101 in 1001 - The List

As promised, here's my list of goals. If you missed my first post explaining the concept behind the challenge you can find it here

Start Date:     1 August 2016

End Date:       29 April 2019

Goals in progress   9/101

Goals completed    0/101

Family

1.      Compile a list of 101 things to do with the kids (0/101)

2.      Complete 10 things from the list of 101 things to do (0/10)

3.      Complete Power of Attorney forms for Mum & Dad

4.      Have at least 5 girly days with Olivia (0/5)

5.      Organise at least 2 family board game nights per year

6.      Visit 5 zoos/wildlife parks with kids (0/5)

7.      Build a snowman with kids

8.      Bake something with kids every other month minimum (0/20)

Relationship

9.      Get a couples massage

10.   Have a date at least once a month (0/34)

11.   Complete alphabet dating

12.   Write a letter from the heart

13.   Complete all the dates from our 2016 date book

Finances

14.   At the end of the challenge do something fun with the money saved

15.   Go one month without buying anything stationery related

16.   Don’t buy anything that isn’t absolutely necessary for 3 separate months  (0/3)

17.   Put aside £50 per month for 6 months then have a spending spree

18.   Save £10 for every challenge completed

19.   Save at least 3 months’ salary for emergency purposes

20.   Write a will

21.  Make the equivalent of £10 per day for 6 separate months (0/6)

Blog

22.  Publish 400 blog posts (4/400)

23.   Reach 100 followers

24.   Earn £500 income from my blog (0/500)

25.   Blog every day for a month 

Health/Fitness

26.   Complete couch to 5K challenge

27.   Complete Jillian Michael’s 30 day shred

28.   No fast food/takeaways for 1 month

29.   No alcohol for 1 month

30.   No eating out for 1 month

31.   Reach current goal weight of 10st

Physical Environment/Home

32.   Complete full KM declutter of house and garage.

33.   Make downstairs into a ‘Batbog’

34.   Assemble first aid kits for home and both cars

35.   Buy a fireproof safe for our important documents

36.   Complete at least 10 organisation projects I’ve pinned on Pinterest (0/10)

37.   Cull/organise all my Pinterest boards

38.  Complete Christmas preparations before 1st December each year  (2016/2017/2018)

39.  Develop a workable filing system for all our paperwork

40.  Donate/dispose of 101 items per full calendar year of challenge and only  replace if necessary (2017/2018)

41.   Put up a gallery wall somewhere in the house

42.   Set up a fabulous play area for the kids

43.   Organise/tidy the garage

Personal Development

44.   Set 5 small additional goals for each year beginning in 2017  (2017/2018/2019)

45.   Compile/complete 5 30-day challenges (0/5)

46.   Compile a Life List containing at least 50 things I would like to do/achieve  and at least 50 things I’ve already achieved

47.   Compile a new list before the end of the challenge

48.   Compile a list of 101 things that make me happy

49.   Get a unique and meaningful tattoo

50.   Write a list of 50 things I like about myself

51.   Own a DSLR camera and learn how to use it.

Charity/Giving

52.   Donate blood at least times (0/5)

53.   Donate £1 to charity for every challenge not completed

54.   Complete 10 random acts of kindness (0/10)

55.   Jump out of a plane for charity

56.   Become a regional co-ordinator for the Dyspraxia Foundation

57.   Run 5K for charity

Just for Fun

58.   Inspire someone else to take up a 101 in 1001 day challenge

59.   Buy a lottery ticket for a stupidly high jackpot

60.   Complete/attempt all puzzles in a puzzle book

61.   Enter 20 competitions (0/20)

62.   Host a dinner and/or cocktail party

63.   Host a fancy dress party

64.   Host a Halloween party

65.   Attend a cocktail making masterclass

66.   Complete a wine tasting course

67.   Compile a playlist entitled The Soundtrack of my Life

68.   Fill my iPod completely with nothing but music.

69.   Watch a new-to-me film starting with every letter of the alphabet (0/26)

70.   Watch a film from every year of my life (0/40)

71.   Spend the full week celebrating my 40^th birthday!

Food Related

72.   Try 25 new recipes (0/25)

73.   Bake 25 different things (0/25)

74.   Attempt ‘once a month’ cooking at least 3 times (0/3)

75.   Menu plan for a month in advance at least 5 times (0/5)

76.   Eat at 5 new to me restaurants (0/5)

77.   Make 10 flavours of ice cream (0/10)

78.   Make 10 flavours of soup (0/10)

79.   Make 10 meals I’ve pinned on Pinterest (0/10)

80.   Try 10 new to me foods (0/10)

  

