The 100-Day Project Ten Years Later and What’s Next?

Posted on April 6, 2025 by John F Croston III

Ten years ago, on April 6th, 2015, after reading Elle Luna’s Great Discontent article titled “Elle Luna: 100-Day Project – What Could You Do with 100 Days of Making?” a while before, I decided to start my 100-Day Project.

The 100-Day Project is about doing something creative for 100 days. It could be writing a novel or short story, making comic strips, taking photos, drawing landscapes, painting portraits, creating cooking videos, writing or performing music, etc., every day for 100 days.

A guy I know by the name of Jeremy Keith wrote 100 100-word blog posts over the 100-days.

I’m Going to Paint

My first thought of doing some creative work for 100 days was painting, which I hadn’t done in about ten years.

What to paint didn’t matter before I started, but it would come to me along the way of what to paint.

In the meantime, I checked my paints and brushes, which were in good condition, and then went out to a large chain art supply store in Washington, DC, to purchase a bunch of canvases.

After looking around the store, I went with the hard-backed canvas boards. That way, I could store them more efficiently when the paintings were completed, and they wouldn’t take up as much space.

What to Paint?

Since I spent at least one day a week with friends as part of a larger wine group that had a tasting to improve my knowledge of wine, I decided to paint wine bottle shapes. The wine bottles consisted of the bottle, label, and foil cap. Nothing fancy with much, if any, shading, label information, etc.

Being a novice painter and having only taken a few painting and art classes at our local Torpedo Factory, I wasn’t going to do more than the shapes of bottles with painted backgrounds.

I started slow and got used to using my oil paints again on the first paintings.

Then, after I was used to painting all over again, I pulled out my palette knives to use them as well. At first, I painted the wine bottle shape with my paintbrush and then used the palette knife to do the background.

I enjoyed the palette knife paintings more because of the different textures I could create.

How Did It Go?

After starting it, I slept better and had more dreams, which I tend not to have had many, if any, before.

As the days went by, I enjoyed myself and began to improve.

I then had to purchase more canvases since I was running low because I did not buy all 100 in case after the first 20 or 30 days or sooner stopped.

How Many Painting Did I Do?

Around day 178 or so, which was the end of September, I was driving to An Event Apart in Austin, TX., and made it into a road trip to use up my vacation. By doing that, I could not easily paint every day with wet canvases and be in a different AirBnB or hotel room.

So I started using my iPad Mini 2 to start drawing digital wine bottles with the iOS application pencil, which was, at the start, much harder to do than painting.

After that, I kept making the wine bottles digitally even when I returned home.

How Did Digital Drawing Go?

I am still enjoying drawing wine bottles digitally using the Pencil app.

At some point, Pencil was sold, and then the new owners wanted to charge a one-time fee for features I had been using for about four years. So, I did not upgrade to the next version for nine or ten months so I could keep the one I was using.

Somewhere along the way, I hit the update ALL applications button on my iPad, which updated the Pencil app. In doing so, because it was so long ago, the new app lost all my previous wine bottle drawings, some of my coolest ones.

The number of digital wine bottles I had drawn at the point was approximately 1,761. They are likely somewhere on my iPad but lost in the application.

I sighed, shrugged my shoulders, and moved on; I could do nothing.

I started over, and currently, I have 1,698 digital wine bottles on my iPad.

So How Many Wine Bottle Paintings and Drawing Did I Make?

I did 178 paintings (need to check), 1,761 digital drawings before I lost them, and 1,698 in the current batch for a total of 3,637 wine bottles out of the last 3,652 days ( two leap years).

The number could be higher because I did not remember what number I was on when I lost the first batch of digital drawings or miss numbering them.

Either way, I’m happy to have only missed 15 days over the past 10 years.

What’s Next?

I will start a new 100-Day Project today to shoot, edit, and publish cooking videos, including music, sound effects, graphics, etc.

This project will be a bit different, more or less than a typical 100-day project, because I’m looking to spend at least 30 minutes each day (likely after work) learning how to use DaVinci Resolve (video editing software) which is FREE from the two or three courses I paid for over a year ago.

I have not been giving the editing videos the effort I need to learn how to edit quickly and efficiently.

On the weekend, I plan to spend an hour a day either learning more about DaVinci Resolve or watching YouTube videos related to food to see how things are presented, talked about, etc. Another item is testing recipes from others or taking what I think are the best parts of a bunch of recipes to see if that works.

