Okay, so I’m nearly a month behind on this post, but… life happens. We’re now 800 829 days into my fourth 101 in 1001 list, which means it’s time for our 8th check-in!
A 101 in 1001 is a list of 101 things I’d like to accomplish in 1,001 days, which is just under 3 years. It’s a nice balance between a new years resolution and a bucket list. I’m currently on my fourth list, with each one starting the day after the previous one ends—meaning I’ve been doing this since April of 2015!
I check in with my list every 100 days (or, in this case, 129 days… whoops) to keep myself on track and see how far I’ve come. So let’s get into it!
2 Goals Being Changed
I always give myself permission to change a goal—after all, it’s my list, of things I want to do, so if I no longer want to do them, I refuse to just let the items sit there unhelpfully.
This time around, I’m changing two of my goals.
15. Open a brewery Set up a craft room in the basement.
When we first moved into our current house, I dreamed of setting up our own “brewery” in the basement. Sean brews his own beer, and I loved the idea of getting a bar with barstools and a chalkboard menu where everyone could hang out. Well, since then, Sean hasn’t been brewing as much beer, and we haven’t really spent much time in the basement, so I’m reconsidering.
Now I want to set up the basement as a craft room instead of a brewery. It’s a bunch of wasted space right now, and I thought I’d use my office as more of a craft room, but that just hasn’t really happened. I think the basement will be a great spot where I can spread out, make a bit of a mess, and not have it impact my workday.
71. Knit something other than a scarf Crochet a sweater or cardigan.
I’ve been honing my DIY skills lately, and the spirit of this item was originally to make something by hand that I could wear—but I wanted it to be a little more complicated than a giant rectangle. I originally figured knitting would be the way to go, imagining some sort of cable-knit sweater, or maybe something round like a pair of socks.
Well, I’ve been working my way through my Woobles crochet kits, and I realized that I really want to learn how to make granny squares, and then stitch those granny squares together to make a cardigan. It’s the same spirit of the item, just slightly different.
5 Goals Completed
Now that we’ve covered how the list is changing, let’s get to the main event—progress! I crossed five items off my list in the last 129 days, putting my total at 52 out of 101.
25. Get my antique sewing machine working.
I’m so proud of this one, and I’m honestly still struggling to believe that I actually accomplished it. A few years back, my dad and I refurbished an old 1913 Singer sewing machine. We replaced some of the veneers, sanded down and stained all of the wood, painted the legs, and even added gold detailing back onto the Singer logos in the metal stands. We just had one element missing—getting the sewing machine to actually work.
I had the old leather sash cord, but it had crumbled a bit, so we got a new one to replace it. It took me about two years, but I finally cut it to size and connected the sewing machine to the trundle peddle. And… it still didn’t work. I tried tightening the cord, which made it worse, so I eventually had to buy another new sash cord, and then took apart all of the sewing machine pieces and oiled the hell out of them. After about 45 minutes of deep-cleaning, everything was moving smoothly enough for the trundle to finally move the needle up and down!
I’m not sure I’ll ever actually use the sewing machine for any projects (I’m not confident in my sewing skills in general to throw a 112-year-old curve ball into the mix), but just knowing that I could is rewarding enough.
37. Organize my baseball hats.
Speaking of my dad, he raised us to be a baseball cap family. We went to a lot of professional baseball games when I was growing up, and I swear he bought a new hat at every ballpark. It took me until I was about 30, but then I quickly took after him and now have an unruly amount of baseball hats. I knew I needed to organize them, but I had no idea how.
I ended up finding some macrame hat organizers on Etsy, and decided to make my own version of them to organize all of my hats. After all, make something with macrame was another item on the list, so I could kill two birds with one stone!
I finished the first one, which had room for 10 hats, and then quickly realized I needed to double up the hooks, because I had more than 30 hats, and didn’t have room for more than 3 hat organizers. I figured I could get 20 on one organizer, then make a second one and I’d be good. Except… then I bought more hats. My current total is 47. (For the record, my dad does not have that many hats… I don’t think.) So it took a bit longer, but I now have 3 hat organizers, each with a 20-hat capacity. So I can only buy 13 more before I need to start downsizing. 😆
62. Bake 5 different cake recipes from scratch.
A couple years ago, I got sucked into the cake baking side of Instagram, and I was mesmerized. Watching people spin a cake around on a swivel top, scraping at the icing to make it smooth, was so satisfying to watch, and I wanted to try it for myself. Plus, I wanted to graduate from boxed cake mixes to from-scratch recipes. I had made a few, but I wanted to try more varieties, so I put on my list that I wanted to make 5 cakes from scratch.
