Despite not blogging much for the past year, I’ve been working hard on my 101 in 1001 list, which is a list of 101 things I’d like to accomplish in 1,001 days. This is the third time I’ve done this—the 1,001 days stretch from October 2020 through July 2023, which means we’re now 75% of the way through!
It’s been quite a while since the last check-in, so warning: long post ahead!
7 Goals Being Changed
I like to keep my list flexible—after all, it’s a list of things I want to accomplish, and if I no longer want to accomplish something, why keep it on the list? So every check-in, I allow myself to change as many goals as I see fit.
This time around, I’m changing a whopping 7 items—many of which are thanks to buying a new house!
16. Finish Ring Fit Finish World 23 of Ring Fit.
I stopped playing / working out with Ring Fit for a myriad of reasons. I recently got back into it, though, and realized there are 69 Worlds (!), which are the game’s equivalent of Levels. I’m currently in World… 14.
I knew if I kept the original goal of finishing Ring Fit, it would no longer be motivating, because reaching the end of World 69 by July just isn’t feasible. So instead, I’m pushing myself to finish World 23, which is the end of the main storyline of the game.
And honestly, that’s really what I wanted to accomplish—I just didn’t realize how many extra fitness levels there are at the end!
24. Add a wet bar to our dining room Add a bar to the lounge.
This one was directly related to moving—a wet bar wouldn’t fit / doesn’t make sense in our new dining room, but the lounge, which is right next to the kitchen, is a perfect place for one!
26. Finish renovating the windows throughout the house Decorate my office.
We no longer have the old windows that need to be renovated (🙌🏻) so this one was due for a change! I spend a bunch of time in my office, which is currently very bland, so I want to focus on decorating it.
28. Make a plan and budget for a kitchen renovation Open a brewery in the basement.
Once again, we no longer have the kitchen we wanted to renovate—instead, we bought a house with a totally renovated kitchen! We also have a finished basement, and we’d like to “open” a brewery down there.
35. Convert the side yard to a pollinator / butterfly garden Plant my grandma’s irises at the new house.
I stuck with the gardening theme here. We don’t know what we want to do with the yard / landscaping, but I really wanted to find a spot for my grandma’s irises, which we dug up from her yard after her funeral.
61. Play tennis with Sean at Crane Park. Play pickleball with Sean at Fray’s Park.
Since we no longer live close to Crane Park, it made sense to switch this one to our new local park, Fray’s Park! Plus, we really enjoyed playing pickleball in Florida last summer, and Fray’s Park has pickleball courts, so it seemed perfect.
79. Screen Block print something.
This one was really a formality—I used the wrong word in the original list; I thought the project I wanted to do was called screen printing (I thought that was a more general term), but it’s really block printing.
32 Goals Completed
Welp, this is what happens when you don’t do a check-in for more than a year! Let’s get to it.
10. Max out 401Ks, IRAs, and HSAs for me and Sean in a single calendar year.
We crossed this off in 2021, which we’re so proud of! Now we just need to keep up the habit and max everything out for as long as we can.
15. Go on a hike once per week for a month.
Last October, we hiked once a week for a month, including a trip to Flagstaff and Sedona, Arizona! We really enjoyed it but have fallen out of the habit, so I’m hoping to start it up again soon, despite the approaching winter.
20. Replace our microwave.
Funny story about the microwave at our old house. Not long after we moved in, the microwave plate just… cracked in half. Right up the middle, split in two. We used it for a bit, but eventually it cracked again, and we had to throw the plate out. Then one day, I went to open the door and the handle came right off into my hand. The plastic broke, so there was no repairing it. I ended up using a butter knife to pop the door open, and we lived like that… until we decided to sell the house. Several years later. Then we finally replaced it and only got to enjoy it for about a month. 😂
21. Set up an emergency preparedness kit.
This was definitely inspired by the pandemic. It took a bit, but I finally got it put together with everything I wanted to set aside! Now it lives in the basement for safe keeping.
22. Improve our inventory of smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, and fire extinguishers.
We did this at the old house before we decided to move, so it worked out that everything was up to snuff when we listed it! Now I need to get around to doing this at our current house…
24. Add a bar to the lounge.
We originally thought we’d add a piece of furniture for the bar, but instead used what we already had—two built-in bookshelves around the fireplace! We added wine glass racks and moved all of our alcohol (minus the stuff in the fridge / freezer, of course) and glassware over there. It works perfectly and looks amazing!
32. Get a pool for the back yard.
This one was kind of a cheat 😂 instead of adding a pool to our yard, we just bought a house that already had a pool.
