101 in 1001, Goals

Second 101 in 1001 Challenge: Update #3

Leave a Comment on Second 101 in 1001 Challenge: Update #3

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. Additionally, I’ve changed a few more line items since my last update, mostly because the old goals either weren’t possible anymore or no longer were priorities. 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 August.

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 (7/8)

When I made up this list over a year ago, I thought that most of these were going to be real “stretch” goals. I never could have imagined that just over a year later, we would have completed so many. (Of course, a big part of that is Matt and I deciding for sure this year that we were going to pursue early retirement in 15 years’ time.) These have also been helped along greatly by the child tax credit payments, stimulus checks, a raise from Matt’s work, us starting the flower farm, and me taking on a part-time job at the local paper.

Many of these goals are linked to other posts where I talk about them in more detail. (P. S. Now that we’ve completed most of these, I’ve created a NEW list of financial goals we’re working on for 2022, which you can find HERE.)

Homestead Life (3/5)

  • Preserve three types of food (aka, tomato sauce, applesauce) all by myself
  • Plant an apricot tree (completed February 2021)
    • I thought that the apricot tree we planted earlier this year died sometime in the summer, but now I’m not so sure — it definitely looked like it had a little bit of new growth/branches on it, even if it didn’t have any leaves. Fingers crossed it survived so we don’t have to order another one.
  • Plant strawberries + blackberries (completed March 2021)
  • Purchase part of a cow
    • I’ve been asking around a lot about this actually, but it’s tricky — the hard part is not finding someone who is raising cattle for meat, but rather for them to find someone to do the butchering and packaging. However, a new meat processing plant is opening up the next town over, so hopefully this will happen soon!
  • Buy a better food dehydrator (completed Dec 2020)

Emergency Preparedness (1/4)

A big focus for us all year long in 2021 was emergency preparedness, and we spent the entire year working really hard on building up our emergency food and water supply as well as getting other parts of our emergency preparedness in place.

  • Create a will
  • Have at least a 6-month long-term food supply on hand for our family (completed October 2021)
    • I did an email series on how we went about doing this, which you can find HERE.
  • Buy an emergency water drum + spigot and make sure we have an adequate emergency water supply
    • This one is *almost* done — my mom and stepdad bought us the water drum and pump we wanted for Christmas this year, but the problem is that it’s on backorder. I’ll make sure to cross this off for good when we actually get it and have filled it for emergency use.
  • Make 72-hour kits for each member of the family
    • I’ve made a ton of progress on this–we now each have our own backpack, and each backpack is already filled with the necessary hygiene items as well as a few other things (like diapers for our youngest and medicine/first aid stuff). I’ve also added clothing to most of them. However, I still have to add other emergency things like a flashlight, cash, food, etc., so this one can’t be marked as complete yet.

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)
    • I almost completed the BBG workout program years ago, but then I got a serious back injury in the middle of one of the workouts, which is still causing me issues today. About a month ago, I tried to do a (slow) version of one of the beginner workouts, but as with basically any exercise I’ve tried over the past 3 years, it messed up my back again. At this point, we’ve decided to just prioritize getting me in to see the specialized massage therapist once a month (even though he lives two hours away) because that was the only treatment that showed any improvement. Until my back can be more or less “fixed,” all exercise apart from walking and stretching has to be postponed.

Spiritual (0/3)

For more on my faith, you can click HERE. For more on why temples and genealogy are important in my faith, you can click HERE.