Travel

81.   Stay in a 5-star hotel

82.   Travel first class

83.   Visit New York

84.   Visit Cornwall

85.   Visit 10 UK cities I’ve never visited before (0/10)

86.   Go to 5 different museums/art galleries

Creativity/Reading/Writing

87.   Complete all pictures in a colouring book

88.   Complete a photo-a-day challenge

89.   Complete a memory book or similar for every starting with 2016.  (2016/2017/2018)

90.   Make at least 10 craft related things I’ve pinned on Pinterest (0/10)

91.   Read 10 books I read as a child (0/10)

92.   Read 101 books (0/101)

93.   Read 10 self-help/personal development books (0/10)

94.  Complete 5 monthly creativity challenges - rock your handwriting or similar  (0/5)

95.   Maintain a journal, or similar, recording progress of challenge

96.   Write a letter to myself to be opened when the 1001 days is over

97.   Start a 5-year journal on 1 January 2017 and maintain for duration of  challenge

Beauty/Fashion

98.    Find the perfect little black/little red dress

99.    Set up a capsule wardrobe (either full year or 4 x seasonal)

100. Find my perfect foundation.

101. Paint my nails a different colour every week for 3 months

So there it is! What do you think of my goals?

I'm super excited to get going and start checking off some of these goals, not to mention setting up the planner/notebook to help keep track (but that's a post for another day).

Be sure to keep checking back as I'll be updating this list as things progress.

If you have a list of your own just link in the comments below and I'll be sure to check it out.

Debbie x

101 in 1001 - The Concept

Not long before my 2 youngest children came along, my husband and I attempted the Day Zero challenge of completing 101 goals in 1001 days (you can read more about it here http://dayzeroproject.com/about/).

The general concept is you compile a list of 101 preset goals within a period of 1,001 days.  Your goals must be specific and realistic with a clearly defined result but must also stretch you and involve some amount of work on your part. 

Needless the say the patter of tiny feet, and me giving up work to look after them, meant that many of the goals on the list were rendered obsolete due to time, money and just the general nature of the goals. I mean how feasible is to take two under the age of 5 to Las Vegas!

Mirage Hotel - August 2007

The idea behind the 1,001 days is that it helps to beat procrastination. Standard lists such as bucket lists and New Year's resolutions don't generally have a specific deadline, whereas this does.  The 1,001 days (about 2.75 years) allows you several seasons to reach your goal and allows for better organising and timing.  As a planner geek, this appealed to me immensely both then and now.

Anyway, fast forward to a few months ago and I began to see people's lists popping up in posts on my Facebook news feed and it sparked my interest so I decided to give it another go.  Obviously I have had to make some major changes to my original goals to take into consideration the two small people that now take up a large amount of my time and money but I'm hopeful that I will be able to complete a large proportion of my list, if not all of it within the timescale.

I decided I would start my list from 1st August 2016, which means 1001 days will be up by the 29 April 2019. I had planned to have my list up for all to see on the 1 August but I was still trying to decide between a couple of goals, hence the delay in posting.

Making the list has been a challenge in itself in some ways and I have attempted to sort my list into categories to ensure that my goals are a mix of challenging and fun as well as not all being centred around one area of my life. I'm hoping that this challenge will be what I need to give me a push to start actually start making my dreams a reality.

In the interest of keeping my post short and sweet I will be posting my full list of goals in a separate post later today. In the meantime I would love to hear from you if you have attempted the challenge (whether you completed it or not) or if I've inspired you to start your own (that means at least one of my goals can be crossed off :-) )

Debbie x

Mummy, I want...

