I am setting myself a small challenge for the first year of being 40.
I read on a blog that I follow about a challenge one of her friends was undertaking. On further investigation I decided I could possibly adapt this challenge to suit my own needs for something I wanted to do for the first year after turning 40.
Click over here to Make it, Give it - Let it Shine to see where I got the idea from and see how they have managed with their own challenge for the year.
As I achieve each challenge I will cross it out and add the date I achieved it. The date will also be the link to the corresponding post telling you about the challenge.
There is no set order for how to complete them, (apart from #1 & #100) I just have to finish them to the best of my ability before my 41st birthday! (Nov 18, 2011)
Unfortunately my 41st birthday came and went and I was unsuccessful at achieving all my challenges, however I had a very big personal achieving year so was happy with myself (that is all that counts) I have however decided to leave the challenges up here and slowly work through them, when I remember.
100 challenges, 100 ways to try and be more intentional about life.
Why don’t you join me and pick some yourself!
So here goes, the 100 challenges are as follows.
1. Do this challenge first -
2. Collect some random artifacts from unusual places and mail them to a friend.
3.
4. Listen to classical music while doing the house work.
5. Get an old piece of furniture and redesign it.
6.
7. Take a big piece of paper and draw your family
8. Buy a blank canvas. Get 3 favorite colours and with a young child create a master piece together.
9. Create some bubble mixture and give it away as a gift to a child.
10. Offer to help a friend do some work on their home in some way.
11. Run a bath turn of all the lights and light one candle. Add bubble bath or oil to the bath. Hop in close your eyes and enjoy the silence – what do you hear and see? This will be a challenge for me as we do not have a bath in our house!
12. Go to the home of a friend who has just recently given birth/ or has been sick and help in any way needed during this time.
13. Cut flowers, weeds, tree branches whatever is there and arrange them in a vase creatively.
14. Help a charity.
15. Have a picnic in a friend’s garden.
16. Make homemade jam or relish or preserve fruit and give the first one away to someone with grey hair.
17. Think about a complimentary thing for your waiter, then write a little note on the serviette and leave it on your table.
18. Get the children up early one summer’s morning and drive to the highest point in town and watch the sunrise.
19.
20. Make something cute and give it away just because you can.
21. Do something to help others in the community.
22. Teach someone a new craft – help them on their first ‘project’.
23.
24. Clean out your closet and donate everything to your local charity shop rather than sell it on Trade Me.
25. Buy someone a bottle of bubble bath and a rubber ducky – this has got to be given to an adult!
26. Give away something of yours that you love.
27. Ring a friend you haven’t seen for a while and take them out to a theatre production.
28. Find out what a friends favorite cake is and make it especially for them for no particular reason at all.
29. Invite one of your friends out to a restaurant you have both never been to and order the weirdest thing on the menu.
30. Go for a walk in your neighborhood and take you camera. Take a picture of anything you find with a particular thing on it (e.g. numbers, colour, shape etc). See how many weird shots you can get.
31.
32. Make homemade bread and homemade soup and invite a family over to share it with.
33. Send a friend a funny and encouragement packed message via Text.
34. When next out at a cafe with friends why don’t you instigate a toast to celebrate the week just gone by. Celebrate and notice the incidental victories that might have slipped by unnoticed if the toast hadn’t happened.
35. Ring a friend; pack a basket with treats and a board game and go play!
36. Write a letter to yourself at seventy from yourself right now. Tell them about the things you wish to achieve, how life is at present, what the family is up to. Where you are working and how you enjoy or not enjoy it and why. Write about the friends that are in your life at present and what they mean to you. Put it away safely and read when you are 70. (Or maybe in 10 years time to see if you are still on in line with achieving what you wanted to achieve when you wrote the letter.)
37.
38. Organise a treasure hunt with some of your closet friends. Have them end up at your house. Cook a simple but colour filled meal for them.
39.
