About

For months I asked myself:  Does the world really need another blogger?  The answer I kept coming up with was: not likely.

Eventually though, somewhere along the way, I decided that wasn’t the question that needed to be asked.  The question that needed to be asked was:  Do I feel the need to be blogging?  And, well, since I’m here, I bet you all can guess the answer to that one.

So, welcome to Move Eat Create – my blog that aims to be an informative and entertaining place to share my appreciation for fitness, food, and creativity.

I’m Shannon and I live in Portland, Oregon.  A city which, I must say, I absolutely adore.  It’s also a city that lends itself well to my pursuits of being active, eating well and fostering inspiration.  A lot has changed for me over the last year or so and those changes have led me here – to this blog.  You see, in March of 2011 (it’s May of 2012 as I write this) I was . . . well, to be perfectly honest . . . pretty much a mess.  I’m not going to bore you with all the details, but some points relevant here are that I was working at a job that left me feeling uninspired and left my pocketbook empty.  I had seen myself gain over 30 lbs in recent years.  I was completely out of touch with what I loved to do for fun and to stimulate me.  I was, overall, physically and mentally unhealthy in many ways.  A few months earlier I had turned 30 and this sort of sent me over the edge.  It seemed like such a milestone.  Such an important year in my life, and yet I felt positively unimportant in so many ways.

In March of 2011 something changed.  I can’t pinpoint exactly what shifted in my thinking, but something absolutely did.  I started to work out.  I started to cook more often.  I read about health.  I tried all kinds of new things.  I learned wholeheartedly how to knit (a hobby I had started to learn a few months before, but hadn’t fully been able to embrace due to wrist problems).  I began to discover that I LOVED these things.  And, I changed my entire way of living.  I have since gone from being a very sedentary person to working out actively on average 5 days a week.  I’m a runner.  And, I’m in the best shape of my life – literally (plus, I’ve lost those extra 30 lbs – in fact, I’ve lost around 50!).  I stopped eating crap and learned that there is a world of delicious, natural, healthy food out there that is amazingly fun to cook with.  I knit scarves, mittens, hats, toys, blankets, socks, and so on, learning that I really, really loved to create usable items with my own hands.  And, while there are some things I’m still working on (I’m still at a job that leaves me uninspired – though it is a different one than before), I am thoroughly excited every day about something – adding an extra .5 miles onto a run, personalizing a recipe for a healthy Mexican casserole, or learning a new way to make an increase for a shawl. These are the things that bring me joy.  And I want to share them with you.

So, here’s what you’ll find on this blog:

• Move

Posts in this category are all about fitness and activity.  I’ll share my personal experiences from being inactive, to finishing my first 5k, to my current training for my first half marathon.  I’ll include reviews of books, fitness DVDs, and products.  Also, there will be links and information to reliable information about how to achieve a variety of fitness goals.

• Eat

I love to eat.  I love to cook.  And, I love to read and learn about food.  All of this will be covered.  I hope to include tasty and nutritious recipes, recommendations for cook books, blogs, magazines, and websites, as well as information on healthy, delicious ingredients.  You’ll likely also get to view my own personal cooking successes and failures (they happen to all of us, right?).

• Create

This category is pretty broad.  As I mentioned, I love to knit.  It really is a passion of mine and I’m sure I’ll share some of it with you.  But, I also believe in fostering creativity anywhere we can find it.  This category of posts will include anything that I find to stimulate imagination.

Overall, this is a blog with a mix of personal experience and professional expertise derived from various sources.  It is a blog, ultimately, about the creating of things – healthfulness, food, crafts, and meaningful [not capitalistic] abundance.

Welcome to Move Eat Create!