Catching Up: Fancy Parties and Wedding Photos

Because I've been so busy over the past week, I haven't been able to write about some big things happening! Like I mentioned before, last Saturday Jordan and I had to leave everything in a complete mess at our apartment to go to a party celebrating the launch of a new Apple product that his team worked on. The party was held at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. I had been there once before, with Katie last summer, but we only visited the tower that is free for admission. As soon as we got to the party I was blown away. There were sooo many people there, that we sort of got lost and didn't see as much art as we would have liked. We stayed close to the various food and dessert buffets and hung out with Jordan's co-workers. The party had an African safari-esque theme and they had some great musical groups providing entertainment. It was super fun, and it gave me an excuse to buy a new dress (I conveniently left most of mine in Michigan!). But sadly, neither of us saw Steve Jobs..maybe next time.

In other news, our photographer must have gone to work as soon as the wedding was over because the pictures are all done! The full album is up on her website and she put together a beautiful slideshow of the highlights. She was so wonderful on the day of and I love how the pictures turned out. Eventually we'd like to get a formal album made by her but for now we're going to get a file of the pictures and do some prints ourselves. I also want to get a few canvas pictures made for our apartment, but there's too many pictures to choose from! I'm having a hard time narrowing down.

Here's a link to the slideshow:

Kristen and Jordan's Wedding in Emerald Isle

And she has a nifty tool on her website so I can show all the pictures from the full album here, although probably only until August 20th, which is when the album will go offline.

If you want the log in information for her website to see all the pictures in non-slideshow format just let me know! You can also purchase prints directly through her and she does touching up on each one.

A Video Tour

We had a very busy weekend around here. Moving day was Saturday and we have everything but cleaning supplies out of the Cupertino apartment. Not to say we're all settled...we still have tons of unpacking and setting up to do and we're lacking in the furniture department currently. But don't worry! We purchased a living room rug yesterday and will be ordering more rugs and a bedroom set this week. Woo! As soon as we got everything in the door we had to turn around and start getting ready for an Apple party to celebrate the launch of a product Jordan worked on. It was awesome but we were so exhausted from moving that we ended up leaving a bit early.

To help you get a feel for the layout of the apartment, here's a video Jordan took on his iPhone the day we got the keys (so it's completely empty). Once we're more settled I'll be sure to post another of the final product. Enjoy!

Apartment Tour I from Kristen R on Vimeo.

Our New Home

Yesterday Jordan and I drove up to the city to sign the lease and get the keys for the new apartment, our first real one together. We were so excited to finally get in, even if we won't be officially moving in and living there until next weekend. Originally we were thinking the last weekend of July for the move, but we were just too antsy being in Cupertino with not much to do and most of our stuff in boxes or suitcases anyway. So yesterday we took a carload of stuff up and today we plan to take another. After 1 or 2 more runs this week and the big move on Saturday, we'll finally be living in San Francisco!

So without further ado, here are the pictures we took of our new place:

View from the entryway. Bathroom and dining room on the right, living room straight ahead.

Bathroom. Older style tiles but still very nice, and with 2 showers.

Dining room. Kitchen on the left.

Built in buffet cabinets in the dining room.

The kitchen. Plenty of storage space!

The living room. Bay window facing Fillmore St.

View from the bay window. I spy a sailboat!

Another view of the living room, and the giant closet.

The bedroom.

Big walk-in closet :)

So we're signing up visitors! Who wants to come stay with us?

Pioneer Woman Thinks We're "Precious"

Excuse me if I can't contain my excitement, but Jordan and I made it on to PIONEER WOMAN'S SITE today! She called our wedding photo "precious". AHHH!! This is amazing! Dreams really do come true.

Check out the post here.

Now we have to thank Pamela for this because she's the one who took the picture and submitted it to one of Pioneer Woman's Flickr photo contests. She periodically holds these contests for aspiring photographers and the theme of this one was iPhone photos. Pamela's picture made the cut :)

For those of you who don't know about my obsession with Pioneer Woman, it all started over Christmas break my junior year of college, when my sister Katie was home for the holiday and happened to show me her site as we were perusing the internet. She's a ranch wife from Oklahoma who started blogging about cooking but has expanded into photography and other subjects. She now has a cookbook, a book about her love story, and she's actually getting a show on Food Network this fall (I've already told Jordan that we need DVR so I can record them). Anyway over the past few years I've followed her very closely and tried my hand at some of her recipes. Now that we're moving into our first real apartment and will finally get to unpack our shower gifts, I hope to make many many more.

So thank you Pamela! Best surprise ever!

Belated Pictures

I finally got it to work so here are some belated pictures from last weekend:

Lauren and Lance (hi Kimberly!)

Yum.

The outside of our new apartment building! Ours will be the lowest one on the left hand side - with the blinds up. We'l have interior pictures by next week!

Success!

