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 known end date.

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 original items on this second 101 in 1001 list HERE. (Note: about 8 months into this new list, I changed quite a few of the goals to reflect some major life shifts, which you can read about HERE. All those changes are reflected in the most current version of the list below.) As for this post, I’m just giving updates on the things that I’ve actually made progress on since my last update back in February.

Note: There are affiliate links to products and books 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 (3/7)

• Open up a brokerage account (completed December 2020)
  • I started a separate financial goals series to break down each one of the items in this first category, so if you want all the details on where we’re at with each of these, make sure to check out all the exact numbers and current stats HERE.
• Buy and pay off a new vehicle to replace the Buick (completed January 2021)
• Get each kids’ savings account to $500
• Make an extra mortgage payment (not necessarily all at once) (completed June 2021)
  • We’ve thrown around the idea of early retirement for years, but this year, we’ve finally given ourselves a deadline to become financially independent by age 50, which would require that we pay off our mortgage over the next 15 years rather than over the next 29. This original goal was much smaller than our current goal, so we’ve since exceeded it by quite a bit. Nevertheless, I’m still celebrating that we’ve already managed to pay $1,400 extra on our mortgage in just the first six months of having mortgage payments on this new house.
• Start contributing to my IRA again
• Max out Matt’s Roth one year
• Complete a no-spend month

Homestead Life (3/5)

• Preserve three types of food (aka, tomato sauce, applesauce) all by myself
• Plant an apricot tree (completed February 2021)
  • We planted one back in February, but it’s not looking very good thanks to a hard growing season (terrible drought, very late frost, extreme heat wave) and very salty soil. We almost certainly will need to order a new one next year and try again, probably in a different location.
• Plant strawberries + blackberries (completed March 2021)
  • Once again, these aren’t looking great for the same reasons that the apricot tree has been suffering (although they’re in slightly better soil), but I do think they’ll both survive. We even harvested a few strawberries, although they weren’t anything to write home about.
• Purchase part of a cow
• Buy a better food dehydrator (completed Dec 2020)

Emergency Preparedness (0/5)

While I haven’t technically crossed off any items on this list, we HAVE made a lot of progress on this, at least when it comes to building up our short-term food storage plan, as well as making sure we have back-ups of medicine and first aid stuff and such. If you want to check out the first two posts in my 4-part series on this, you can find the first post HERE and the second post HERE.

• Create a will
• Complete Evernote profile
• Buy five-gallon buckets for food storage (at least 12) + fill each with staples
  • I haven’t purchased the actual buckets yet, but I have already started buying some of the staples I plan to put inside, such as huge bags of rice, beans, and oatmeal. We’ve been focusing on our short-term food storage plan for awhile, but now I’m about to shift into the long-term stuff.
• Buy an emergency water drum + spigot and make sure we have an adequate emergency water supply
• Make 72-hour kits for each member of the family
  • The fire alarm scare we had this month only solidified in my head the importance of getting this taken care of, and stat. I put this on my goals list for this month, so hopefully I should get around to it soon.

Health + Beauty (1/4)

• Whiten teeth (completed Nov 2020)
• Get back to pre-pregnancy weight
• Run in a race again (any length)
• Complete BBG (on my own terms)

Spiritual (0/3)

• Visit 3 new temples (1/3)
  • All the temples have been closed since Covid hit last March, but they just barely started opening up around here by appointment only, which meant that we got to attend the one by our new house for the first time since moving here in November. We’re close by several others that we’ve never been to before, so I imagine we’ll be able to complete this goal before too long. (For more information on why temples are important to my faith, you can click HERE.)
• Read President Nelson’s biography
• Index 1,000 names (83/1000)
  • I’m not quite 10% into my goal here, but at least I’ve made progress. In case you’re wondering, indexing is a genealogical service that anyone can do, and it consists of typing up names and dates from various historical records so that they can be read by a search engine (and therefore help people find out more about their ancestry). If you’re interested in volunteering, the website is HERE.

Flower Farming (1/12)

Earlier this year, I decided to just take the plunge and go for my years-in-the-making dream of starting my own backyard flower farm, where I grow and sell cut flowers to the public. While it has come with a steep (very steep!) learning curve, I have truly enjoyed the process and the product, and I’m excited to see where this goes in the coming years. If you want to follow along with the flower farm specifically, you can follow that on Instagram and Facebook, and you can also check out my other blog.

