Valentine's Day: Celebrating the Single Life

It's almost Valentine's Day and for the many eligible, beautiful singles, it seems like a reminder of their "void."  Is Valentine's Day just a "Hallmark Holiday," created to encourage consumerism in America?  Why is society so focused on the need to link-up?  Can't happy singles celebrate in creative ways, as well?  Here are some offbeat Valentine's Day ideas to spark up a new tradition that doesn't revolve around your significant other, or lack thereof, for that matter.

Valentine's Day Girls' Night Out: Seeking Mr. Right Now
Create and design a sleek Evite by Postmark, or any other company of your choice and invite your favorite, upbeat girlfriends for a night out.  Create an itinerary of sorts including restaurants or bars you'll make appearances at and goals for each girl.  Write out their goals on pink index cards and mixing them up in a giant fishbowl, have your friends choose a card at the beginning of the night.  Each card will give a girl an endeavor or goal for the night.

Ideas for sample index cards:  "Find a tall, dark, handsome man before 9pm, make eye contact, smile and approach him.  Compliment him."

"Buy a drink for a lucky man at the bar and have the bartender/server let the gentleman know the drink is from you."

"Make three people laugh tonight."

"Make a stranger smile."

"Get three phone numbers tonight."
Read the endeavors to each other so that you can encourage the adventures of the night!

Valentine's Day Girls' Night In: Relax, Reflect, Enjoy
Host a relaxing night of bliss with your girls at your house or one of theirs!  Buy all of your favorite incense and/or candles, create a peaceful playlist, (even ocean waves) and purchase some different fresh facial masks.  Invite a fortune-teller, or write your own secret fortunes for each friend.  Create a party favor of cute, girly bags with pink ribbon, pink or red nail polish and/or lip color for your favorite friends.  Bake adorable heart-shaped sugar cookies and play a favorite movie in the background.

Valentine's Day Tea Party
Host a dress-up themed brunch with your best gals.  Your friends will be excited to dress to impress, share gossip, tea and cookies at your home or even a favorite hotel.

Valentine's Day Yoga Detox
Invite your best girls to power hot yoga class or outdoor yoga, or whichever yoga you aspire to try!  After class discuss how you each feel different, more centered or gratitude.  If possible, have this conversation in the steam room!

Valentine's Day Rebellion Potluck
Invite your friends to each invite one single friend to your singles' potluck.  Each guest must bring a dish and a single friend.  This is a great way to extend your social circle and recipe collection without spending time on pinterest or facebook.

These are some fun Valentine's Day activities you can enjoy with close friends, on or around Valentine's Day.  Maybe they will inspire a new tradition.

Private Powder: The Ultimate Winter Vacation

February is the perfect month for venturing to Big Sky, Montana, home of the perfect place for a private ski and snowboard haven.  Yellowstone Club offers elite members, such as Bill Gates, an eventful, family-friendly environment and their trademark -- Private Powder.

The upscale club, often known as YC, creates perfect snow-topped mountains for picturesque skiing, snowboarding, and tubing.  The club is home to an eclectic crowd, ranging from some of the world's most powerful people, to trust-fund kids and even celebrities such as Justin Timberlake.  Just a few years ago, Timberlake proposed to Jessica Biel in this cozy, private resort.

The site hosts an enormous main lodge with a lively staff who seem to create a new theme, event, or showcase complete with song and dance each day.  Besides ski lessons and theme parties, guests have the option to relax in the home theater.  Strange spectacles entertain guests, like the random appearance of the larger-than-life-sized blowup champagne bottle gliding down the mountain as guests raise their hot cocoa and cheer with encouragement of the glowing staff.

The private mountain is home to many identical upscale log cabin castles with $30,000,000 price tags.  The club is exclusive and caters only to members and guests of members, offering breathtaking views from an obscenely high elevation of nearly 10,000 feet. Club visitors can literally feel the Big Sky altitude at Yellowstone Club.  They can also feel the understated, unique personality of the club.  Although the demographic invites a particular economic stratosphere, YC is actually not an elitist place.  It's an elysium of sorts where members engage each other and feel gratitude for their hidden retreat in the Rocky Mountains.

A Nontraditional Vacation in Hollywood Hills

Ever desire an escape into the life of an elusive Hollywood star, just for a weekend?  The Hercules Estate provides quiet enjoyment for many actors, writers, producers, NFL players, and Playboy models to inhale glorious views that resemble what Heaven should look like. The home was designed in a flawless flow that lets guests enter and feel as though they are gliding into a spaceship.  Multitudinous times throughout the day, traffic stops at the sudden view of the exterior presence that truly looks like a giant ship from another time period, 100 years in the future, landed at the top of the hill.

When you enter the Hercules mansion, you are enveloped in peaceful upscale modern design.  The estate seems to create its own language, its own uniquely refined energy.  Secrets of elegance lie in every corner.  As you enter the foyer, slightly draw back the lush maroon rug to discover a glass hole in the floor, offering a sneak peak to the winding wine cellar below.

Continue on, enjoy the high-ceilings, a full bar opposite a magnificently-shaped entertainment center, an astoundingly powerful blue refrigerator, a perfect dining area, and an inviting sitting room with open windows facing the sprawling hills and homes below, complete with an oversized half-donut royal purple couch that one could only read about in a Roald Dahl story or imagine in a German castle.

Make your way upstairs by elevator or sweeping staircase, the choice is yours.  The elevator takes guests up in an instant to the comfortable bedrooms and of course the centerpiece of the estate, the master bedroom.  The bedroom offers a fireplace ready to calm your senses at the flick of a switch.  You can soak up the universe as you lie in bed since the entire room is framed in moveable glass, complete with a balcony outlining the upstairs overlooking the enormous infinity pool and entire world of the Hollywood Hills.  At night, the view is like looking at a never-ending field of diamonds.  Your shower with built-in steam room perfectly lends itself to the outdoor walkway, so that when you awake, you can stretch out into your terrace, looking down on the land as king of the universe.  The master closet seems to go on for days, complete with a secret passageway into the master intelligence and sound system of the estate.

