About

Hi! I’m Olivia!

I’m a traveler, foodie, Portlander, list fan, and spreadsheet lover. Powered by Tofu is my personal creative outlet for exploring, creating, and living the good life.

For me, the “good life” has a lot to do with adventure – from travel experiences to adventuring right here in Portland, Oregon – challenges like 30 new things before 30, being outdoors, travel tips and guides. It usually includes food – from finding all the breweries in a new city, cheese, IPA, coffee, to cooking up a new recipe from my summer garden. My good life is rounded out with fitness (challenges, running, yoga, half marathons), happiness, family, friends, seasonal fun, and list making.

One of my favorite things is time savers and hacks – probably how you found me in the first place – with tools and templates to save you time and money… more to enjoy the good life, yeah?

Background:
I originally created this blog as an outlet for all things food, apartment dwelling, Portland roaming, and MBA pursuing back in 2007.  It then morphed into a way to keep track of my 101 Things in 1,001 Days/life list project.  So when I decided to quit my job to spend a year traveling around the world, I thought it would be fun to just continue the adventure here.

I’m a strong believer in living consciously (purposefully, deliberately, or whatever it is the kids are calling it these days), which is what got me interested in Life Lists, a 30 Before 30 list, and annual goals. I love the idea that you’re working on specific, verbalized goals, and while a year later you may not care about 1/4 the things on the list, you’ll still have a lot of really cool things accomplished.

My round the world trip:
I started my round the world trip in Beijing, China in late February of 2008.  From there I traveled to Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, back to Thailand and back through China to come home to Portland.  I spent two months in Portland (we have amazing summers), before heading to Eastern Europe. From Budapest, Hungary, I travelled to Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Morocco, and then back to Spain before taking the slow boat (a transatlantic) back to the States (via Portugal & Bahamas).  After spending the holidays in Portland, I finished up my travels in Costa Rica and came back to Oregon.

Post-RTW life:
Post-RTW I found a job, got a cat, bought a house, and fell in love with Portland all over again. [Not all at once] And after almost four years at a travel company promoting independent and long-term travel, I took the leap to self-employment. I work with small to mid-size businesses and startups helping them grow their businesses through email marketing, content strategy, and analytics at Early Bird Strategy and also offer blogging resources like Editorial Calendar Templates and other downloads.

FAQ: What does “Powered by Tofu mean”?
I’ve been a vegetarian all my life, so it’s always been a running joke that I’m “powered by tofu.”  We even made t-shirts in high school that said “powered by tofu” with a tofu block on them. Alas, I swear that PETA stole my line for their Powered by Tofu shirt that was all over the Internet for awhile. Great minds think alike. :) Anyway, while I still cook mainly vegetarian, I consider myself more of a “pescatarian” now, since I eat fish, and bacon. I won’t be changing my blog to Powered by Bacon, so Powered by Tofu it is.

Let’s be friends on Instagram!

Cheers,
Olivia