34. Improve the entertainment space in the backyard.
We did this at the old house last summer—Sean updated the deck, and we got new furniture that was perfect for entertaining! And it worked out, because it was a huge selling point when we sold the house.
35. Plant my grandma’s irises at the new house.
I ended up planting these around our mailbox! Fingers crossed they don’t get destroyed by snow plows or neighborhood dogs…
39. Go through all of my old mix CDs.
This one took a while, but was so fun! I now keep all of my old mix CDs in the car so I can swap them out as I want, plus I have playlists of all of the songs so I can stream the mixes.
41. Organize the workshop.
Once again, this was done at the old house—but it still worked out nicely, and was another great selling feature of the house! We’ve started working on this in the new house, but I have the feeling we’ll need to do even more in the months to come…
49. Travel to Denver.
I actually completed this twice in the span of a month! First, my whole family flew out to Denver and Steamboat Springs, then my brother and I flew back out to Denver to go to the Great American Beer Festival with our sister.
52. Visit Randi in Arizona.
Last October, the Honard family traveled together to Sedona, Arizona—which is super close to where Randi lives in Flagstaff! I ended up flying out a weekend early to spend time with Randi. Which brings me to…
54. Do a girls’ trip with Angela and Randi.
Angela traveled out, too! We got an AirBNB to share, and Randi showed us around town. We all hung out at our rental house, which was so conveniently close to downtown, and went on a hike. It was the best time, and I can’t wait to do it again.
59. Visit 10 new-to-me places in Kalamazoo.
I was at 8 during the previous check-in, and have since crossed it off! I’ve actually hit up way more than 10 new-to-me places, especially since new places are opening “after” the pandemic, and we moved to a new area of town.
61. Play pickleball with Sean at Fray’s Park.
Once we got settled into the new house, we walked down to the park and played! It was super hot, so we didn’t play for long, but I loved it.
62. Go apple picking.
Despite what felt like unending travel, I really committed to making the most of fall this year. I dragged Sean to a local apple orchard with me, where we picked a bunch of honeycrisp apples—our favorite!
63. Visit a pumpkin patch.
Once all of my traveling was over, I dragged Sean back out with me, this time to a pumpkin patch. At first it seemed like they didn’t have a true pumpkin patch, but just had a bunch of pumpkins in an area where you could buy them. But when we were walking back to the car, we noticed people with a cart full of pumpkins walking from the other way, and we found the patch itself! I was so excited.
68. Learn how to roast a chicken without needing to follow a recipe.
This feels so bougie but is actually quite simple! I found a recipe for lemon and thyme chicken, and now I can easily make it whenever I want to feel fancy.
71. Learn how to make crepes.
Another recipe that sounds complicated but is actually easy! The key is using a blender to get all of the ingredients really mixed. I’ve made them both with Oreo filling and with a lemon curd and sugar filling. Yum!
76. Learn to cross-stitch.
I’m so glad I added this to my list, because it has gotten me back into crafting! I still haven’t finished a cross-stitch project yet (I went too big from the get-go), but I feel really confident with how to do it, and I really enjoy sitting around stitching while watching TV.
79. Block print something.
My mom came down to Kalamazoo one day in February and helped motivate me to complete some looming tasks—and this was one of them! It was a fun way to end the day. I decided to take inspiration from Princess Diana’s iconic sheep sweater, but with my dinosaur logo. I love how the throw pillow cases turned out!
82. Read all published books by Jenny Han.
I absolutely love Jenny Han, so this was such a fun project. I read all of her books that I hadn’t read before, plus reread To All the Boys and The Summer I Turned Pretty—just in time for the TV series to come out!
85. Read the Royal Diaries books.
Sometimes I feel like I was the only one to remember these books, but my library had all of them, so I guess not. 🤷🏼♀️ It was such a fun trip down memory lane! It’s a series of 20 fictional childhood diaries from famous royal women from throughout history. Some of my favorites were Cleopatra, Kaiulani, Nzingha, and Anastasia.
88. Get framed photos of all of my neighbors in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
This item took some dedication, but I finally did it! 😂 If you’re not familiar, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game for Nintendo Switch where you move to an island with animal neighbors and decorate it however you want. It’s like the Sims, but with animals. You can have up to 10 neighbors, and if you become really good friends with them, they’ll give you a framed photo of themselves—it’s a big deal when you do. It took me a while, but I eventually got all 10! (Not to brag, but I actually ended up getting two of Judy’s photos. 💁🏼♀️)
89. Catch all bugs, fish, and sea creatures in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
This is another one that was super hard—it took such a long time! In the game, you can catch bugs, fish, and sea creatures and donate them to your museum. They’re only around for certain months, times of day, and weather, though (and it follows the actual calendar, so you can actually only catch some fish in the month of September!), so it took a lot of planning and dedication!