• Expand farm to lilac bushes
• Expand front garden bed
  • I bought a large silage tarp to smother out all the weeds, which is currently covering part of our front lawn that will become the expanded bed. After a couple weeks, I’ll move it to the other section of front lawn, then plant the first section with a quick cover crop so that the grass doesn’t just come right back. Then I’ll repeat the process with the expansion in the backyard.
• Try a low tunnel or hoophouse
• Try landscape fabric for weed control
• Install drip irrigation in the raised beds
• Expand to both a spring and summer CSA
• Do a bouquet bar 
• Donate flowers to the local nursing home
• Host an event at the farm (like a u-pick day)
• Try a seedling sale (completed May 2021)
  • This first year of flower farming has been full of all sorts of trial-and-error things, and one of the marketing opportunities I wanted to try was to do a seedling sale. I went very, very small this first year just to see how it would do, and I learned a lot (like to have it on a different weekend than the one when All The Things are happening over Memorial Day, ha ha). The seedling sale did decently well though, and I think there is definitely potential for that in the future, especially if I expanded to more types of flowers available and offered them at slightly larger sizes if I could manage it.
• Turn a profit
  • Even if I sell every stem I have available in August and September, I won’t turn a profit this first year, and with all the infrastructure costs for next year, I doubt it will happen then either. My goal is to be in the black by Year 3!
• Have Matt build me a roadside flower stand

Personal Development + Skills (1/8)

• Take a floral arranging/design class
  • I set this goal even before I decided to officially start the flower farm, and it’s even more relevant now! I’ve been buying and studying a ton of floral design books, but I think an actual class would be really valuable. No idea how I’ll actually swing this (I’ll probably have to do something online), but we’ll see what I can come up with.
• Mend at least one piece of clothing (completed July 2021)
  • Doing simple clothing fixes has always been one of the tasks that I absolutely procrastinate the longest, so I’m trying to get better at basic skills (like sewing on buttons, ironing patches, fixing hems, etc.), so that when something comes up that needs to be fixed, I won’t turn it into this huge thing in my head because it’s something that I’m used to doing. I took about half an hour the other week to sew some buttons on a pair of Matt’s pants and one of my dresses, and now that I’ve reminded myself that it hardly takes any time (or skill) at all, maybe I’ll be better at not putting it off so long next time!
• Alter at least one piece of clothing
• Learn to French braid
• Find a go-to gluten-free pie recipe
• Find a go-to gluten-free cake recipe
  • I have tried out one, but I’m not sure that it’s fabulous enough to consider it my #1 go-to. Guess I’ll have to keep experimenting!
• Try 12 different gluten-free cookie recipes (2/12)
• Make 5 new recipes out of each of my cookbooks (+ donate the ones I don’t get to)
  • I’ve made a bit of progress with this goal in general, but I definitely made this item EASIER this past month because I donated 7 of my cookbooks, which took down the count from 34 to 27.

Family/Service (1/11)

• Sign Mathias up for preschool (completed March 2021)
  • Kinda hard to believe that two of the kids will be in some kind of school situation this fall, but Mathias is beyond excited to be “big” like his sister!
• Sign both Raven and Mathias up for swimming lessons (+ have Raven complete through level 4)
  • I wanted to start these this summer, but our local pool is not offering swim lessons this year. I’m hoping that by next year (or even this coming winter) that we can get these going!
• Start teaching piano to Raven
• Create chore system for the kids
  • We’ve started having the kids collect the eggs from our chickens and they help clean up the house when asked, but I want to make this a little more systematic than it currently is.
• 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)
• Make birthday boxes to donate to the local food pantry
• Move Raven to her own room and move the boys in together
• Create family photo albums through 2020

Local Love (6/11)

• Take the kids to 5 different parks/playgrounds (3/5)
  • We’ve added a couple more to the list here. Turns out the town we moved to only has one park, so we’ve been town-hopping a bit to try to fit in some more.
• Go on 3 local hikes
• Find a pediatrician (completed January 2021)
• Find a dentist (completed January 2021)
• Find an OB/GYN (completed June 2021)
  • No, I’m not pregnant (don’t get excited), but I did find a new OB/GYN, albeit one that’s a bit of a drive away. #smalltownlifeforya
• Find a general family doctor (completed January 2021)
• Try out 5 local restaurants (3/5)
  • We normally would have tried more by now, but it’s been tricky finding places that accommodate Matt’s gluten-free requirement. We’ll keep looking around!
• Go to a community event
  • We did go to a county event a couple weeks ago, but as it’s a festival we happened to have been to before, I’m not counting it. Maybe the county fair coming up at the end of the month?
• Go to storytime at the library + get a library card (completed August 2021)
  • The library card we got immediately upon moving in, but storytime took a little longer to work out (as they weren’t offering it for the longest time due to Covid restrictions). Now that they’ve finally started it up again though, we probably will start going pretty regularly!
• Find or start a book club (completed July 2021)
  • I originally thought I’d completed this one soon after moving here because there is a well-established community book club that’s been around forever, but then I realized I’d never be able to make any of the meetings because they’re always held in the middle of the day. So yeah, I basically just had to start up my own. Crossing my fingers that I like it as much as my last one–our first meeting is this month!
• Make purchases from 5 local (non-chain) businesses (4/5)
  • I figured this one wouldn’t be too hard to complete (as shopping is so limited around here), and I was right! I mean, we hardly even shop at all and we’ve already easily bought from four, so the next one shouldn’t be too difficult.

