Things Jordan's Listening to Thursday! (Or something like that)

Hi all,

It's been basically six months since we moved to Portland! So weird--it really doesn't seem like that long. Well, I didn't really know what to blog about (I'm working on a wedding dress post, and I'm heading up to Seattle next weekend, so those posts will be coming soon), so I asked Jordan what the top five songs are that he's been listening to since we moved here.

Here's what he said:

1. "Oh Sherry" -- Steve Perry
Jordan: I think that Steve Perry is my absolute favorite vocalist of all time. This song is super catchy! Sometimes I wish Claire's name was Sherry so I could sing it to her... :)

2. "December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" -- Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons
Jordan: Great piano riff, good harmonies... Ever since I went to Vegas and saw the show in November, I've been obsessed!

3. "Queen of California" -- John Mayer
Jordan: A great, chill song with good harmonies, too--It reminds me of early morning driving up to Portland through southern Utah in August.

4. "Breathless" -- The Corrs
Jordan: Female vocalists were better in the 90s...

5. "Don't Dream It's Over" -- Crowded House
Jordan: This is mostly nostalgic for me--it takes me back to Idaho, mint fields, sunsets... And I don't want the 90s to be over. :)

What'd you think of Jordan's dancing? He's gonna kill me for putting it on here... ;)

-Claire

Christmastime in Portland

In a perfect world, this post would have been up at the beginning of January, but everyone knows now how prompt I've been with posting on the blog.

Jordan and I did our Christmas thang before I flew to Texas for the holidays. A blog post on wedding dress shopping later! We didn't really make it a big deal--I didn't even wrap Jordan's solitary present. (Although he did get a fancy wedding band a few weeks later!)

I had bought us tickets to see the Oregon Ballet Theater's production of the Nutcracker several weeks before, and if you know me at all, you know how much I LOVE the Nutcracker around Christmastime. My mom took me when I was younger several times, and it's one of my favorite holiday memories growing up.

Anyway, I wanted to take Jordan so he could experience the magic of the ballet with me (and it's lame to go by yourself to the Nutcracker). That morning, we made blueberry muffins and listened to Christmas records that I had been buying at thrift stores in preparation.

We had so much fun, and I hope you enjoy the pictures! :)

The Long-Awaited Engagement Post, Part 2

Now that I am finally done with graduate school permanently (blog post on that later), I can get back to blogging! I've been really excited to post these pictures and tell you all about our engagement. :) So now you know all about how we got my ring, but now I get share the story of Jordan's proposal.

We had decided a week or two after I'd moved to Portland that we wanted to visit the Oregon coast. Jordan visited a lot when he was younger, and I had never been before. We decided to go the weekend before I started grad school since we knew that I'd probably be too busy to go after everything got into full swing. Secretly, Jordan had already Skyped with my parents that last Saturday morning (the day we found my ring and went to the Timbers game) and asked their permission. So he'd been planning to ask me when we went to the coast, but I had no idea. ;)

So we drove the 3-ish hours out to Cannon Beach and parked at a couple's beach house that Jordan's cousin Amanda knew. When we got out of the car, Jordan pulled a full-out picnic and quilt out of the car! He had kind of been acting weird the night before (he told me he wanted to look nice when we went to the beach, in case we went out to dinner or something, haha.), so I just figured that this picnic was what he had been trying to keep from me. We walked down to the beach in front of the house and layed out our picnic.

We had assumed the weather was going to be windy and cold, but it was sunny and absolutely perfect!

(Obviously, Jordan had Kelsey taking pictures in the backyard of that house, but once again, I was oblivious. Haha.)

So we eat our lunch and talk, and then finally Jordan says that he has a present for me (I am, of course, still clueless). So he reaches into the basket and pulls out something wrapped in a towel. When I open it up, there's a beautiful old Bible dictionary that was published in the late 1800s. As you can tell by my apartment tour here, I have a thing for old books.

I was so excited and started flipping through a few of the beginning pages. Then, I flipped over about half of the pages to see a small ring box sitting in the middle. Oh my gosh, you guys! I immediately started tearing up, and Jordan asked me if I could stand up. I couldn't even speak, I was so surprised.

My sweet man got down on one knee and asked if I would spend the rest of my life with him. And of course I said yes! :)

So then I'm freaking out and too excited to notice that Kelsey is basically 10 feet away from us with her camera. Haha. We popped some champagne that Jordan's mom had sent for us, took a few more pictures, then started calling all of our family and friends. I'm so grateful that Jordan planned for Kelsey to take our pictures--they're so wonderful, and I know that I'll always love to look at them. So thanks again, Kelsey!!

Of course, Jordan's not done surprising me. He takes me to a restaurant and tells me we're going to get dessert with Kelsey. We walk in and there are Kelsey's parents; Jordan's cousin (Amanda), and Jordan's mom (Susie)! I got some sweet presents like bridal magazines and a beautiful blue cameo pin from Susie and ate a really delicious cobbler at the restaurant.



