The Brent Proposal

Hello loyal blog readers! Sorry I've neglected this blog for MONTHS, hopefully you all haven't given up on me and reading my blog. So much has happened in the last few months of my life, I finally have a moment to breathe and get caught up on my life + inspiration. We'll start by catching up with THIS - THE PROPOSAL! After 9 years of dating Brent proposed to me on the beach in Long Beach with this amazing Eiffel Tower ring he had made for me. BEST ENGAGEMENT RING EVER! We are moving to France in a few weeks, hence the Eiffel Tower. It was so cute and romantic, and even though it stuck out a bit, I rocked it until we got our real rings made. Everywhere I went, almost every day someone made a comment about how dangerous it was - well, you are all lucky I didn't punch you in the face with it. Brent tricked me into going down to the beach by telling me he had to collect straws off the beach for a presentation at work. He said similar to how Billabong makes boardshorts out of recycled water bottles, Quiksilver was going to start making boardshorts out of plastic straws from the beach, and they were going to give a presentation about it, so he needed to collect some to take photos for the presentation. Of course I never turn down an opportunity to go beach combing (beach combing HOARDER!), so I agreed to go, not thinking anything of it, picking up every dirty plastic straw in the sand all along the bay, all the way to the beach. GROSS! AND NO, Quiksilver is NOT actually making boardshorts out of straws, but there are SO MANY straws on the beach that I completely believed him. (Maybe someone SHOULD think about making something out of recycled beach straws?) Anyway - once we had gathered about 50 dirty straws he asked me to help him photograph them in the sand… so as I started styling straws in the sand, he got down on one knee and surprised me. I don't really remember much of what either of us said (I feel like this happens to a lot of people), but I remember being really happy and excited and surprised (obviously surprised, because if I had been suspicious at all I would NOT have worn workout clothes with my Patagonia vest - why didn't I even think to put on a cuter sweater and hat for this?! Haha oh well). He was also clever enough to have asked our amazing photographer friend Kristina of Kristina Lee Photography to photograph it all - she was hiding in the lifeguard tower on the beach snapping all these awesome photos. Thanks for the great pictures Kristina! We went back to our house after where more friends were waiting with champagne and it couldn't have been more PERFECT. That's my story.