I want to be able to create 20 or 30 videos that are four to six minutes long that tell people how to cook certain foods before I post them so I can post half of them at once and then post one a week thereafter while making the next batch.

Another thing will be to read J. Kenji López-Alt two books, “Food Lab” and “The Wok,” as references and as a resource in videos, along with Michael Pollan’s handful of food books and Harold Mcgee’s books for the same reason.

Then, I will watch food/cooking-related series such as Mind of a Chef (YouTube), Michael Pollan, and other Amazon or Netflix shows like Salt Fat Acid Heat, Somebody Feed Phil (seven seasons), Vivian Howard PBS shows (A Chef’s Life and Somewhere South).

NOTE – This next 100-Day Project might not be in the whole spirit of the original, but it will get me there in the end if I make it a habit to practice every day.

I plan to take notes of my findings in notebooks or digitally and track how much time I spend during the learning process. The goal will be to spend 20 – 30 hours a month.

Yes, I will continue to draw more digital wine bottles. It’s a thing I do before bed each night. Some might call it a habit.

Veggie Stew

Posted on January 14, 2021 by John F Croston III

Over the weekend (Saturday), I made a veggie stew. It might even be vegan, but I would have to check the ingredients on a few labels.

Let the Chopping Begin

I started out dicing up three medium-sized onions and got them cooking down in my cast iron skillet. I used two good olive oils to help soften them up. While the softening up was happening, I peeled and chopped up a head of garlic from the farmer’s market.

Ingredients

Once the garlic was in the pan, I added some salt, pepper, and spices. The spices were curry powder, cayenne, chipotle, smoked Spanish paprika, and Ancho chili powder. I then added dried basil, thyme, and oregano along with many turns of finely ground Szechuan peppercorns.

I let the spices cook a bit to intensify the flavor. Before adding the pound of Rancho Gordo heirloom Classic Cranberry Beans to my large stainless steel pot (16 quarts?).

Soaking Beans and Wild Rice

The dry Rancho Gordo beans started soaking three-hours before I started chopping my vegetables. I also soaked half a pound of Trader Joe’s wild rice separately.

Okay, it was probably between 14 and 15 ounces of bean because I put 50 of them in a small envelope in my wine cooler. The reason being I wanted to see at some point if I could grow my own beans.

Slow Cooking

I added the beans and then made sure they boiled for five minutes. Then turned them down to a simmer. I then went to read some more, lying on my sofa. About every twenty minutes or so got up to check on the beans and other vegetables and stir them. After about an hour, I added the soaked wild rice and it’s water to the pot.

Stirring While Reading and Writing Blog Posts

More reading, and I think outlining a blog post or two along with more stirring. After another hour or so, I added in a 12-ounce package of Anson Mills Slow Roasted Farro. Before adding the farro, I made sure to presoak it for an hour or more.

Over the next hour or more, I let the beans, the wild rice, and the farro slowly cooking. I added the following a 4 ounce can of Trader Joe’s Fire Roasted Diced Green Chiles. Then I added a 13.75-ounce jar of Trader Joe’s Corm and Cile tomato-less Salsa. Followed later by a one 15.25 ounce can of Wegmans No Salt Added Whole Kernel Crisp’ N Sweet Corn.

At some point in all of this, I cooked up 10-ounces of Impossible Burger in my cast iron to then added to the pot too.

Oops, I forgot I chopped up a medium-sized head of fennel and cooked in my cast iron pan, and added it in at some point to my veggie stew.

All this needed time to meld together and get tasty.

Extra Notes

For the spices, I probably put in two tablespoons of each, give or take in a very large pot. I learned over time; I can add hot sauce for added flavor and heat later. Instead of putting n to many hot spices in, that got hotter as the water evaporated.

Leftovers

So now I’m eating it most days for one meal. I need to put some in the freer for later if there is any room.

Here’s to more large batch cooking on a slow Saturday to have good food and lots of leftovers.

My Weight Loss

Posted on January 13, 2021 by John F Croston III

My weight loss over the last fifteen or so months has been slow and steady. Been working on what I eat and don’t eat, along with portion size and healthier choices.

Eating Habits

My eating habits have changed a good amount since I’m no longer buying breakfast and lunch at work. Which has allowed me to save more money.

During the height of the summer, lots of my lunches started with tortillas. I added garlic hummus, mixed greens, heirloom tomatoes (Cherokee Purple), and a cheese slice. I started eating more salad too as my dinner a few nights a week.