Fun/Travel (3/6)

• Visit the Children’s Museum in Salt Lake
• Go on a family vacation (completed April 2021)
  • We took the kids to St. George in April and stayed at a condo with my mom and stepdad, and it was awesome. The kids enjoyed themselves so much that Raven (our oldest) sobbed for most of the drive home because she was so sad that it was over.
• Go on an overnight trip with just Matt and me (completed July 2021)
  • I kind of didn’t think these next two lines items through very well because the overnight trip Matt and I just barely took to Capitol Reef to celebrate our anniversary obviously ticked off both boxes. Oh, well. Two birds with one stone!
• Do something memorable for our 10-year anniversary (completed July 2021)
• Attend a musical
• Go camping

Yard (1/3)

• Grow dahlias
  • I’m currently growing dahlias from seed, but as they haven’t bloomed yet, I’m not counting this as complete. I also might expand it to include growing dahlias from both seed AND from tubers. (I technically did plant some dahlia tubers this year that I bought on clearance, but I’m not sure we’ll get anything from them this year–I think I put them in the ground too late.)
• Build more garden beds (completed March 2021)
  • Yeah, we totally knocked this one out of the park—9 beds built this year, baby! (With hopefully more to be built next year!)
• Build sandbox
  • We bought this one (because surprisingly it was cheaper to buy it in a kit like this rather than to buy the lumber, as lumber prices are sky-high right now), but we have yet to assemble and fill it. Soon, though!

Home (9/22)

• Update flooring in kitchen
  • We’re close on this—really, really close!—but as it’s not quite there yet, I don’t get to put that satisfying cross-through mark over it. Next update for sure!
• Paint kitchen cabinets (completed January 2021)
• Paint main floor walls (completed Nov 2020)
• Update curtains in front room
• Update at least one light fixture (completed Nov 2020)
• Add recessed lighting in the kitchen (completed Nov 2020)
• Update flooring in playroom (completed January 2021)
• Paint playroom/guest room (completed Nov 2020)
• Put up backsplash in kitchen
• Make a gallery wall in our house of my photography
• Clear out junk room in basement
  • I have done some (mostly of a few of the book boxes and a couple of the bags of kids’ clothes), but I’ve also added like 4 huge boxes of thrifted vases, so…it doesn’t look that different. I’m thinking this will be a winter project when I’m not so busy with flower farming.
• Figure out an organizational system for master closet + paint upper half of walls
  • The first step to this was getting all the random boxes off of the floor and sorted through/unpacked, which is now done. Now I just need to spend some solid time brainstorming ideas and trying out different organizational ideas, as well as set aside a weekend for painting. I’ve at least made progress so that it isn’t as insane as it was before (and it will get significantly less insane too once we move the laundry closet doors out of there as well as the standing gas fireplace, which are both currently in the closet because of the kitchen floor not being done for so long). Slowly but surely.
• Buy rug for master bedroom (completed February 2021)
• Get plumbing quotes for adding bathroom downstairs and adding sink to workshop in outbuilding
• Buy/make decor for each season and major holiday
  • I was doing really well on this until I decided to start the flower farm, then I basically have stopped decorating the house altogether, lol — I mean, I still have a wooden snowflake garland up on our fireplace!
• Replace and update the kitchen sink and faucet
• Update master bedroom (completed Dec 2020)
• Start making updates to main bathroom
• Replace cracked window in front room
• Come up with organizational scheme for playroom
  • Getting rid of about half the toys made this one actually do-able—now I just need to purchase a few bins or organizers, make some labels, and call it good.
• Buy outdoor furniture for the deck
  • We really need to do this…I think if we had outdoor furniture, we’d eat outside all the time because our back deck is one of the best things about this house. Maybe we’ll find a good set on clearance after this summer?
• Declutter 1,001 items (completed July 2021)
  • I did a whole series on my process of doing this, which you can read about HERE.

Reading (0/4)

• Read 50 books I own (13/50)
  • This has definitely been easier than when I put it on my first 101 in 1001 list because our new town’s library is significantly smaller, so I’ve been indulging myself more with my Book of the Month selections and with Daily Kindle Deals. In fact, for the first time in many, many years, the majority of the books I’m reading and finishing lately are ones that I own rather than ones that I’ve borrowed!
• Participate in (and complete!) a reading challenge
  • I was all set to do the Unread Shelves Challenge this year (you can see my post all about it HERE), but flower farming has drastically reduced my reading time, so I just haven’t followed through. I’m thinking I’d better find a smaller challenge to make this one more doable!
• Start my Assigned Reading again
  • As the time to start doing this is at the start of a school year, I need to decide soon if I want to jump back on this train again this year. While a part of me will always want to, I also know how busy I’ve been (and will continue to be). Decisions, decisions… (You can check out THIS POST to find out what exactly my assigned reading consisted of, as well as why I took a break from it.)
• Do ten read-alouds with Raven (and eventually include Mathias)

Current Total of Completed Goals: 29/101

Current # of Goals in Progress: 19

Percentage of Time Elapsed: 28.7%

Percentage of Goals Completed: 29%

Whoa, that’s pretty freaky that my percentage of goals completed is basically right on track with how much time has passed! Pretty crazy 🙂