For those of you with children, this is a sentence opener that you'll probably here about a million times a day and in our house is usually followed by something food related or something they've seen on the TV.

I try to ignore it as much as possible otherwise my initial response to it is usually "I want never gets!" and that just makes me sound like my mum.

Take this morning, for example. Corey was watching kids TV while I sorted some laundry when the adverts came on. Usually, if they want the TV on I try to encourage them to watch CBeebies to avoid adverts but they'd seen the program that was on so we switched channels.

For a whole 3 minutes I was subjected to "Mum, I want (insert whatever crap they were advertising that he's never in a million years going to get because I know he'll spend longer actually getting it out of the box than he will playing with it). This morning's wants included a Scooby Doo toy, a Transformers dinosaur/gun and a game called Og on the Bog (which is never entering our house as I have a rule that no toilet/gross game is allowed and the person responsible will be banned for life).

I try to response to this kind of request with  "Just add it to the list" which means not in a million years, although every now and again there is something I think they might play with so that does in fact get added to MY list. I must point out that at the minute there isn't any such list, although I'm sure as he gets older he will probably start one of his own (like mother, like son lol).

Anya on the other hand was all about the food this morning and our conversation went something along the lines of 

A: Mummy, I want chocolate.
Me: You can't have chocolate for breakfast
A: I want ice pop
Me: You can't have an ice pop for breakfast, plus we don't have any in the freezer
A: I check
Me: Anya, don't open the freezer. There aren't any in there
A: [crying] Me sad
About 1 minute later she came back
A: Me OK now. I want crackles (Rice Krispies)

Both kids are now happily munching breakfast while watching some random cartoon, but at least the constant drone of 'I want' had ceased for the time being, although I don't see it lasting too long.

I have often wondered how many times I hear 'I want' during the course of the day but have no chance of counting them as I'd either lose count after the first 50 or, my usual reaction, just ignore them.

I'd love to know if this something you hear often? If so, how do you respond?

Debbie x

Who I Am and Why I'm Here

After I got my 'scary' first post out of the way I began to think what next when I came across another blogger, Lola Peroni (you can find her here) who had started with the #bloggingfundamentals course. It seemed like the kind of thing that would help this newbie find her feet so I signed up.

The first task is to tell everyone who you are and why you're here, so here goes.

I'm Debbie, I'm 39 and I'm mum to three wonderful children, Olivia who is nearly 19, Corey is 4 and Anya is 2.  I live in Leeds with my husband of nearly 11 years and am currently a stay at home mum who is constantly looking for new challenges.

When I can find time I love reading and have a always have a big pile of books to read as well as a huge library of books on my Kindle. I tend to prefer thrillers/crime fiction but I am currently trying to broaden my horizons by reading other genres, so am open suggestions of books you enjoyed.

I'm also massive stationery addict and have been for as long as I can remember. As a child I used to collect rubbers/erasers and had a huge box full of them, but heaven forbid anyone ever wanted to use one! I'm also a sucker for a good notebook/journal and even now have several just waiting for the right reason to be used.

My current addiction is bullet journalling, which I have been doing now for just over a year and will be talking more about in a later post. This had led me to several planning and journalling communities and I can honestly say I think I have finally found my tribe.

When I'm not running around after my family or reading I love just chilling with my OH and catching up on the day or the backlog of TV shows we have on Sky+. I'm more of crime and thriller junkie than anything else but having been with my OH for what seems like a lifetime I'm also becoming quickly versed in anything Batman/DC related and to be fair I'm kind of enjoying it.

So that's me! I hope to share my passion for all this and more and hope you like reading as much as I enjoy writing it.

Debbie x

Welcome!

Hey there!

My name is Debbie and welcome to the first post on my blog Another Pair of Hands (so named because that is what I frequently wish for).

I'm both nervous and excited to finally get my blog up and running as I've been considering it for ages but never actually got around to it for one reason or another.

My blog will be an outlet for everything that that interests me (which could be almost anything depending on my mood) and hopefully there will be some people who will actually read my posts and if I'm lucky, they may even find them interesting.

So there it is, my first post. I hope it's piqued your interest enough to pop back again later.

See you soon

Debbie x