Most of my salad was the bagged kind with a dressing pack and some crunchy element. You would think that might not be healthy, but it was better, I guess than what I used to eat. But I would add some smoked sunflower seeds and two slices of torn up sliced cheese. I would even crunch up tortilla chips for some crunch.

I almost forgot the halved heirloom cherry tomatoes that I added when possible to my salad.

Breakfast or lunch could also include peanut butter and jelly on a tortilla. Or eggs and cheese in a tortilla with some hummus if I had some and mixed greens too.

Lots of Tortillas

You might have noticed all the mentions of tortillas. It’s been more because I saw that when I purchased bread, it dried out or got moldy much quicker. So I went with the tortillas, which cut down on the carbs, I think a bit more, but I’m no scientist.

Snacks

Snacks have been better also. Meaning I now eat more peanuts, cashews, fruits, carrots, and hummus when I need a snack than before. Sometimes after dinner, I will put a good handful of peanuts in a bowl. Then a half a pint of blueberries, a sliced banana, and add a bit of chocolate sauce. So it’s feels like a fancier dessert minus the ice cream etc.

New Habits

With all this and more purposeful walking and eating better. Not perfect, but an improvement from what I have been doing. I have lost about 60 lbs (27.2 kg or 4.3 stone) since the end of September 2019. Half of that has been since the beginning of the pandemic.

What Other’s Noticed

Seeing friends on Zoom after a long time like today, a bunch were amazed at my weight loss. I haven’t seen some of them since I lost the 60 lbs, and others only the last 30 lbs since mid-March 2020.

New Things

I even had to buy a set of metal leather whole punches to put new wholes in my handmade leather belt. I purchased the belt from an old friend in June or July of 2019 when he was in town for an art show. I had ran out of wholes so that I couldn’t tighten it anymore. I didn’t want my pants to fall down.

I even purchased one new pair of jeans this fall because the others were at least four to five sizes too big. I only bought one pair for now. Since I’m mostly sitting in the house working and then out for a walk in the cold. So I don’t need more than one pair. I can put on some shorts or sweats when I need to wash them.

Walking Everywhere

Another thing that has helped is having to walk to the grocery or farmer’s market. Which are a mile or more one way and using a backpack. I found there was less room for junk food that way.

Okay, at one point, I was down 65 lbs. For the last two months or so, I have been getting more foods like pastries or cookies from the farmer’s market or the store. Now with doing a bit less walking and the holiday’s being over this will stop except for once in a while treat.

Slow and Steady

So my weight loss has been slow and steady for the most part and has become more of a change in my eating habits. That needs to be tweaked now and again.

Adding some exercise besides walking will come when I’ve lost more weight.

How much that is, I don’t have a goal in mind besides feeling better and more rested.

Eating Healthier

Posted on January 6, 2021 by John F Croston III

In the last nine months to a year, I have gotten healthier because I have been eating almost all my meals at home and making better food choices.

By only bringing in healthy food, it’s easier not to eat less healthy foods. Doing so has made it easier to eat what is in the house.

Another reason is when you are walking to the grocery store with a backpack, there is less room for junk food. Plus, when you are stocking up on fruit and vegetables, along with kombucha and eggs every two weeks. You buy less junk since there is less room. Not that I haven’t been buying tortilla chips to crumble on my salads for some crunch or dark chocolate bars, etc.

I think I’m healthier partially because I’m not eating at restaurants. Or I haven’t had any takeout since mid-March, and I’m walking more. Doing so has improved my eating habits. I have been making, cooking, or assembling (salads) for all my meals, which I enjoy doing. But hadn’t done much of or as often until this year, especially when cooking for one person.

Changes in Eating Habits

I have managed to eat more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, on tortillas, than in the last ten years. Which is still better than what I would eat for breakfast or lunch from the work cafeteria.

Breakfast at work used to be scrambled eggs and pork sausage. Or two egg, pork sausage, and cheese sandwiches on a croissant or toast or a toasted bagel. At the same time, lunch ended up being about a pound or more of hot food from the lunch buffet.

I have eaten more fruits, vegetables/salad, nuts, this year, which has been a good thing. Along with trail mix of peanuts, cashews, almonds, raisins, and M & M’s.

Rethinking My Cooking

When cooking hot meals, I have used more grains, fresh vegetables, and less meat. When using meat, I would put a pound in what I was making. That gets divided amongst the six to eight servings that I ended up eating over time. So there is less in each portion. I even ate more tofu and plant-based meats too.

