Meet Lindsay

She may not be much to look at, but she's soon to be ours! We decided to name her after the street she lives on and signed a mountain of paperwork today and took another poke around the house as well as some "before" pictures. Just inside shots today, but we'll put her lovely face up soon. There's lots of work to be done before we move in, but with a few gallons of paint and unending enthusiasm, what can't we fix?

Dining room/addition/office? This one needs help!

Wonderful 80s bathroom

Living room -- love the colors!

Another living room shot

Second bedroom (yes, there is a window that looks into a closet)

Kitchen

Front bedroom (will be ours)

We understand if you don't want to visit us for a while, but if you're in the area and just love hard, dirty work, then we'll have a place for you soon! More updates to come, but for now, we've got all of the nuts and bolts things to wrap up before we officially get to call Lindsay ours.

We've been thoroughly blessed to have our bid taken on this house. It's nice and close to church, friends, the grocery store and other useful things. It's also got quite a bit more space and a basement that's partially finished. If you're ever in need of a place to stay, we'll have room! Hope you all can meet Lindsay in person soon :).

My latest project

A Study in Steps

Have you ever wanted to know how many miles you clock during the day?  My office is at the end of a long hallway, my co-workers about halfway down and the bathroom at the end.  Needless to say, I do a bit of walking during the day.  I hate using the phone when I can just dash down the hall to ask someone a question in person.  This probably wastes a little bit of time, but, hey, I'm getting off my tush, right?

My curiosity to know just how much I walked at work was fueled by the fact that I eat an enormous amount of food during the day.  Way, way more than I should at a sedentery desk job.  Well, as the Lord had it, we had a benefits fair, and as incentive to attend, we were offered a chance to win a door prize.  Win one I did, taking home a basket put together by Humana, and in my basket was a teeny-weeny pedometer.

So today, I clipped my little friend onto my wasteband and off we went.  Today was pretty normal and here are the results:

6570 Steps

2.854 Miles

4.599 Km

319.2 Calories

Red River Gorge(ous)

Chris had spring break and I took some vacation to get out of the city and head out to the woods. We went southeast for a couple of hours until we ran into a stretch of hilly wilderness in the Daniel Boone National Forest. With quite a bit of borrowed gear, we parked the ol' truck and hiked a few (laborious) miles into the back country to set up camp for the night. 

We were amazed by the creativity of the Lord in the Red River Gorge. Ancient rocks were carved into natural bridges, sculpted into fantastic shapes and beautiful works of art. The deciduous trees were still leafless, but I think the lack of foliage afforded us a better view of the valleys, canyons and rock formations. 

Our first night was spent deep in the woods, on the top of a promontory rock that gave us a great view and made us feel oh-so-isolated. What a treat it was to be far from everything except that which the Lord had created! We were a bit chilly and slept a little ill, but it was worth it!

The second day of our trip we ditched our heavy packs at the truck and went for a 10ish mile hike to a suspension bridge and back. The weather was perfect and we got a killer workout going up and down the many hills. By the time evening arrived, however, ominous clouds had begun to roll in and blanket us in a gloomy possibility of showers. We camped quite close to the truck just in case, and kept only the bare necessities with us in our tent--which by the way, is a very nice tent from Kevin and Becky's European adventures. Well, the rain came down and the floods came up, and after four or so fantastic hours of sleep, we began to get wet. After a brief pow-wow, we decided to spend the rest of the night in the cab of the truck and to pack up the tent, etc as soon as it was light. 

Though the trip was cut a bit short by the unfriendly precipitation, we had a blast and will likely head out to the gorge later this summer. As a break from work and school, it was perfect.

Granola Bars Recipe

So I love granola bars, like, a lot. What don't I like about them? That they come in a little package and that I can't make them at home...until now! I found a recipe for granola balls on Keri Plevan's blog which was very yummy, but a bit too much like candy for my taste. They were also a chore to bite into, from my perspective, so I modified the ball recipe to make bars.


Granola Bars

1/2 cup peanut butter (I have chunky on hand)
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 cups oats
1/2 cup mixed chopped nuts (I used walnuts and pecans)
1/4 cup dried fruit (craisins for us)

1) Toast the oats in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes on a cookie sheet.
2) Meantime, heat the peanut butter, honey and brown sugar over medium heat, stirring frequently to prevent scorching. When the brown sugar has completely dissolved, remove from heat.
3) Stir the toasted oats, nuts and dried fruit into the peanut butter mixture until well coated. Mixture should appear somewhat dry.
4) Spread oats mixture on a lightly greased cookie sheet/baking pan with at least 1/2" sides. Carefully press the oat mixture to compact using a spoon or your hands. Mixture will be VERY HOT so don't burn your fingers! The tighter you compact the oats, etc, the more durable your bars will be. Mine were about 1/4" thick.
5) When well cooled, cut bars into desired shapes/sizes or turn onto a cutting board to cut. Eat, enjoy!

Better than the 100 Push-up Challenge

For those of you familiar with the 100 Push-up challenge, get ready for the next big thing. I started having pretty painful wrist issues about 3 weeks into the 100, so I wimped out and never looked back. But in the Peek home we're still pretty excited about working out, so we've come up with an even cooler way to be fit. We'd like to call it "You're the Best Around Crunch Challenge." Having grown up in the 80s, we have fond memories of Karate Kid and the never-to-be-forgotten goodness of the rockin' theme song. So how does the challenge work? Click play on the video below, and crunch away until your abs are flaming and you can't move any more. You have met the "You're the Best Around Crunch Challenge" when you can do crunches through the whole song. Good luck!

And these are a few of my favorite things...

Through a colleague of Christopher's we have found a most delightful place to do some of our grocery shopping. It's called Creation Gardens and it caters largely to fancy-pants restaurants dealing in bulk produce and gourmet food. Why has this warehouse-like shop become a favorite despite lack of price tags, limited hours and slightly unhelpful staff? Well, because I spent $15 dollars today and got a bag full of fresh food that is both better for our diets and better priced than what I could get at a commercial grocery store. Some of my favorite buys today:

The fantastic snow peas


Not a great picture, and if you don't read Thai you won't have a clue what the dark liquid is in the back, but each of these necessary items was roughly $2.15. I stopped at an unnamed grocery
store before heading to Creation Gardens and priced the same product at $3.59 for about a 1/3 as much curry! The second item is Fish Sauce, not even available at your run-of-the-mill grocery store.
And I can only typically find one variety of lentil elsewhere, but Creation Gardens carries so many! Here are red and French.


Additionally, I have to mention my friend Trader Joe and his wonderful store that I wish we had in Louisville. Every time I go to Cincinnati, I try to visit Joe's store and get some sweet deals like $.29/lb bananas and a box of Cuties for $7. But I also get a favorite item that you need to discover if you haven't gotten hooked already. The picture speaks for itself.