I’ve also been trying to learn more about my Celtic heritage and Celtic paganism, so I tied the cake baking to pagan holiday celebrations. I made two additional cakes in the last few months, bringing my total up to five: a berry Chantilly cake for Lughnasadh (which is the first harvest, celebrated halfway between the summer solstice and the fall equinox) and a salted caramel apple cake for Mabon (the second harvest, celebrated on the fall equinox).
90. Watch all of the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
For a long time, I knew the name Mary Tyler Moore (though probably more in the context of Weezer than in the context of the woman herself), and I knew the show was a groundbreaking, feminist moment in society, but I hadn’t actually seen a single episode. I finally decided to start it back in September… and then realized all seven seasons would be leaving Hulu at the end of the month, so I needed to binge all 168 episodes in a single month if I wanted to avoid paying to rent any episodes online.
Amazingly, I succeeded, finishing up the final season on September 24, with almost a full week to spare. And I absolutely loved it. I could absolutely see it becoming a comfort watch for me, similar to The Golden Girls or Friends. It’s all set in the 1970s in a TV news room, and it just felt like an escape into a much simpler time. Which is saying something, given Watergate was all happening while the show was airing.
91. Watch all of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
On a similar note, I’ve wanted to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race for years now. I love drag, but I haven’t known much about it, and I’ve only gone to a handful of drag shows since college. Plus, I found out at one point that we have a family tie to one of the star contestants—my husband’s second cousin. I read her autobiography a few years back, but now that I’ve seen the show, I want to reread it. There were so many interesting behind-the-scenes descriptions that I didn’t have a full appreciation for the first time around that I think would be fascinating to reread.
All that said, Drag Race has many more episodes than Mary Tyler Moore—it has been on for an amazing 17 seasons so far, starting all the way back in 2009. (And let me tell ya, that Season 1 Vaseline filter was something else.) I started watching Season 1 at the end of October 2023, and finally wrapped it up in July 2025. Now I’m excited for the next season to air—and I’ve got plenty of spin-offs (All Stars, etc.) that I can add to my list, too.
12 Goals in Progress
In addition to the five items I’ve completed recently, I’ve also made progress on another 12 of the remaining 49 items on my list.
1. Beat my past 101 in 1001 record of 68.
Slowly but surely! Each time I cross an item off my list, I get a little closer to beating my previous record, which I achieved in my second 101 in 1001 list.
3. Get a Duolingo French score of 30.
I’m really proud of how well I’ve stuck with French lessons lately! I’m trying to get to a CEFR score of A2, which Duolingo labels as Level 30. According to Duolingo, a Level 30 score means I’ll be able to “handle simple conversations about daily topics.” Seeing as I learned Spanish most of my life and haven’t had any formal French lessons outside of Duolingo, I’m pretty proud of how far I’ve come! In fact, my best friend recently sent me a long text message entirely in French, and I was able to pick up on probably 75% of what it said.
I also made the jump to Duolingo Max this year, so I can (among other things) have AI-based video calls in French. I struggled for a bit with listening to and speaking French (I will forever be haunted by Athina telling me once in high school that I speak French with an Asian accent; I swore off ever speaking French again, but finally faced my fear). The video calls were hard at first, because it’s a totally different way to use your brain, but I picked it up quickly and try to do at least one video call per day to continue practicing my French!
13. Finish my allergy shot treatment.
I’ve been working with my allergist on allergy shot treatments since December of 2021, and I’m hoping we’ll be wrapping it up in the next year or so! I probably won’t finish it before this list ends in April of 2026, but I’m really happy with how it has gone. I take allergy meds every morning still, but I heard that we recently had a bad ragweed pollen plume in my area that was making kids, pets, and really anyone with allergies miserable for a whole month—which was news to me, because I hadn’t noticed at all. It really stood out to me that I didn’t notice any increased allergens in my system, so I’m taking that as a very good sign.
22. Refinish my hexagon end table.
I got a hexagon end table back when I was in college (aka more than a decade ago) and it has somehow followed me to every place I’ve lived since then. I think it might actually be the only piece of furniture I still have from college. It was painted a dark green with some awful apple decoupage on the top, plus gold leaf details hand painted with what I can only assume was a gold Sharpie.
