Tun­ing into Prime Time tele­vi­sion these days can be an eye-opener. For those of us who remem­ber when they couldn’t even say the word &%#@!…well they can say it now. And do, a lot. There is also lots of skin, inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior and dress on both ends of the age range, ridicu­lous lifestyles and gen­eral unbe­liev­abil­ity try­ing to be sold as the norm. I don’t buy it. You don’t have to either.

A cou­ple of years ago, I gave my 9 year old niece the DVD set of TV’s Gid­get with Sally Fields. Have you seen it? It is fab! My sis­ters and I spent many a sum­mer day watch­ing reruns of it in the 70’s. With names like Gid­get, best friend LaRue and boyfriend Moon Doggy, how could it be any­thing but inno­cent fun. And guess what, my niece and her friend LOVED it. I watched all the episodes again with them myself with­out wor­ry­ing about any awk­ward moments crop­ping up or any deep mes­sages. Two years later, she still watches it.

Last year I gave her DVD’s of Bewitched, I Dream of Jean­nie, Green Acres and The Fly­ing Nun. You will be amazed at how these old gems hold up. Are they a bit cheesy? Yes. So what. My niece is always ask­ing sto­ries about our child­hood, this is a way to share, bond and laugh together. There really was a more inno­cent time and it wasn’t just in the 1950’s.

These DVD’s and ones like them would be a great gifts for most young girls. There are just as many great ones for boys, like Alias, Smith & Jones, My Favorite Mar­t­ian and Get Smart.

The inspi­ra­tion to tell you about these TV show DVD’s came from my niece, her­self. I have been mak­ing her Hal­loween cos­tumes for most of her 11 years. This past Hal­loween, she said she already had a cos­tume. Oh, okay — I thought. I really look for­ward to work­ing with her ideas and try­ing to bring them to life, so I was a bit dis­ap­pointed. She, in fact, has said her favorite thing about Hal­loween was Aunt Jenny mak­ing her costume.

Jean­nie: Now.…and Then!

Imag­ine my delight when she said she was going to be Jean­nie! HA! She had found the cos­tume I made for a col­lege Hal­loween party, 20 years ago. I went to a fash­ion school, so stakes were pretty high. In fact, at one time, F.I.T.‘s Hal­loween party was THE party to go to in NYC.

So, it ends up that I did make her Hal­loween cos­tume, just a bit early.

The longer you reli­giously read this blog, the sooner you will real­ize I have a few fetishes…I will reveal the first obvi­ous one here: Leop­ard. There, I have said it. I am La Dolce Diva and I love Leop­ard Skin. I am not quite Eartha Kitt, I don’t roll my rrrrrr’s or make loud hiss­ing sounds, very often, but I do like the kitschy feel­ing of power that leop­ar­rrrrrd skin brings me.

As I have men­tioned before, I have sev­eral pieces of leop­ard skin acces­sories and even a few leop­ard pil­lows here and there. Which brings us to another fetish, Pajamas.

Where else can you reveal your true self? No one can say you are silly or immature..they are PAJAMAS for Pete’s sake. I have sev­eral sets. From Dis­ney char­ac­ters to cow­boys & horses, from the Cheshire Cat to well…my newest acqui­si­tion, a pair of leop­ard skin PJ’s from Bed­Head.

I have been cov­et­ing these for a while now and they were def­i­nitely worth the  wait. Yummy qual­ity flan­nel with pink pip­ing. I was con­cerned that they were a bit large– but after wash­ing, they ended up being true to size. They washed & dried beautifully.

I have to say that they make me feel absolutely glam, or in my case– even more GLAM! Like an 1940’s movie star– but the comfy flan­nel ver­sion , not the slinky satin ver­sion where you slip off the sheets of your own bed.

Pair these with match­ing leop­ard print bal­let slip­pers and no one will ques­tion your Diva Quotient.

If leop­ard pat­tern is not your sec­ond skin, Bed­Head has plenty of other prints and pat­terns to choose from. I plan to add more to my collection.

Bed­Head has invited The Sweet Life read­ers to enjoy a 15% dis­count on their web­site. Enter HOLIDAY when check­ing out. The offer is good through Dec. 15th.