We found our new apartment! Hooray! The rental tour on Saturday turned out to be a HUGE help. The lady who showed us around all day knew everything about the city down to all the bus routes and where the good grocery stores were at. So partly based on her recommendations, we ended up with a place in the Marina neighborhood, slightly farther north than we were originally planning. During the tour, we saw 8 or 9 different apartments before deciding that the 3rd one we'd seen was the one for us. And it's beautiful! It's a one bedroom but is gigantic. Seriously, we could almost fit the futon in one of the closets. The building was built in the 1930's and still has a lot of charm, but the apartment itself has been nicely updated. We are signing the lease and getting the keys on Saturday, so I will have pictures up soon with a few more details about the place!

As for the neighborhood, it's a nearly perfect location (other than it's an hour+ commute by shuttle for Jordan and 30 minutes by bus for me..oh well). We're two blocks from the Bay (we can actually see it down the street from our living room window, two blocks from really lively streets with restaurants, shops, and bars and a few blocks from the Safeway! We're so excited to move in, and hope for visitors too!

After our successful Saturday, we drove up to Emeryville on Sunday where Lauren and Lance just moved for a surprise party for Lance's birthday. We grilled out by the pool and enjoyed the warm sun! It was fun and super relaxing. I have a few pictures, but unfortunately the upload function is not working on the blog, so those will come soon.

As for slightly-more-boring logistical news, I'm well on my way to officially becoming a Raetz! I applied for my CA drivers license today and everything else will be a lot easier once I get that in the mail. We're still working on getting the car registered, which we hope to do soon so we can try out street permit parking instead of paying for the monthly garage fee. I also signed up for my next CPA exam (much less fun), so the studying has commenced.

The Hunt

Apartment hunting in San Francisco is a whole different ball game. All along we've known that as part of Apple's relocation package, we'd be taken on a tour to various apartments scheduled by a realty specialist. That tour is happening tomorrow, but this week I decided to look on my own to get a feel for it and also to see a few apartments that I knew would be gone quickly.

The housing market in SF is pretty brutal right now. We were informed by our relocation specialist that prices have shot up since Jordan moved here in January, and of course the good apartments go quickly. Most of the apartments we found browsing through Craigslist last weekend have been or will be rented by the time we take our tour tomorrow. Just to give you an idea, on Tuesday I visited two apartments downtown. At one of them, a very nice 2 bedroom apartment in Nob Hill (a very centrally located, fun neighborhood), I was joined by at least 15 other people at the showing all vying for this place. And who knows, they could have shown it to more people at other times. We went ahead and applied, because you have to do it on the spot if you want a chance, but pretty much knew there was no hope. Apartment hunting in SF is almost like a sales pitch for yourself - it's not about finding the apartment you like, it's about finding several apartments you'd be happy with and then presenting yourself to the owner and hoping you're what they're looking for. We've also learned that we have to broaden our search and not get hung up on certain amenities. While the nice 2 bedroom affordable apartment in Nob Hill with hardwood floors and a bay window would be perfect, it would also be perfect for half the other people looking for apartments currently, which means less chance of getting it.

Jordan and I are lucky that we're flexible and not in a huge hurry to move. With the month to month lease in Cupertino, we could just as easily sign a lease tomorrow or find something where move in is not until mid-August. Either way I'm excited to keep looking and to find a place that we can be comfortable and happy in. Maybe I'll have news that we found a place by next week! Wish us luck!

Hello California

We safely arrived back in California on Saturday after a beautiful wedding followed by a wonderful vacation week at the beach, and we're married! Jordan even had a stretch limo pick us up from the San Jose airport Saturday night! It came in handy since a regular taxi would not have been able to fit all our luggage. Once I have some pictures to share, I'll write more about the wedding but for now I'll just share what we've been up to the past few days.

We're still living in Cupertino near Jordan's work, but just getting started with the search process to find an apartment in downtown San Francisco. It will be an hour commute for Jordan after the move, but at least he gets a nice free shuttle provided by Apple. I'm pretty excited about moving and getting settled in our first real apartment together. Right now, all of our shower gifts are still in boxes because we figured it would be pointless to unpack and repack a month later. We hope to be moving within the first few weeks of August, but it could be sooner than that depending on what we find.

I haven't quite gotten used to the time change yet, so that coupled with the fact that the sun shines directly into the apartment in the morning, there's no air conditioning, and the crows are loud..we've been getting up very early and have barely made it to 11pm some nights. Aside from running lots of errands and grocery shopping, we've spent most of our time looking at apartments online and perusing for a new bedroom set, which might be one of our first big

purchases after we move.

Yesterday we celebrated the 4th in Walnut Creek at Kimberly and Jason's. They had just flown in from NC, so Jordan and I drove up for some pool time. We also tried out two recipes from one of our cookbooks, and they turned out to be delicious! Although according to Jordan, they would have been difficult to screw up. The fancy titles are "Seared Beef Tenderloin Steaks with Dark Beer Reduction and Blue Cheese" and"Skillet Asparagus and Roasted Bell Peppers". Definitely worth trying again. We've been pretty good about cooking at home the few times I've visited, so trying some new recipes will make that even more fun. Now following all those cooking and baking blogs might come in handy!

Our lovely meal (excuse the iPhone quality and lack of user skill). We also decided we need another side to fill up the plate!

Aside from apartment hunting and packing, over the next few weeks I'll be running errands to make my name change and California residence official, and will have to start studying for those pesky CPA exams again. Although, the good news is I have two out of the way :)