Now that it's been so long since the proposal, a lot of the wedding planning is done; I have my dress, the venue, we've taken our engagement pictures, and a lot of other things. June 30th is the day, people! Mark your calendars! :)

-Claire

The Long-Awaited Engagement Post, Part 1

Okay, okay, this is a long time coming, I know... Life has just been so busy the last month! Who knew that the second you get engaged is the second you start planning your wedding? Not me, anyway. Add that on top of starting graduate school, working two jobs, and trying to figure out life in Portland and you find that the blogging never gets done.

Oh gosh, I don't even know where to start--there's so much to tell! And I specifically asked Jordan not to put any details about the engagement on Facebook so that I could tell the whole story here on the blog instead. :)

I guess the best place to start is the ring. Jordan and I had been looking on and off since around my birthday in July. I found one online that I loved, and none of the ones I saw in person really compared to this beautiful vintage ring that I had found. But neither Jordan nor I was particularly thrilled with ordering something so special like an engagement ring through a computer without seeing it first; as I tried on rings, I realized that the ones that I thought I would really like didn't look as good on my hand as I thought. So after deciding that the online ring was too expensive and the risk was too great, we started looking at other places.

The Saturday before we got engaged (so September 15th), Jordan bought us tickets to a Portland Timbers soccer game. It was SO much fun--it actually reminded me a lot of seeing Nottingham Forest play when I studied abroad in Oxford. They have all of their own club's chants and cheers, and everyone was wearing green and white. The Timbers were down 0-1 and it was near the 80th minute when we decided to leave to beat the crowd. Literally the second we stepped out of the stadium the Timbers scored a goal and the stadium just exploded. Of course.

Anyway, there was a jewelry store close to the stadium that Jordan wanted to look at, so we walked a couple of blocks down and talked to someone there. There were a couple of rings that I liked a lot, but they were pretty expensive. Mostly, Jordan wanted to ask if they could custom design a ring that looked similar to the vintage ring that I had seen online. We probably spent a good 45 minutes in there, looking at all sorts of different styles and cuts and bands... And even though I liked a few of the rings and we were planning to come back the next weekend, I didn't feel convinced that I had found "the one" just yet.

As we left the store, I started telling Jordan about that I felt a little discouraged after seeing all of the rings over the last few months. I couldn't figure out if I didn't love any of the rings because I truly didn't like them, or if I was waiting for some magical feeling that might not even exist. Maybe I had been watching too many romantic comedies and I just needed to pick one that I thought was pretty.

There was one more store that I really wanted to go to that I had read reviews about online. It was a little vintage jewelry store called Gilt on NW 23rd, which is one of my favorite parts of Portland. I didn't have extremely high hopes for the place--my mom and I do a lot of antique shopping, and when most places say they have vintage jewelry, they usually have one or two diamond rings and the rest are costume.

This is Gilt--it doesn't look like a store, but it's so amazing on the inside!

Well, we walked into the store, and my heart started beating so fast. There was an entire glass counter FULL of beautiful, one-of-a-kind diamond rings. As soon as I saw them, I knew we were going to find my ring there. We started talking to one of the women who worked there, and I just felt like I was in a dream. The first ring I tried on looked very similar to the one that I loved online, and it was so beautiful when I put it on. I was so excited... until I looked at the price--I think it was around $11,000. Needless to say, I took it off and handed it straight back to her!

Jordan and I both started to get worried; what if all of the rings were that expensive? I think the woman could tell what we were thinking, because she asked Jordan what his budget was. He told her, and she smiled and said they had a lot of rings at or under that price. So she started pulling several out at a time, and I loved them all. They were all so unique and different that it was hard to compare and decide which ones I liked the best. At first, I was just looking at white gold and platinum rings, since yellow gold seemed a little too old-fashioned for me.

But then she pulled out a little cluster ring with seven diamonds set in platinum with a gold band, and I literally gasped. It was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen. It had a thin band (one of the things I really wanted), and it was just so striking and sparkly without looking gaudy. I put it on my finger and I absolutely knew it was the one. I couldn't stop smiling or looking at it in the mirror. It was such a strange feeling--I had no idea that I would have instantly felt that strongly about a ring. But oh my goodness, it was so perfect. And the thing that really sold me was that Jordan liked it the best out of all of them as well. So I looked at him and said, "This is it. This is the one I want!"

But now we were kind of in an awkward situation, because the woman informed us that they didn't put rings on hold--you had to pay for it all at once. Although the ring was under Jordan's budget (yay!), it was still a lot of money to pay at one time. And of course Jordan didn't want to talk to her about it while I was standing right there, so I left and took a walk and called my parents. When Jordan caught up with me a little later, I was dying to ask him a million questions, but I didn't. I'm kind of a surprise-ruiner, and this was one surprise that I didn't want to spoil!

As we were driving home, I told him that I really hoped that it worked out, because I didn't want anyone else to buy it. Little did I know that Jordan had bought the ring just then and it was in his pocket! So sneaky.

Here it is!! Let me know what you think in the comments. :)

See the band? It's a little blurry, but it's a really pretty double band that's still really thin.

The ring was made in the early 1900s. I wish I knew all the history behind it!

This was right after we got engaged. :)

Okay, so this was a lot of reading, so I figured I would split this into two different parts. So stay tuned for part 2 of my engagement post and I'll fill you in on all of the details about the engagement!! :)


-Claire