40. Send a heartfelt letter to a family member with a memorable photo in the letter.
41. Take your camera with you when having a day out with friends. Take lots of pictures and then give them a disc with all the ones that contain them on it.
42. Take a batch of unusual but yummy homemade muffins to a meeting.
43.
44. Jump on the Internet and encourage someone via email.
45.
46. Buy a creative book for someone in your world.
47. Be a good neighbour and take over a batch of cookies or a cake.
48. Buy a hard-working friend a take away coffee and drop it off to them.
49.
50. Put a love note in your husband’s lunch box.
51. Pay for someone’s coffee that you do not know.
52. Buy a movie ticket for a friend and post it to them, with a note saying where to meet you.
53. Look for a funny childhood picture of a friend or family member. Frame it and give it to them for no reason other than to celebrate family.
54. Buy an utterly frivolous piece of lingerie.
55. Make 10 presents this year.
56. Light a candle and put on great music
57. Find a project/recipe/idea on-line and do one of your own.
58. Look for some inspiring cards and frame them.
59.
60. Read a newspaper from another country.
61. Create an area in your home that is just for your ‘creative space’ – maybe a corner with a chair in it or a whole room!
62. Write a list of things you would like to do or achieve before you die – ‘Bucket List’.
63. Look through your old recipe books, choose one book and try cooking every recipe in it!
64. Spend one day taking pictures of everything you find beautiful.
65. Get some old magazines and look through them and pull out anything that is attractive to you. Paste them in the book and write down why you like it.
66. Write down your favorite saying or life values.
67. Find a favorite verse in the bible.
68.
69. Sew something you have never made before and give it away.
70. Create a piece of wall art.
71. Create a recipe.
72. Make something for one/all of your children. Wrap it up and put it where they sit at breakfast time.
73. Write down about 7 separate places in your life that you loved and wish you could take your children to see.
74. Record 4 things that have been said to you in your life that has inspired you to succeed.
75. Make a daisy chain
76. Write something inspirational or copy something inspirational on lovely paper. Put it in an envelope and put it under someone’s wiper in a car park.
77. Think of someone in your life you appreciate, write to them or email or leave a message that says only the following: You are… (list 10 words) and when I am around you I feel/am (list 5 words). I love you.
78. Choose a photo of you and a friend. Write something on the back and send it to them telling them why you like the picture
79. List every colour you can think of.
80. Write down 10 or more things you are grateful for in your life.
81. If someone could describe you in 10 words what would you want those words to be? Write them down and read them every day this week. See if you really are living up to those words.
82. Write to any Grandparents or older family members you have to say you are thinking of them.
83.
84. Make 20 Christmas cards in October. Separate them into 4 bundles of 5. Give away three bundles.
85. Buy two beautiful buttons put one on ribbon and wear it somewhere on yourself for a week. Send the other to someone creative you know and challenge them to do something with it.
86. Find a favorite poem or verse and memorize it.
87. Read a book you have always said you would read.
88.
89. Take baking to a person that you appreciate but pay for their services. E.g. hairdresser, doctor. Take it to your next appointment and simply give it to them and say Thanks.
90. Have a whole week with no TV.
91. Surprise your children. Keep each of them (one at a time) off school one day and have a fun day with them.
92.
93. Bake a cake for someone and go overboard decorating it with lollies. Take your children with you to deliver it. Put it at the door. Knock and run away to hide and watch it being collected.
94. Learn a fancy way to fold serviettes and do it randomly for dinner one night.
95. Let the kids decide the dinner menu one night, help them to make it, set the table and decorate it with whatever they want.
96.
97. Grow something from seed and give it away.
98. Turn off your mobile for a whole day (and night).
99. Enter a creative competition.
100. Do this challenge last – go somewhere for a night! Take your journal of the challenges with you and look back through it. (A girls weekend away maybe)
Maybe there is something that jumps out at you from this list??
Have a go yourself, leave me a message if you are going to complete your own challenge, would love to see how you get on.
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