a cooling breeze from the sea

Our wedding website is up!

2008-03-23T15:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know it has been a while since I last posted... but...

FINALLY! We completed our wedding website and is now running. Check out:

http://www.aletheasteven2008.com

And also here's a photo that I enhanced... (by making black & white with just green leis around our necks!)

It's not 100% done (still need to do RSVP, the registry, etc)

We're ecstatic and cannot wait for our special day to occur!

166 days to go!

(Some of you have been asking.. and yes, we already BOOKED the venue. It will be at Ocean View Resort in Seaside. We can't wait!)

Coastal Wedding Venues

2008-02-08T06:13:00.000-08:00

We are REALLY getting close to deciding the wedding date! Right we will be flexible with the dates - but our desired dates are early weekends in September or end of August. I'm hoping for either Sunday, August 31st (Labor Day weekend) or Saturday, September 6th. If it has to be another date -- we'll be flexible but we just hope that most of the guests will be able to make it since we are kinda planning it at last minute (well, we were told that it's NOT that last minute so I'm grateful. We got 6-7 months to go! So, that's not bad, right?)

I'm also VERY excited about staying in Seaside overnight today so we could go to the Beach Bridal expo in the morning! They will provide ASL Interpreter so we hope that she will do a good job.

Also, here's the wedding venues that we will be checking out this weekend (we will stop by these places in the order too):

Oceanview Resort- Seaside

Surfsand - Cannon Beach
Hallmark Inn - Cannon Beach
Tolovana Inn - Cannon Beach
Arch Cape House - Arch Cape

Spanish Head Inn- Lincoln City

Salishan Spa and Resort- Lincoln City

Hallmark Inn - Newport (yes, another one)
Stone Crest Cellar - South Beach (just 3 miles south of Newport)

Heck, we don't even know if we will reserve one of these places. We may even end up learning more about other places at the expo or just drive down on the coast and see a place that may catch our eyes.

As for the ceremony - I would like to get married outside or inside as long as there's a coastal view. I've been anxious to check out the locations above so we could RESERVE then start worrying about the rest of wedding details. I can't wait to move on the fun part (trying on the gown, ordering wedding favors, etc) - but reserving the venue is our 1st priority right now. We HOPE to decide next week after checking out the venues.

It'll be a long yet fun weekend!

My first vlog!

2007-12-22T20:44:00.000-08:00

Pardon the quality -- I was using the laptop but well... enjoy it, regardless. :)

Happy Holidays to you all!

Alethea & Steven

Latest picture of our kitchen

2007-12-11T17:53:00.000-08:00

These are from last Sunday that I took so we could put it on our holiday photo card. I think these looks so much better than the previous posting. I took several pictures with my camera's different settings... I think all of these look good. Our kitchen's actually not SO green, it actually looks more like the last one.

Natural and electricity lights does make a big difference as it affects the look of the kitchen with different shades of colors and lights/darkness.

We look forward to remodeling our bathroom and possible expansion for both of our bedrooms in the future. We'll see!

After & before photos of our kitchen

2007-11-29T00:08:00.001-08:00

Pah! I've been procrastinating on posting our newly renovated kitchen pictures! It took us only THREE months to renovate the kitchen. BIG thanks to Jon, Steve's Dad, for helping us. Without him, we wouldn't have done it! We love you, Dad! ;)

Be sure to remember what this BEFORE photo looks like then scroll down and see a HUGE difference.

Wrap-up for our protection. Also, we literally used our bathroom to clean dishes for about a month. Yuk...

Way, WAY old white cabinets - it's 1960's style. These were too small for us.

To our shock, there was an OLD mold behind the cabinets. Boy, were we glad for making a decision to renovate the kitchen!

We tornthe wall down... that was certainly a fun part.

Took out the old window and put in energy-efficient window. ;)

Ta-da.

We were quite surprised to find 1950's checkerboard floors underneath.