*La Dolce Diva is not com­pen­sated in any way for this post or spe­cial offer pro­vided. I pur­chased my pj’s & slip­pers at full price.

Have you ever walked into a shop and been totally trans­ported to another place? I know it sounds cheesy. Trans­ported you say? Come on. It’s a shop. Well, there are shops and there are SHOPS.
The first time I walked into MacKenzie~Childs, a home shop on W 57th street in Man­hat­tan, I remem­ber think­ing, Oh, I’ll be com­ing back here.

A cross between Robin­son Crusoe’s Tree­house and Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hat­ter Tea party, except more whacked out. In a good way.

As soon as you walk in the door, you are swept up into some­thing out of a child’s fairy tale but not so pink and sparkly. All the reg­u­lar things that you would nor­mally find in a house were there. Tables, chairs couches, chests, tea cups & saucers, can­dle­sticks, pil­lows, lamps and chick­ens in a coop. Ah, yes, I said chick­ens in a coop. Now from what I remem­ber, they were exotic chick­ens in a hand painted, finely-made coop. On a pedestal.

Since start­ing La Dolce Diva, I have acquired a lot of leop­ard skin pat­terned acces­sories; shoes, scarfs, hand­bags, glasses, etc.

Now, to be fair, ani­mal prints have his­tor­i­cally got­ten a bad rap. I am the first to admit that if one chooses to sport some leop­ard, there is a fine line between taste­ful & tacky. Taste­ful is adding a leop­ard item here and there to spice an out­fit up — never more than 2 pieces. Tacky is match­ing head-to-toe, capiche? I knew that you would.

A few months ago, I wore a pair of leop­ard skin shoes to visit my niece, whom, hereto­fore, shall be known as Dinky~Diva. As I walked into her room, her face lit up, as is per-normal for our wee-cherub. She started to look back at what she was play­ing with when some­thing caught her eye…my leop­ard skin shoes. She dropped her toy, crawled over and started pet­ting my feet. “Shoe”, I said. “Sue”, she said. “Prada”, my sis­ter said.

I was delighted, my Dinky~Diva was show­ing the first signs of a seri­ously high Fash­ion IQ. This would only come nat­u­rally, not directly from me, my sis­ter is a fash­ion plate to be reck­oned with.

A cou­ple days later, my sis­ter sent me an email, “I think Dinky~Diva needs these.” It was a link to leop­ard skin shoes at  PediPeds. Of course, Dinky~Diva must have these shoes. Look! They come in pink. She must have those too! Oh, come on, when else can you wear pink leop­ard skin and get away with it except at the ages of 5 & under?

So the cycle begins, imprint­ing style and taste at a young age will help  form a well-rounded Fash­ion IQ. It takes a sis­ter­hood to raise a Sweet Diva.

What style tips are you pass­ing on to the Dinky~Divas in your life?

Part 1 Part 2

Turn­ing onto the Ston­estreet Win­ery Estate, you real­ize you are actu­ally in a val­ley between the Coast Range to the west and the May­a­ca­mas Moun­tains to the east. All right, I didn’t “actu­ally real­ize” I was between these moun­tain ranges. I am not known as the Geog­ra­phy Diva, I looked these facts up.  I also learned that these moun­tains ranges and val­leys were formed from a vol­canic explo­sion. The lava flowed form­ing a part of the ranges, while also spread­ing ash and min­er­als through­out Napa & Sonoma. The des­o­late soil the fiery flow left behind mil­lions of years ago, com­bined with the fog that gets trapped between these ranges and keeps the grapes cool until late in the day, causes the grapes to strug­gle for sur­vival, yield­ing smaller grapes of intense fla­vor. I guess you could say each lit­tle bunch of grapes is a like box from Tiffany’s…the best things come in small packages!

The tast­ing room was Cal­i­for­nia con­tem­po­rary set within a élite “barn” aes­thetic. As as a horse owner, I am nat­u­rally drawn to and com­forted by the sim­ple archi­tec­ture of a barn. This sim­ple archi­tec­ture sur­rounded by vine­yards is even more com­fort­ing. A girl can dream.