By making larger quantities, I was able even to make enough to have many extra meals. So I only had to reheat them and put others in the freezer for later. That way, I wasn’t cooking every day, but a few days a week. Then I would have salads, etc., so I wasn’t eating the same thing for every meal.

Not Everything has Been Healthy

Not that everything I ate was healthy, but it’s been an improvement. I have eaten more fruits and vegetables, healthier snacks, salads, etc. The snacks have been more nuts (peanuts and cashews).

I nice dessert I have made many times is to take a large handful of nuts. Put them in a bowl with half a pint of blueberries, a sliced up banana, and then add some dark chocolate sauce. To me, it’s like an ice cream dessert without the ice cream and a lot more fiber.

How I Fared with Eating Better

All in all, I have been eating better but not on what I would call a diet per se.

So here is to making more eating improvements in 2021 for the long term.

2020 What a Year

Posted on January 1, 2021 by John F Croston III

All in all, 2020 wasn’t that bad a year for me. At least there was more positive than negative.

The following are things that went well for me and will be written about in more detail in the coming weeks.

Purposeful Walking

The first thing that improved for me was, I did more purposeful walking this year, Meaning, it wasn’t because I was commuting to and from the house to the train to the office and back, but out taking lunchtime walks most days and then again in the evening after work along with ones on the weekends.

Because of this, I managed to walk 3,200,944 steps, 2,314 flights of stairs, not many living on the first floor of a house, and finally a total of 1,468 miles, which is two or three hundred more miles than an average year of mostly walking during my commute.

More Sleep

Another positive thing with this year has been I have been getting more sleep because my commute is now from one part of the house to another. Even if I woke up at 7:00 AM or before and couldn’t get back to sleep, I would stay in bed and rest until close to 9:00 AM when I would start my workday.

Doing this has been helpful and cut back on my need for naps on the weekend.

Eating Healthier

With not eating out or getting takeout since mid-March, my eating habits have improved. Been making, cooking, or assembling all my meals, which I enjoy doing but hadn’t done much of or as often until this year.

This year I managed to eat more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on tortillas than in the last ten years, which is still better than what I would eat for breakfast or lunch from the work cafeteria.

I have eaten more fruits, vegetables/salad, nuts, trail mix (peanuts, cashews, almonds, raisins, and M and M’s) this year, which has been a good thing.

When cooking, I even made enough to have many extra meals, so I only had to reheat them and put others in the freezer for later.

No More Car

In the fall of 2019, I had car issues that I decided not to spend the money to fix, so I used the metro (commuter train), bus, and walking to get around the DC area.

I sold my car to a friend’s friend in late August because they thought it would be cheaper to fix mine than theirs. Now I need to find out if that was the case.

Met My Neighbors

With all the walking around my neighborhood, I have met more people on my block or within six or eight blocks of my house.

Some I met for the first time, and we have lived a few houses away for over ten years. I saw others a few times a week and would say hello on my commute to and from work, and I finally learned their names.

I even met a couple that is retired and is now Certified Master Gardeners. I even got a small fig tree from another neighbor that I replanted in a five-gallon bucket.

Attended More Conferences

It worked out deciding not to attend CSUN, which is an accessibility conference in Los Angles, as it was at the beginning of everything closing up related to the pandemic.

Because many other conferences had some time to switch to remote events, I used my vacation to attend more of them, and part of it wasn’t used to travel. I attended four or five conferences, a workshop, a few couple hour food-related classes/demos, etc. More on these in the future.

Learned More

I spend more time at night and on weekends on YouTube learning about homesteading/small farming about grow my own food and raise animals for when I get my plot of land to put a tiny house on, cooking, JavaScript through the JavaScript book club, which I joined in January, tiny houses, and much more that I will write about soon.

My Weight Loss

With all this purposeful walking and eating better. Not perfect, but an improvement from what I have been doing. I have lost almost 60 lbs. since the end of September 2019. Almost half of that has been since the beginning of the pandemic.

I even had to buy a set of metal leather punches to put new wholes in my handmade leather belt because I had run out of wholes.

I even purchased one new pair of jeans this fall because the others were at least four sizes too big. I only bought one pair for now since I’m mostly sitting in the house working and then out for a walk, so I don’t need more.

With having to walk to the grocery or farmer’s market and using a backpack, I found there was less room for junk food that way, which helped too.

Conclusion

So all in all not a bad year for me.

I know it’s been hard and difficult for many and will be for a long time to come too.

So here’s hoping for a better year for all of us in 2021.