A few months ago I stripped all of the paint (and apple artwork) off, but then it sat in my office with no plan for a long time. I finally decided on a style I want to go for (picture black paint, antiqued gold details, and witchy vibes) and picked up all of the materials I need! I’ve even replaced a piece of trim that had broken off before I bought it. Now I just need to replace some of the trim, and then get to priming, painting, and sealing! A perfect first project for the new craft room in the basement…
42. Visit 3 zoos.
I absolutely love zoos—I worked at the zoo in Grand Rapids every summer when I was in high school, and my husband even had an internship there one summer when we were in college. But I haven’t been to any zoos in a long time, so I wanted to make a point to go to a few. The biggest hurtle for me is how busy they tend to be, especially with a bunch of little kids. Well, that was taken care of when we got ads for an amazing fundraiser at our local zoo: Corks and Kegs at the Zoo!
They closed the zoo to the public on the first Saturday in September (which worked out to be a beautiful cloudy fall day) for a 21+ beer and wine festival throughout the whole zoo. There were probably 500 or so people there, but when everyone is spread out across the whole zoo, it doesn’t feel crowded at all. It was such a fun day.
71. Crochet a sweater or cardigan.
I mentioned above that I recently swapped this one into my list—and I’ve already made some (very basic) progress on it! I picked out the pattern I want to use (a sunflower granny square pattern), and I ordered / received the yarn I need for the whole thing. I’m going to focus the rest of October on finishing up all of my Halloween Woobles kits, but after that, I’m going to start learning how to make granny squares so I can start on this sweater!
77. Fix my manatee bowl.
Back in the beginning of 2020, during my first ceramics class, I made a slab bowl that accidentally looked like a manatee, and I loved it. Except, since it was one of my first projects, I didn’t realize that I made the clay too thin. We never put anything in it, but one day some sort of tremor must have vibrated through the bowl just right, because it broke into four or five pieces, and no one was even touching it at the time.
I finally went to repair it a few weeks ago, only to learn that Gorilla Glue / other superglues aren’t great for repairing ceramics. No matter how many times I tried, they just didn’t stick together. Apparently I need to use an epoxy instead, so I’m going to try that next, and mix some gold powder in with the epoxy to go for a kintsugi look. Wish me luck!
79. Read all of my Book of the Month picks.
I’m gonna be honest, friends, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to cross this one off. The problem is that I keep buying more Book of the Month picks. 😆 I started with fewer than 50 books on my list, but I’m now up to 103 books. I’ve read 42 of them, which is pretty close to what I started with, but that is less than half of what I need to read to cross this one off. I’ve been focusing on only reading my Book of the Month picks, but I just don’t see how I can read 61 more books in only 172 more days. 😅
80. Read and / or get rid of 25 books I already own.
Of course, those 61 more Book of the Month picks only account for one of my reading goals, and I have a whole section devoted to reading. I have thankfully made progress on getting rid of some of the books I had on hand the day I started this list, with my current total at 11. Apparently I just need to focus my attention on Book of the Month picks that I had before this 101 in 1001 started, and then get rid of them as soon as I’m finished, so that I can make progress on two items at once.
82. Read the Animal Ark series.
That being said, there are some books I will never get rid of—my Animal Ark series. These were my favorite books as a kid, and as part of my last 101 in 1001, I collected all 50 of the original American series. I’m now working my way through them, slowly but surely. I’ve read another 11 in the last 129 days, putting my total at 33 out of 50.
85. Read 10 self-help books.
I have a hard time listening to audiobooks, because I don’t realize that I’ve tuned out the narrator until 10 minutes later and I have zero clue what’s going on. Thankfully, the same thing doesn’t happen for nonfiction books, so I’ve been taking this approach with the self-help books I want to read. I’ve added two more to my list in the last 129 days: Nobody Wants Your Shit by Messie Condo and Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. That puts my total at four out of 10 self-help books so far.
90. Watch all of Boy Meets World and Girl Meets World.
I absolutely loved Boy Meets World as a kid. Mr. Feeny basically raised me, and one day I’ll convince Sean to be Plays with Squirrels for Halloween. I tried watching Girl Meets World when it first came out (which was my original introduction to Sabrina Carpenter, fun fact), but stopped watching after like two episodes. I started watching Season 1 of Boy Meets World last week, and I’ve already zipped through most of the first season. It threw me off that Eric is supposedly a ladies’ man at the beginning. I’d like his character arc to backtrack to loveable idiot ASAP, please and thank you.
So there you have it—52 of 101 completed, with 172 more days to go! I won’t think about how many days I’d have per item if I want to finish them all by April 3, 2026. 😅 But any amount accomplished is still really exciting, so I’m very pleased with my progress!
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