can read about here.

Reading (5)

• Read 100 books in a year
• Finish Les Miserables (unabridged)
• Read 50 books I own (6/50)
  • I made this same goal last 101 in 1001 list but didn’t reach it, though I’m off to a much better start this time. Of course, a large part of that is because 1) the library here is MUCH smaller than any I’ve used in the past, and 2) I finally caved and bought a smartphone last year, which means I’ve been reading (and buying!) books through the Kindle app.
• Start my Assigned Reading again
• Do ten read-alouds with Raven (and eventually include Mathias)

Current Total of Completed Goals: 16/101

Percentage of Time Elapsed: 11%

Percentage of Goals Completed: 16%

Feeling pretty good because I’m actually ahead (for once)!