We were pre­sented a tast­ing flight of 3 three vineyard-designated Chardon­nays — Upper Barn Chardon­nay, Bro­ken Road Chardon­nay and Red Point Chardonnay…Oh– maybe I for­got to men­tion that Angela and Michelle were actu­ally try­ing to round out their wine col­lec­tion– so they were also in need of Chardon­nays. Evette and I were try­ing to “round” out or should I say “start” our wine col­lec­tion, so we were in need of Chardon­nays too!

The Upper Barn Chardon­nay was a bit too fruity for me. More like a Sauvi­gnon Blanc. The Red Point Chardon­nay was a bit too yeasty or dry. Noth­ing wrong with that, I was look­ing for a much more but­tery depth of fla­vor. The Bro­ken Road Chardon­nay was just right. 4 bot­tles please, thank-you.

These are my opin­ions and are cer­tain to dif­fer from an actual pro­fes­sional review. So, let’s look at  a pro­fes­sional review of The Bro­ken Road Chardon­nay from the Wine Advocate.

“… more min­er­al­ity, broad orange blos­som, nec­tarine, and guava notes, some hints of hazel­nut and brioche… very full-bodied rich­ness, and slightly more acid­ity and def­i­n­i­tion than the Red Point.” Robert M. Parker Jr., Wine Advo­cate, Decem­ber 2007

Hmmmm, I didn’t see but­tery men­tioned once. Oh well, it was yummy.

Our next stop was Stryker Sonoma. This win­ery was the Tiger Woods of winer­ies: Sporty, mod­ern, grace­ful, tal­ented and it delivered.

In com­par­i­son to the other winer­ies I have already shared with you and the ones to come, Stryker was not the most lav­ish or scenic. It was not the most expen­sive or impres­sive. Even though it was the Win­ner of the 2002 Archi­tec­tural Design Award for North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, it was not the most beau­ti­ful. Yet, the tast­ing expe­ri­ence here was the most com­fort­able and enjoy­able. Funny thing to say about stand­ing at a bar? Well, that’s just it, it felt as if you were at your favorite bar with a group of good friends, good wine and a per­son­able bar­tender that treated you like a friend instead of a pay­ing client.

Our barista pre­sented us with a list of over 40 wines we could choose to taste. Don’t be con­cerned, we were respon­si­ble Wine Divas, we selected about 8–10 dif­fer­ent wines, mixed between reds and whites. By this time, I was tak­ing small sips and only sec­ond sips of those I really liked in order to com­pare and assess.

This win­ery hap­pened to be one of Angela and Michelle’s fond­est finds on their last trip. While they were busy dis­cussing pur­chases for per­sonal con­sump­tion and gifts, Evette and I were being indoc­tri­nated into our next level of wine­hood..the pur­chase of  2, I said TWO cases of wine. And, drum roll please, we joined the Med­ley Wine Club! 3 bot­tles of the lastest releases 4 times a year. You also receive a dis­count on any other wine pur­chase you make through­out the year.

For your vini­fi­ca­tion infor­ma­tion, I will list the wines we pur­chased. I rec­om­mend you visit the wine list­ings to read more about the wines and more impor­tantly, the rec­om­men­da­tion for food pair­ings. The site it very user friendly. Here are our pur­chases: 2006 Semillon-Chardonnay: Sonoma County, 2005 San­giovese: Alexan­der Val­ley, 2006 Zinfandel’s Patty’s Patch:Alexander Val­ley, 2004 Caber­net Sauvi­gnon: Sonoma County, 2003 Cab “3”: Sonoma County. Some of these selec­tions are new releases and oth­ers are only avail­able at the vineyard.

For the grand finale of the day, we vis­ited a jewel of a vine­yard, Ferrari-Carano.

Nes­tled in a pocket, hid­den by trees, you come upon what looks like, a pri­vate Ital­ian villa. 3 guesses why I loved it…OK…you may only need 1 guess. For me — THIS — was the most impres­sive win­ery. It’s grandeur and ele­gance con­veyed the same sense of time­less­ness and beauty that you would see in pri­vate vil­las in Italy.