Time to put up our new cabinets! We were pretty ecstatic.

Steve & his Dad were definitely proud of their work. ;)

Putting up stainless microwave. Now, it's getting there and looking better...

Sora, our cat, enjoying being a center of attention ;)

Still not complete...

Our beautiful granite countertops

Yay, we're ALMOST done

ALL DONE. We really loved the kitchen as it has a lot of space and is open to the dining room/living room. I'm elated that we got what we wanted -- spacious, big sink, modern stainless units & wood hardfloor.

Just so you know - the last picture was taken probably in April or May - I need to take pictures of our kitchen soon since we've decorated a bit more than that one. Oh! The black rug isn't there anymore.

Here's the funny part... Steve and I used hgtv.com's customized program trying to design our own kitchen before we actually did anything. Now, you can see how identical is it to our current kitchen. ;)

Photos of my engagement ring / Maui, Hawaii

2007-11-28T13:18:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd post engagement/ring photos... although, I'm sure you've seen some of these photos.

Taken by Niki at CB & Rush's wedding early this month

Taken by the window in our front yard

Close-up of my new/upgraded ring, a Platinum Princess cut diamond.. the only difference is that it has the diamonds on each side. See below for more details.

Taken the day we went snorkeling/snuba... this one is my favorite!

These two pictures above are the original ring that Steve gave me when we were in Maui-- but he said I could upgrade it if I wanted to. Of course, at first I said no because I didn't want to change the ring since it was all him who picked it out.. but when we went to the jewelry store to resize the ring and I was so tempted. He just smiled and said go ahead and take a different one! It took me nearly 2 hours to finally decide after looking at different rings and just decided to stick with the original look expect that there were more additional diamonds on the side. Right now my current ring has the original ring's distinct look to it... I'm very happy with the result! :)

Funny, Michie say to me "Remember the rainbow," when she and George were dropping me off at the restaurant. Of course, I had NO idea what she meant... now I am grateful she said that to me. Thanks, girl! Mwahs!

At Pacific'o, a fairly expensive restaurant, in Lahaina. We decided to make a dinner reservation there after reading that it's one of the best restaurants in West Maui and was the only beachfront one.

Steve's meal was Pink-peppered steak - he said it's really delicious! I had a bite so I gotta agree with him.

For dinner, I had fresh hapi-hapi wrapped in seaweed with tempuras... it wasn't bad.

Beautiful cruise off the sea

Three-men rowing in the canoe

Banana lumpia as well as banana ice cream for dessert. Yummy!

Tiki in the gorgeous sky

Beautiful sunset

I was definitely overhappy!

Steven must be so relieved that I said yes...? :)

The site where Steven proposed!

Ok, so what happened...?

After being full with food in our stomachs so Steve picked up the bill, he then said he wanted to go for a stroll on the beach so I was like - oh okay, why not? But before we actually got to the beach... I saw these nice homemade Hawaiian stuff on the pathway and before I could look at these, Steve just tapped me on my shoulders and when I turned around - he just kneeled down with the red ring box and inside was a beautiful Platinum princess cut diamond ring and signed to me, "Will you marry me?" I was very surprised and I even said "Are you teasing me?!" He said no, no and asked me to marry him for second time. God, what was I thinking?! Of course, I said yes yes... and we continued to stroll across the beach as we wanted some privacy and just stood there kissing and hugging under the moonlight bit far away from the restaurant.

It was such a romantic night and I was really on a cloud nine the whole night. ;)

OVERDUE posting!

2007-11-21T11:37:00.000-08:00

Geez! It's been, what, SEVEN months since I last blogged! I guess it's time to get back in blogging world!

2007 has been a busiest year for us! Let's see what I have done for the past several months...