  • Visit 3 new temples (1/3)
  • Read President Nelson’s biography
  • Index 1,000 names (123/1000)
    • A bit of progress here, though I imagine I’ll make much more later this year when the 1950 Census becomes available for indexing in April. 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 (4/12)

  • Expand farm to lilac bushes + expand front garden bed (completed October 2021)
    • With these latest expansions, we’ve essentially almost tripled the size of the farm from what we had our first year, and with the 7 new raised beds we’re planning on putting in this spring, we’ll almost be quadrupling what we’re planting. Pretty crazy!
  • Try selling at the local farmer’s market (completed August 2021)
    • Selling at the farmer’s market wasn’t in the original sales plan at all (nor in my original 101 in 1001 list), but I’m glad we tried it out since I think it’s going to be something we continue to do going forward.
  • Try a low tunnel or build a hoophouse
    • We’ve bought all the materials for a hoophouse (which is basically an unheated greenhouse), and we’re constructing it this month!
  • Try landscape fabric
  • Install drip irrigation in the raised beds
  • Expand to both a spring and summer CSA
    • This is in the works — I plan to open these up in just a couple of weeks!
  • Do a bouquet bar 
  • Donate flowers to the local nursing home
  • Host an event at the farm (like a u-pick day) (completed August 2021)
    • I hosted a small bouquet-making night for CSA members to see how I liked it. While it wasn’t as well-attended as I was hoping (due to so many people being out of town), I still learned a lot and I think everyone who came had a good time. If nothing else, it definitely served to inform me of what to expect if I ever do anything like this again in the future.
  • Try a seedling sale (completed May 2021)
  • Turn a profit
  • Try selling to florists to see how I like it

Personal Development + Skills (1/8)

  • Take a floral arranging/design class
  • Mend at least one piece of clothing (completed July 2021)
  • 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
  • Try 12 different gluten-free cookie recipes (4/12)
    • Made some progress here over the last holiday season, as we tried out some gluten-free white chocolate macadamia nut cookies and some crinkly chocolate cookies sprinkled with powdered sugar from one of my favorite gluten-free cookbooks.
  • Make 5 new recipes out of each of my cookbooks + donate the ones I don’t get to (1/31)
    • Yeah, I’ve got a lot of ground to make up here. I am really close on a few others (only a recipe or two away), but there are two-thirds that I haven’t made a single recipe out of at all.

Family + Service (3/11)

  • Sign Mathias up for preschool (completed March 2021)
  • Sign both Raven and Mathias up for swimming lessons (+ have Raven complete through level 4)
  • Start teaching piano to Raven (completed December 2021)
    • I started teaching my oldest piano over Christmas break–now the tricky part is continuing the momentum. I’m trying to set aside Wednesdays to be our “piano lesson” day, which should help.
  • Create chore system for the kids
  • Get family pics taken three times (1/3)
  • Donate at least $100 to the local library
  • Donate at least $100 to a charity (completed December 2021)
    • We pay tithing and make donations through our church, but I also wanted to donate money to at least one other place. In December, we gave money to both our local food pantry and to a local humanitarian cause to help the Afghan refugees coming to Utah.
  • 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 (8/11)

  • Take the kids to 5 different parks/playgrounds (4/5)
  • Go on 3 local hikes
  • Find a pediatrician (completed January 2021)
  • Find a dentist (completed January 2021)
  • Find an OB/GYN (completed June 2021)
  • Find a general family doctor (completed January 2021)
  • Try out 5 local restaurants (3/5)
  • Go to a community event (completed October 2021)
    • We went to our town’s big Halloween event last year, which essentially replaced trick or treating (although we still had a handful come by). We also went to our city’s Christmas light parade.
  • Go to storytime at the library + get a library card (completed August 2021)
    • The library card happened almost immediately upon moving here, but storytime took a bit longer to make happen. While it was fun to go (and the kids enjoyed it), it’s been a tricky thing to fit into our schedules now that school is in session again.
  • Find or start a book club (completed August 2021)
  • Make purchases from 5 local (non-chain) businesses (completed August 2021)
    • When you’re so limited with options for shopping, you definitely appreciate when something is available locally! We still get a lot more of our household supplies and other things shipped to us than we did when we lived elsewhere, but it’s been great knowing a little more what local options there are and supporting them when we can.