Before enter­ing the main grounds, there is a tran­quil gar­den with a water­fall and run­ning streams. The gar­den beds were filled with vibrant flow­ers, lush green­ery and the charm­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing  Cork Oak. Yes, cork trees. The bark is cork. They are mature enough to peel the cork off the trunk after 25 years and can be har­vested again every 10–12 years. they live for approx­i­mately 150–250 years. I bet you never gave cork much thought, did you? Well, now you can pack that lit­tle gem of use­less yet fas­ci­nat­ing infor­ma­tion away until the rare lull in your next din­ner party.

The main build­ing or hos­pi­tal­ity cen­ter known as Villa Fiore, housed 2 tast­ing rooms. The clas­sic wines were on the main level, the lim­ited releases in the cellar.

I have to say that even though it was just as grand inside, it felt more like a retail shop and much more touristy than the other winer­ies we vis­ited that day.

I also have to admit that by this time it was late in the after­noon and I was worn out from tast­ing. Yes, I said it. I was tired of tast­ing and think­ing about wine for the day. I was happy to have Angela and Michele con­tinue the tast­ing in the cel­lar while Evette and I sat out­side in the sun, enjoy­ing the fresh air and soak­ing in the beauty of the grounds.

I bought 3 bot­tles of 2005 Carneros Chardon­nay Reserve. I made the pur­chase purely on Angela and Michelle’s recommendation.

Big sigh. Done with our first day in the wine coun­try. It was a lot of fun and very edu­ca­tional. Angela did a fab­u­lous job of plan­ning and execution.

Off to Rossa’s for Pizza Mag­a­rita. I’ll just have water with mine, please.

Yes, It’s true. Today is my birthday!

I awoke in my own home, my own bed, with my fuzzy-headed kit­tens, Piazza and Bellini “mak­ing bis­cuits” on my feet. *sigh* this is La Dolce Vita.

For the last 20 years I have spent most of my birth­days in Europe. OOOOOH, poor lit­tle Diva, you say. As glam­orous and che bella as that sounds, I was actu­ally work­ing. My job as a fash­ion designer took me to Europe a cou­ple times a year, in the Spring and Fall. Sev­eral times I was with co-workers, who were friends but most of the time I was by myself. Okay, you say, you were still in Europe. True. And it was great, I won’t deny it.

There is some­thing spe­cial about your birth­day that you enjoy being home receiv­ing the birth­day phone calls. Maybe men­tion­ing it to peo­ple a few times a day in order to hear Happy Birth­day! a few extra times. Per­haps gar­ner your­self a free latte at Star­bucks (like I did this morn­ing.) It’s funny that birth­days seem to be a uni­ver­sal bond that even com­plete strangers are happy — just for you — when they real­ize it is your birth­day. A smile usu­ally comes to their face and they light up a bit. “Happy Birth­day!” they say, even though every­one has one, it’s YOUR day today.

Through­out my trav­els I have had hotel clerks review­ing my pass­port sud­denly look up and say “It’s your birth­day!” and had pros­ecco and kumquats sent to my room. Immi­gra­tion con­trol has even smiled and wished me a happy day. Pretty much any time I showed my pass­port– which is a lot in Europe– my birth­day was acknowl­edged with gen­uine warm wishes. For a split sec­ond, that child­hood imprint of excite­ment of our “own” spe­cial day seems wash over each of us and “Happy Birth­day!” is auto­mat­i­cally exclaimed.

Because of shop­ping hours and travel sched­ules, I was usu­ally in Paris on my birth­day. I spent the evening sip­ping Kir Royales in the beau­ti­ful lobby of  Hotel Con­cord St. Lazare observ­ing the passersby bus­tle along the rue Saint-Lazare. Trés Parisi­enne! Some­times, I was lucky enough to stay over a Sun­day in Flo­rence and wan­der the cob­ble­stone streets of my adopted city. I would grab a pas­try sev­eral times through­out the day as mini birth­day cakes. A time or two, I have  stopped on the Ponte Vec­chio to acquire a birthay bauble. Each time I would mur­mur to my inner Diva how lucky I was to be able to spend my birth­days in Europe.

Now, I don’t go to Europe as often. When I do go, I am able to sched­ule the dates as I want. Even though it seems trés chic et trés bon to have spent birth­days in Europe, I am happy to be home today. With my kit­tens. Plan­ning a din­ner with one of my BFF’s and my Diva Mom.

It’s my birth­day, I must be home. La Dolce Vita.