90. Get all 6 golden tools in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
This one is related—there are 6 tools that you can get golden recipes for in ACNH, and the net and fishing rod are only available once you’ve caught all the bugs and fish, respectively.
94. Learn to identify 5 constellations.
Shoutout to the StarTracker Lite app for helping me out with this! I ended up learning how to spot Cygnus, Draco, Hercules, Aquila, and the Pleiades!
95. Get a new piercing.
I treated myself to a second lobe piercing for my birthday this year! Now I’ve started planning out all of the other ear piercings I want… this may have been a dangerous one to add to my list. 😂
96. Get a keyboard and learn to play the piano again.
My parents got me a keyboard for Christmas last year, plus a beginner’s songbook! I need to get a more permanent setup for it so I can practice more, but I learned how to play the chorus of Boulevard of Broken Dreams, so I consider this a win.
98. Watch all of The Golden Girls.
I understand so many references now! I absolutely loved this series.
100. Watch all of Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire.
Just like with The Golden Girls, there are so many references I now understand! It was super interesting to watch this as an adult, 30 years after it originally came out. But it was fun to finish the series and then watch the reunion.
18 Goals in Progress
Whew! And after all that, I still have 18 more goals that I’ve made progress on since the last check-in.
1. Beat my past 101 in 1001 record of 68.
I added 32 goals toward this one! 😂 I’m now at 54, and in order to cross this one off, I need to hit 69. So just 15 more!
5. Listen to all (previously unplayed) episodes of 99% Invisible.
I’ve listened to 174 episodes since the last check-in! I’m now at 382. I’ve got a ways to go still (the most recent episode is 513), but I’ve been enjoying it and have learned so much!
6. Get to level 1 in all Spanish lessons on Duolingo.
I haven’t made much progress since the last check-in, because I gave it up for a while in an effort to minimize my obligations, but I still made some progress!
11. Boost our emergency fund to $15k.
We slowly work toward this every month! We had to spend a big chunk of it on the Jeep this summer, though, so I’m not sure if we’ll be able to cross this one off…
16. Finish World 23 of Ring Fit.
I’m now on World 14! I’m aiming to play / work out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.
26. Decorate my office.
I’ve come up with the design! I haven’t purchased anything yet, but I have my wallpaper picked out, the paint color options picked out, and I know what I want, where.
37. Use up all of my old And Possibly Dinosaurs notepads.
Slowly but surely! We use these basically every day.
43. Organize the garage.
I mean, technically our garage was a mess when we first moved in, because we set everything inside the garage in order to get it out of our old house. So now that we can park two cars in the garage, I’d say we’ve made quite a bit of progress!
46. Update our Home Book each year.
I just need to update it once more in 2023 before I can cross this off!
55. Visit 10 Michigan State Parks.
So far we’ve only visited one. I’d love to have visited more by now, but one is better than none! We went to Saugatuck Dunes State Park for our anniversary.
66. Cook my way through an entire cookbook.
I’ve cooked 14 more since the last check in, for a total of 30 so far! I took a break because I had too much going on, but I’m excited to cook more this winter and should make lots of progress.
70. Learn how to poach an egg.
I tried! I haven’t done super well so far, but I made one good attempt at it.
72. Learn how to make 15 classic cocktails from memory.
I’ve learned to make two more since then: a gin and tonic and a manhattan! Now I need to keep practicing these six so I don’t forget them…
80. Read (or attempt to read) and get rid of 25 books that I already own.
I got rid of 10 more books since the last check-in! Some I read, some I had Kindle versions of, and some I decided I just didn’t want any more.
83. Read the Animal Ark series.
I haven’t technically read any of these yet, but I now have the full collection! I found a bunch of them at a used book store in Flagstaff, then my parents got me the rest for my birthday! I’m thinking this will be a fun, light winter project.
84. Read the Dear America books.
I’m so close to being done! I only have three more to read, and I own all three. I got burnt out on them near the end, so I’m taking a break to read other things, but I have the feeling I’ll cross this off before the end of the year.
99. Watch all of Downton Abbey (including the movies).
I decided to start watching this last week, and I have since buzzed through the first four seasons. I had no idea it would be this addicting! I love it so much, and I’m already dreading the end.
Being 75% of the way through the 1,001 days, I’d ideally be at 75 items completed, but I’m also not disappointed at all by my current tally of 54! Especially since I’m really close to crossing off another few.
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