Fun + Travel (3/6)

  • Visit the Children’s Museum in Salt Lake
  • Go on a family vacation (completed April 2021)
  • Go on an overnight trip with just Matt and me (completed July 2021)
  • Do something memorable for our 10-year anniversary (completed July 2021)
  • Attend a musical
  • Go camping

Yard (2/3)

  • Grow dahlias (both from seed and from tubers)
    • I did grow dahlias from seed last year, but thanks to a terrible heat wave in June that killed off several and then stunted the rest for a long time, I only really saw one of them *kind of* open before the frost came and got everything. This next year we’ll be crossing this off for sure though, especially as I’ve ordered around 130 dahlia tubers and plan to try more from seed!
  • Build more garden beds (completed March 2021)
  • Build sandbox (completed August 2021)
    • We completed this soon after my last 101 in 1001 update, and the kids got a ton of use out of it before the snow hit. Definitely a purchase I’m glad we made. (We got this one, btw, because it was cheaper to buy a kit than to buy lumber at the time, surprisingly.)

Home (11/22)

I need to do more house updates, but if you want to see some of what we’ve been doing so far, check out this before/after of our back family room and this update on some of our house projects last year.

  • Update flooring in kitchen (completed August 2021)
    • Even though we have a small section that isn’t done by the bathroom, I’m still counting this as completed. And I LOVE having a kitchen floor finally!
  • Paint kitchen cabinets (completed January 2021)
  • Paint main floor walls (completed November 2020)
  • Update curtains in front room
  • Update at least one light fixture (completed November 2020)
  • Add recessed lighting in the kitchen (completed November 2020)
  • Update flooring in playroom (completed January 2021)
  • Paint upstairs kids’ bedroom (completed November 2020)
  • Put up backsplash in kitchen
  • Make a gallery wall in our house of my photography
  • Clear out junk room in basement
    • We’ve actually made a decent chunk of progress on this, but the room is seriously so stuffed full of boxes and random junk that it will probably be several months yet before we can cross this off.
  • Figure out an organizational system for master closet + paint upper half of walls (completed Dec 2021/Jan 2022)
    • Yeah, the “organizational system” isn’t anything pretty, but it’s at least better than it was before, when we’d just shoved everything in there upon moving in. And the brighter color of paint goes a LONG way in making the space look much fresher and far less dingy than it did before.
  • 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
  • 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
    • We’re doing this one better — we’re replacing several of the oldest windows in the house with new energy-efficient ones, which should help to cut down on our heating and cooling costs drastically. Those should be put in sometime around May.
  • Come up with organizational scheme for playroom
  • Buy outdoor furniture for the deck
  • Declutter 1,001 items (completed July 2021)

Reading (0/4)

  • Read 50 books I own (27/50)
    • I’ve made a surprising amount of progress on this, mostly because our library here in our new town is super tiny and often won’t have the books I’m most interested in reading, so I’ve been forced to rely on my Book of the Month selections (which you can get your first book for just $5 if you go through my referral link) for newer selections and the books I picked up at secondhand stores before we moved down here for the rest.
  • Participate in (and complete!) a reading challenge
  • Start my Assigned Reading again
  • Do ten read-alouds with Raven + eventually include Mathias (1/10)
    • We read J. K. Rowling’s latest – The Christmas Pig – over the month of December, which was such fun. It reminded me of why I love doing read-alouds so much, which is why we’re now reading Peppermints in the Parlor for our January pick.

Total Completed: 44/101

Current # of Goals in Progress: 16/101

Percentage of Time Elapsed: 45.7%

Percentage of Goals Completed: 43.6%

Almost right on track with my timeline! Now the trick is to just keep the momentum going 🙂

Liked this post? Then you'll probably also like...

Dreams, Family, Goals

My New 3, 5, and 10-Year Plan
Goals

Moment of Truth: 2012 Goals Wrap-Up
Goals

Goal Check-Point

Goals, Monthly Recap

With Spring Comes a Long To-Do List {March 2020 Goals + February Recap}

My Self-Assigned Reading List for the 2018-2019 School Year
Assigned Reading, Book Recommendations, Goals, Personal Growth, Reading

My Self-Assigned Reading for the 2018-2019 School Year

Goals, Monthly Recap

Summer is Here, But the Flower Farm Isn’t Planted Yet! {June 2022 Goals}