Are you ready to escape the world?  The Hercules Estate can inspire your inner artist, awaken your senses and feed the soul.  There is much to discover on the property...even a beautiful, lush pond.  It's a place where a story could be told, films have been shot, and for the exclusive, fortunate adventurer, a private, impressive sanctuary awaits.

http://www.herculesestate.com/ 
(photos courtesy of HerculesEstate.com)

I love TALON REID!

Hey World,


SO much going on in the DiNovi World...I'm in law school finals...I'm busy...I did well on midterms and on my legal writing final...thank God.

Anyway, I want to post about one of my favorite Hollywood Actor/Models...TALON REID.  He is so talented and we've been friends since 2011. We met through our mutual actor friend, Shane West. (A Walk To Remember). Talon and I caught each others' eye at Shane West's 4th of July party in 2011 and we've been close friends ever since. We have a lot in common. We are both tenacious, and literally will not let anyone or anything get in our way. We are both out of control. What we say= GOES. We don't care what anyone thinks of us. We do what we like. We wear what we like. We make the rules.

Talon and I were born in the Midwest. We both moved to LA at a very young (just out of high school!!!) age.  Talon dropped out of college after a short time...I left University of Illinois Urbana Champaign..or you could say I DROPPED OUT to move to LA, pursue acting and I graduated from Loyola Marymount.

We both live in gorgeous houses in the Hollywood Hills.

Talon and I have worked together a lot from 2011-2012-2013 and we have a lot to look forward to in 2014...

I LOVE TALON REID!!!

Peace & Love.

Alex

VERSACE

Hey World,
I have not forgotten about you. I have been QUITE busy. I have a lot going on so I'm not sure where to begin.

Love, it's here.


Family...amazing.

My birthday was rad, thanks to all of my posse. We had THREE birthday parties in LA.

I do miss my Hinsdale friends and family. I do NOT miss your weather but I will be back over the Christmas Holiday to spend quality time with the family and I have a written work to showcase.

I wrote an edgy, philosophical piece. I'll share it soon. It's being published in 2014. In the meantime, I'm a full-time law student and was offered a very cool role on a fresh TV show....so that's just a little sneak peek of what I have on my plate. 

Other than work, I've been traveling on weekends with my life partner and spending a lot of quality time with him at my house and his house.

PEACE, LOVE.

AD

Every West Coast Girl Should Own Great Cowboy Boots

Hey World,

I just bought these new beautiful FRYE boots. OMG. No joke, they were shipped in from HAWAII (overnighted on Tuesday) and I received them yesterday (Thursday). They are super special because they were the last pair in the entire company in my size and the lovely sales associates found them for me, at a store in Hawaii. I will forever wear them with grace and nostalgia for my beautiful vacations in the great state of Hawaii. I love Hawaii. Once when I was in Hawaii, my dad taught me, "La Luna Splendeva Sul Mare." (His version of: The moon shines beautifully on the sea). I will never forget that memory in Maui. 

Every West Coast girl should own great cowboy boots. You have to rock the Western look...and what about those daring nights you find yourself showing off your moves on the bull at Saddle Ranch?  You need very classy, well-made, good-looking cowboy boots.  
XO,
Alex

   

Welcome to Childhood Summers in Chicago, JULY 2013!

Hey World,

I'm so loving July in Chicago. It's humid but you can't beat the Chicago food and Chicago people. I'm still working on my book and taking a law school class at Chicago-Kent.

I grew up in a perfect suburb, about 30 minutes from Chicago.  This fairy tale land is called HINSDALE. 

I spent some of the greatest childhood memories playing soccer, softball, violin, and dancing in multiple dance companies in Hinsdale. God, I love Hinsdale. I hold a special place in my heart for my hometown. It was safe growing up and we could bike ride all day and night after school if we finished our homework.  My parents bought, knocked down and built a gorgeous Frank Lloyd Wright-style house in The Woodlands.  The Woodlands is such a great part of Hinsdale because of the spacious lots, numerous parks, tennis courts, and trees for miles.  My father planted these king-sized trees in front of our house that grew to such an absurd but magnificent stature by the time I was 18 and left for college.  Wow. Those trees created a secret path in the front yard, strewn with a wood chip trail, that my grandparents would obsess over combing through to destroy any and all weeds or unwanted plants. It was our own forest in the front yard.

Across the street from our home was The Park.  This park stretched on for almost four blocks. Our parents loved the privacy; while my brother and I loved the option to play "500" with our Nerf footballs, flashlight tag, water balloon fights, and Ghost in the Graveyard.  It was our private park...so much that we felt entitled to create our own treehouse there one young summer. That was when I learned the extent of my dad's handyman skills. He scooped up a few pieces of wood, hammered them into "our" tree across the street and my brother and I would climb up into our own little canopy of imagination.

We would create make-believe games with our friends in Hinsdale that only made sense to us.  Of course I was the Princess and my brother was Super Mario and we were flying because we had pixie dust that we found from the good fairies, the twins, our backyard neighbors, Christina & Erica.  The magic all made sense to us.  We created our own reality.

Wasn't childhood an epic era?  I love to look back fondly and remember how many times I rode my bike, fell out of a tree or rollerblading, and scraped my knee in the exact same spot one summer.  That scar is still on my right knee and I love it. It reminds me of how adventurous I am...how I never stop exploring.

Love,
Alex