January - Nothing usual. Went to Western States Basketball Classic/Cheerleading Competition in Riverside, CA. I was working as a cheerleading coach at that time. (You can look at one of my previous postings about it)
February - We purchased our first home. Yay! (As you can see on my previous posts)
March-April-May - we were really busy remodeling our kitchen in the house. I have to post the photos on here soon! ... Also, I started teaching ASL part-time at Western Oregon University (WOU) in late March. Additionally, I went to Chicago for Michelle's Bridal Shower party. I had a great time.
June - My 30th birthday at our house and Michelle's bachelorette party in Las Vegas! I also sponsored Brenna as she was a candidate in Miss Deaf Oregon Pageant. She won 3rd place - congratulations to her!
July - Michelle & George's wedding in Chicago. It was GORGEOUS! Jenko also visited northwest so it was great having her here.
August - Traveling on the west coast sightseeing and attending Boyer Familly Reunion in California - it was so great seeing everyone again. I actually finally felt settling down a bit...
September - Back to work --I resumed teaching ASL at WOU.
October - MAUI, HAWAII! I went to Shelby & Mike's wedding and it was just BEAUTIFUL! I felt like we were in heaven when we headed there. Steve and I spend 4 nights and 5 days in Maui. We wish we stayed longer but it was best time of our lives. Oh, I also got another part-time job as an ASL instructor for the Community (parents, children, etc) at OSD.
NOT ONLY THAT, Steve also PROPOSED to me in Maui. It has been a happiest time of my life. If you want to know more details - you can read about how it happened (you have to sign in facebook, though).
November (this month) - It just continues to get better -- I attended Courtney & Rush's wedding in Santa Cruz, CA. Again, it was gorgeous and simple. AND I got a job offer as an Administrative staff at HOVRS!!!!!!!

Oh, I also posted like over hundreds of photos on facebook. Feel free to look in there. If you don't have an account, I will probably post a few on here... anyway, I'll blog again real soon!

;)

Cats cats cats

2007-03-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

It has been a month since we moved in our house (it'll be exactly one month tomorrow as we moved in Feb. 24th) We've been busy with our projects, including removing the woodstove in the living room and it looks so much better without it! I will post the pictures later.

I notice that many cats live around here... in fact, three cats already stopped by and greeted our babies! (Steve and I will not let our cats out until we take them to the vet for the shots and wait until the weather becomes warmer and we may let them out eventually...)

We met one of our neighbors, Linda, and she seemed nice. She told us about the previous owner of our house and I did not appreciate the fact that he left his grey cat, Bear, and that cat has been living in Linda's backyard. :/

Anyway, here's the pictures as you can see why there's a quite several cats around here!

Bear - it's apparent that he used to live here -

it's awful that the previous owner just left him here :(

Of course, Pumpkin was being a curious cat...

Greeting each other... cute!

My other cat, Sora, being cautious...

It really broke our heart when Linda told us about Bear's pain around his mouth as it hurts when he eats dry food. She and her hubby couldn't afford to take him to the vet, so we gave her $20. We also felt like taking Bear in but knowing that taking one more cat into our home will put a burden on our shoulders, so we couldn't...

Later, Linda took him to the vet using our money for Bear's exam and told us that he has gingivitis/gum disease, something like that... he may have to be put to sleep if it spreads around his body and isn't being fixed up. *sighs* We and other neighbors will keep our eyes out for him...

That very evening, the black cat came by...

As usual, Pumpkin being friendly...

That black cat's eyes are scary! ;)

Yet other cat in our front yard

Although, he didn't greet our cats...
but he was certainly being friendly ;)

Refining the house

2007-03-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

Right now we're just cleaning and fine tuning the house as we realized that it takes a lot of time and patience to decide on what to do with remodeling process. So, right now we are just going to refine the house by cleaning up, free up its space (by taking down the wall between two rooms), and paint the prime white (we'll decide on the color later).

Our next project will be remodeling the kitchen (I don't like its ugly white 1960s cabinets!). Then perhaps remodel the bathroom sometimes this summer as I know it's impossible to redo everything at once! Yes, we were too eager to do everything at once but we need to focus one thing at a time.

Anyway... enjoy the before and after photos. :) (You can click on the photos to become bigger)

See the "entrance" wall between the two living rooms?

I felt kinda claustrophobic too! We took the "entrance" wall down between the two living rooms... scroll below to see the difference

Our little fireplace - it's still there but we plan to take it down

It turns out that it was an OLD green/gold wallpaper behind the white painting, probably 1960s style

See the gold/green thingie?

Steve & his dad, Jon, at hard work! (Jon was so sweet as he stayed at our house for a week to help us... bless him and we're lucky to have him. We love you, Dad/Jon!)

More clear picture... I turned off the camera's light. (If you see the recent and next photo - there were a lot of dirt everywhere, probably from taking down the wall)

Naturally, it was a mess

Finally complete! Looks much better, isn't it? (We will take down the wall between the kitchen and living room later)

We're still deciding on the final paint color... maybe Beige? Tan? We'll see...

No more wall. Yay!

More before and after photos!

2007-03-01T11:14:00.000-08:00

The "before" bathroom with ugly wood wallpaper. Ew! (The stuff isn't ours - it was a previous owner's. I took the picture the day we visited)

Steve & his Dad took down everything but the wall had wood stain

Finally complete! We painted it with prime white color for now. We will decide on the color later.

Close-up of the bathroom

I "died" when I saw the wallpaper! (The frame wasn't ours, it was previous owner's - I thought it was a cute picture but definitely not my type)

Wall paper down! Again, the wood stain was "stuck" so we had to cover it.

There! Looks much better, isn't it? What color should we pick to paint... hmm?

God forbid the wallpaper in the kitchen... of course, it was a MUST to take it down! (Oh, just so you know that the stuff weren't ours - it was the previous owner's)

One of our awesome friends, Ben, who was willing to lend a hand for a while. Thanks, pal! ;)

I was a happy lady that day! (We plan to purchase the new appliances, probably stainless)

I will post later with the kitchen's new look - probably a few months from now. :)

WSBC/WSCC

2007-02-16T11:04:00.000-08:00

Oregon School for the Deaf Rally Squad/Cheerleaders won 3rd place at the Western Basketball Cheerleading Classic (WSCC) tournament, which was hosted by Riverside School for the Deaf, a few weeks ago. (In case you didn't know - I was a Head Rally Coach during football & basketball season at OSD)

Although, I firmly think that we were CHAMPIONS in our hearts! ;)

Here's a picture of me & the girls...

Now that the basketball season's over, I miss working with them already. :'(

Also, the OSD boys' basketball team won 1st place for the Grey Division at Western Basketball Classic Tournament (WSBC)! The OSD girls' basketball team won 2nd place. You can view all of the information, results and pictures at:

http://www.csdr-cde.ca.gov/wsbc/

I couldn't resist posting a photo of me and Steve (he was one of the boys' basketball co-coaches) on the bus in Riverside. It's kinda blurry but I love this one of us.

My former classmates from Fremont - it was great seeing them again after graduating together 10 years ago!

Finally, I was also happy to see my sweet friend Sheila (former '97 CSDF graduate) with her cute dog. I haven't seen her for like 7, 8 years?!

EXCITING news - our FIRST home!

2007-02-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

We PURCHASED our FIRST home in Oregon. Yay!
A bit preview of our new home:

The house is cute and cozy.

Big backyard! (The junk isn't ours, we told the seller to clear it before we move in!)

The house has two bedrooms and one bathroom. Its square feet is almost 1,100 and lot size is 7,800 sq feet (which is huge!). But... it needs a LOT of work. Why? It was built in 1950 and its style is now 1960's, which is definitely DATED. We plan to remodel the kitchen and bathroom. I hope that it will be complete before the summer's time... or before my 30th Birthday in mid-June! ;) The first thing before we move in is PAINT, take down the walls (to make it open space between the kitchen/dining room and living room) and wallpapers, and take out the old carpet/vinyl floors if needed. We are also thinking about expand the house by adding 3rd bedroom and 2nd bathroom to add its value by the time we resell. We will make sure its style is IN and MODERN, so that it will LOOK GOOD! ;)

Although the closing date for the offer to go through is this Tuesday, February 13th - yep, the day BEFORE the Valentine's Day, we will move in by the end of this month. I am very excited!

I'll post more later.

NYE 2007 photos!!

2007-01-16T17:17:00.000-08:00

I went to a friend's houseparty in bay area @ Calif. for the New Years Eve. It was really wonderful seeing everyone again! (You can click on the pictures to become bigger)

Me & my honey

Me & my dear close friend, Emilie

Other one, too bad I blinked. It would've been a good shot!

My longtime sweet friends, Rush & Courtney

Rejoicing the moment of 2007! (Looks like Ian wasn't happy that 2006 ended? Hehee)

Oops, I wasn't ready...

Voila! Sam & me (I've known him since I was like 5 years old... it was great seeing him again!!)

Sam & his sweetie, Di

Steve & Hristo all smilin'

Courtney, me, Sam, & Barbie (We knew each other back in early 1980's...quite a longggg time!)

Our FINAL photo of 2006.... 2007, here we come!

Picture time!

2007-01-16T13:18:00.000-08:00

I know it's been FOREVER since I last posted on here but I felt like sharing few personal photos of mine with you over the holidays. Steve and I went to California for a week during Christmas and we had a great time!

Our most family x-mas recent photo - it was so great seeing them again. I miss them already.

(You can click on it to become bigger)

I took Steve to the Exploratorium and I knew he'd enjoy it because he's into science, technology, hands-on and stuff like that... and after that, we walked down to beach, which had a gorgeous view of golden gate bridge as you can see on here.

Viewing at one of the exquisite fishes

Steve sitting on the chair that double the size of original one on the right

Now, my turn! We just found it hilarious.. ;)

I love this one of him... (behind GG bridge)

Smooching!

Pilates - just gotta love it

2006-06-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

What a workout today -- I did cardio on elliptical for 40 minutes and then Pilates exercise for a hour at gym today. I absolutely LOVE Pilates! I first took it in college and fell in love with it. I lost 10 lbs in the last several weeks and took off few inches - yay me! (Keep in mind that I also do cardio exercises too to help shedding the fat)

I own Denise Austin's "Pilates for Everybody" and "Hit the Spot" DVDs and name to a few. The only reason I bought these is because these are CAPTIONED and help me keep motivated when I do it on my own at home. These are only like $10-13 depending on where you shop. It's really cheap. You can even get it at amazon.com. I plan to purchase Winsor Products as I recently found out that these are captioned as well.

In essence, Pilates exercise is NOT a cardiovascular workout and burning calories isn't its main focus. The Pilates method trains the whole body with a focus on strengthening the core muslces of the trunk (your middle). It simply helps sculpt and tone the body while building the lean muscles instead of being bulky. Not to mention, it helps you to have a proper posture and being more flexible! I'm not really too fond of doing weight-lifting so I decided to switch to Pilates. It's actually fun for me. So, you should try it if you want to tone up. ;)

My first posting... and other blogs

2006-06-21T21:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, since Michie has her own blog on here so thought I'd create one for myself... yes, other one! LOL.

Let's see.. I have quite several blogs --

http://www.xanga.com/breezefromwest - my recent blog. I don't blog often now that I have so many crazy things going on in my life.

http://breezefromwest.livejournal.com - my old blog. You need to log in as a friend to be able to view my entries, though. They date back to July 2004 (two years to now... wow!).

http://www.myspace.com/zephyrdame - well, it's not really a blog but rather like ringo, friendster, tickle.com, etc... it's a great way to keep in touch with friends who live a far distance away from you.