Shows how good I am with birthdays...

We are interrupting Man Wednesdays, for this special announcement: I can't believed I missed my blog's one year birthday five days ago! Mostly, I can't believe that on April 23rd, my humble little blog turned 1.

To celebrate my blog birthday, here's an absurdly non-raw cake I made for a friend's little girl in 2007. Yes, those are all cookies, and yes, I did use an organic hazelnut chocolate spread (aka. an organic version of Nutella) as mortar for my castle. P.S. It was filled with M&Ms.

Happy Birthday, Eat Dance Live!

But like anyone on their birthday, this makes me think about what I have achieved or how far I've come since I began writing this blog. What was my intention when I started writing this blog? How much have I 'Eaten, Danced, and Lived' since April 23, 2009?

Eat: I think anyone who reads this blog knows that I have done my share of amazing eating since last year, but I never would have imagined that within a few weeks of my starting a blog, I would embark on one of the greatest food journeys of my life: Raw Food. Again, I have to thank the wonderful luck I had of stumbling across Meredith's blog as well as a bunch of other resources that got me thinking about the concept in the first place. A lover of new things, I didn't take on raw food as some sort of challenge, but as a way to be even healthier and happier than before. At that point, I just knew it was the right thing to do. To prove how amazing a raw diet is to you yet again, that pizza was our dinner, made up of Alissa Cohen's Easy Pizza Crust, an amended version of her Tomato Sauce recipe, Meredith's Fermented Nut Cheese, and a bunch of amazing toppings.

Dance: Because of school and life, I definitely haven't gotten as much dance in this year as I would have liked. But dwelling on the positive, within the past blog year, I was able to take a two day workshop with my tribal belly dance idol, Rachel Brice. I also got some serious dance-time in at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. And thanks to Rachel's workshop, I was able to get in contact with a couple awesome girls I was able to get together and dance with once a week for a little while. Now heading back to Canada in a matter of months, I'll be back in the same area as my first ATS teacher and mentor, as well as a friend from my dance tribe back there, who I'll be living in the same city as us. We've already decided that we'll be taking it by tribal dance storm! I can't wait!

Live: How I have lived! This year brought on so many things that I've been able to share with you: my work with the OCA, an amazing trip to Mexico, raw food, the completion of my MA, travels back to my second home of France, Boston, Salem, NY, Pennsylvania, and of course all the little things like more love, more family, more happiness, and things I can't even begin to have time to write about, like finally collecting all the pottery we wanted to have the most beautiful kitchenware ever. Oh wait, one more: one day after my blog's birthday, I found the PERFECT house for us to move into once we're in Ottawa this June. We've been super excited about moving into our first house together sine the day we met, and now, we are! And most of all, I think I've found a more specific purpose for this blog. Not only do I want to primarily share all my culinary adventures with you, I hope to get across all the health, positivity, and happiness that radiates from it and my life in general. I don't believe any aspect of ones life is disconnect from their food and lifestyle choices. If you choose to be healthy through diet and exercise, it will show in everything you do from your daily interactions with people to how well you can sleep at night. And, we still have the cutest cat ever: