If you’re even remotely as fanatic about food and wine as we are here at Haute Living, then it will be a pleasant bit of news for you to hear that the tickets to the South Beach Wine and Food Festival 2010 are finally now on sale.
The anticipated festival is schedule for February 25-28, 2010 and tickets officially went up for grabs on October 26. Don’t be fooled by the five month gap from ticket sale to festival however; it is highly encouraged to get your tickets as soon as possible. Unlike past years, there will not be a second block of tickets sold in early 2010, so anyone hoping to chow down on the hautest bites, sip the finest wines, and mingle with the Food Network stars should get those tickets post-haste.
The event is set to be a national, star-studded, four-day showcase of some of the most renowned winemakers, spirits producers, chefs, and culinary personalities. Obtaining your tickets now will ensure you’re going to be part of the delicious four-day event that includes an Amstel Light Burger Bash hosted by Rachel Ray, Wine Spectator’s Best of the Best at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, the 2010 Tribute Dinner honoring chef Daniel Boulud, Cocktail Time with Sandra Lee at Casa Casuarina (also known as the former home to Gianni Versace), and Perrier-Jouët BubbleQ hosted by Emeril Lagasse and Friends, among others.
If you’re looking for the perfect gift for a “Foodie” friend or family member, there are now SOBE BUCKS available for purchase from October 1 – January 8. You can buy SOBE BUCKS worth $250, $500, or $1,000 to use toward purchasing tickets to the Festival. As a bonus (as if us wine and food lovers needed one!), these can also be used toward purchasing tickets to many of the sold-out events, except seated events. The SOBE BUCKS tickets can only be purchased through the Festival’s ticketing manger, ashapiro@southernwine.com, or by calling (305) 627-1646.
Regular tickets to the festival can currently be purchased online at www.sobewineandfoodfest.com or via telephone at 877.762.3933.
See you there!
Parisian hair-stylist and Los Angeles resident, Eric Sebbag, is using his haute French talent to bring a hair and body serum to the world of beauty essentials.
The new hair and body line, entitled Sebbag Essentials, has been dubbed by adoring fans as “Liquid Gold”. The delicate serum gives skin a healthy, dewy glow, and a gorgeous look while a small amount rubbed into hair will quickly enrich and emphasize shine in all types of hair.
Sebbag notes, “Our ancient ritual of Argan Oil Hair Serum, grown in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, has been adopted by my family for over three generations. It is used to replenish and re-moisturize your hair, as well as your skin. Excellent for treating all hair and skin types,
and can also be used for styling hair.”
Celebrities have also caught on to the liquid gold trend, including Pamela Anderson, Jenny Garth, Carrie Anne Inaba, Ashley Scott, and the always radiant Demi Moore Kutcher. Anderson says, “I use Sebbag Essential Oils daily on my body and in my bath, and I absolutely love it! It’s Vegan and animal cruelty free, PETA approved.”
The product is simple to use, and guarantees beautiful results. Simply use two or more drops of the oil daily on damp hair for conditioning and rehydrating. Use another drop on dry hair before blow drying to enhance shine. As a natural product, it can also be used on all skin types immediately after showering or bathing to replenish and rehydrate skin requiring just a few drops.
Sebbag Essentials
128 South Laurel Ave.
Los Angeles CA, 90048
T:323 945 6496
WHO: SBE chefs Katsuya Uechi and Michael Mina host an East Meets West dining extravaganza
WHAT: A friendly, all-for-fun, cooking competition where Chef Michael Mina from XIV will go blade to blade against Chef Katsuya Uechi from Katsuya sushi restaurants. The revered chefs will prepare 6 different plates using the same ingredients in a VIP, Iron Chef-esque dining event. You be the judge: Caviar by Katsuya or bluefin tuna Mina-style?
WHEN: Tuesday, November 3, 2009. Seating available for 6 p.m., 8 p.m., or 10 p.m.
WHERE: XIV by Michael Mina. 8117 Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood, CA 90046
HOW: $90 per person; $130 with wine pairing. Reservations can be made by calling 323.656.1414.
Owners of the Dodger baseball franchise, Frank and Jamie McCourt are entering into what is building up to be a very messy, and potentially nasty, divorce.
Haute Living recently reported that the estranged pair was indeed separated, yet they were purchasing multiple homes with close proximity to one another. Unfortunately, things don’t appear to be as peachy-keen as perhaps they were portraying, or as was assumed. Divorce papers have officially been filed and demands are already being clearly laid out, by both sides.
In Jamie’s divorce filing today, she claimed that the McCourt’s net worth is $1.2 billion, estimating that the Dodgers are worth $800 million. As co-owner of the Dodgers, she claims that the couple officially separated from one another on July 6 before her husband Frank “undertook a systematic campaign designed to intimidate me and drive me out of the Dodger’s franchise.” The documents outline that Jamie is demanding $320,967 per month in spousal support if she is permitted to be reinstated as Dodger’s CEO. If that reinstatement does not happen, Jamie is demanding $487,634 per month.
Other reported demands by Jamie this week include: travel by private jet, five-star hotel accommodation, unlimited travel expenses, business lunches and dinner five times per week, parking spots at Dodger Stadium, flowers in the office, making Dodger Legends available for events without charge, hair and make up for Dodger events, and access to team doctors for McCourt family members…to name a few. We assume all of this will fall under the “maintaining a standard of living equivalent to that experienced prior to divorce” category of the final divorce rulings…
Firing back at these somewhat hefty demands, Frank’s court filings say Jamie signed an agreement in March 2004 to put the Dodger’s in his name due to her concerns about the team’s unstable financial status. Jamie denies claims that there was not a co-owning agreement after this was signed, as Frank suggests.
Boston-born Frank McCourt and Baltimore-born Jamie McCourt met at Georgetown University, married in 1979 and have four adult sons. In 2004, the soon-to-be divorced pair bought the Dodgers in 2004 for approximately $430 million.
Via: LA Observed
The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles is honoring the late Michael Jackson, and listening to demands from his fans, by extending the impressive special exhibition featuring some of Michael Jackson’s glitzy clothes and memorabilia until next summer.
The exhibit, Michael Jackson: A Musical Legacy, was scheduled to close this past summer after opening in February but Jackson’s untimely death, and the media and fan storm that followed, undoubtedly influenced the museum’s decision to keep the King of Pop’s display up one year longer than originally planned.
The exhibit includes Jackson’s infamous sparkling gloves, embellished jackets, original lyrics, a Jackson 5 stage costume, and other artifacts never before exhibited. An additional collage of Jackson’s appearances at the Grammy Award shows will soon be shown on eight video monitors.
October 27 saw the premiere of “This is It”, a highly anticipated documentary capturing Jackson’s final rehearsal moments as he prepared for his world concert which was set to begin just a few weeks after his unexpected death. The theatre in Los Angeles where the documentary premiered is located just across the street from the Grammy Museum. A museum press release adds, “Perhaps the most exciting element is the exhibit’s new interactive experience which will allow visitors to dance on a floor of light-up tiles mimicking Jackson’s own moves in the ‘Billie Jean’ music video.”
The exhibition is one of the city’s most popular visiting points for Jackson’s fans, including his Encino home and his Hollywood Star. Larry King also did a live special of his CNN talk show at the Grammy Museum following the popstars death.
Via: LAist
Even the most famous fashionistas fall prey at times to the shadier side of the beautiful destinations meant to seduce us, both at home and abroad. Case in point:
“Madrid. I just got robbed in the street in front of the Thyssen museum,” Diane von Furstenberg tweeted on Sunday. “My wallet, cash and all my credit cards!”
Fortunately, the only damage the lucky thief did was to her wallet and she was able to escape virtually unscathed, her upbeat demeanor still intact. “I am totally fine! I hope it [is] the worst thing that will happen to me,” she tweeted later on that evening. “Getting a big price tomorrow so going to sleep now.”
I believe the “price” she was referring to is the International Designer Award from Telva, the leading fashion magazine in Spain, an honor which was awarded to her at the 2009 TELVA Magazine Fashion Awards at the El Canal Theatre in Madrid. Angel Schlesser, a Spanish designer, was awarded the National Designer Award alongside her.
Ivanka Trump is undoubtedly still reeling from her lavish wedding to New York Observer publisher Jared Kushner on Sunday but, in true Trump fashion, it was business as usual come Monday morning.
“Book a meeting at the Trump SoHo in February or March and get a 2-night stay at the Trump Las Vegas plus round-trip airfare for two,” the VP of her father’s real estate company, always a salesperson, tweeted yesterday. “For details email sohosales@trumphotels.com.”
The busy power couple postponed their African honeymoon until December, but will have some fun in between all of their hard work and Twitter updates. They reportedly had a second ceremony today for 1,000 guests at the Puck Building in downtown Manhattan.
Engin Yeşil, the Chairman of Yeşil İnşaat, a Turkish construction company, has just announced that the firm will be investing $600 million on a new housing and shopping mall development near Istanbul. He further noted that the new project is set to include an astounding 9,000 apartments, office blocks, a shopping mall, and even a hotel.
Without releasing too much information regarding further specifics about the development project, Yeşil estimates that the project will employ approximately 1,000 workers. It is expected that more information and further details will be released as time moves on and the development project gets under way.
Via: Hurriyet
Billionaire philanthropist Leonore Annenberg died in March at the age of 91 and last week the legend’s diamond ring sold for an equally memorable $7.7 million at Christie’s Auction house.
Designed by New York’s infamous jeweler, David Webb, the 32.01 carat emerald cut diamond ring was purchased by Annenberg on her 90th birthday, just a year before her death.
The $7.7 million price makes the ring the most expensive diamond to have been auctioned off recently.
Via: Luxury Launches
After a year laden with economic failure and the domino effect of corrupt millionaire bank CEO’s and the collapse of their beloved institutions, what’s another sad financial story? Well, only the sixth-biggest bank failure in U.S. history—with over 350 branches and $26 billion in assets seized (most of which BB&T took over)—otherwise known as Colonial Bancgroup, an institution largely responsible for the big, messy burst of the real estate bubble and the destruction it left in its wake. And who does our great nation have to thank for helping to further deplete the FDIC and bang one more nail into the coffin of our economy?
Reportedly none other than Bobby Lowder, who recently retired as CEO and chairman of the banking giant and is a trustee at Auburn University. Lowder, who developed a reputation at Auburn for being a belligerent intimidator who once made a death threat to a fellow board member over a disagreement (sounds like a nice guy) is being named as a primary defendant for charges of reckless and dishonest conduct being brought upon Colonial through a number of class-action lawsuits.
With an FBI investigation pending into Colonial’s warehouse-lending business (which extends short-term lines of credit to mortgage brokers so they can make individual loans, which are then sold, packaged, and securitized), one positive thing to note is that Colonial never received the $550 million bailout they sought out last fall like many of their other lucky competitors. And as the man who signed on the dotted line of all the bank’s financial statements, he better hope there is no indication of fraud on that TARP contract or he may be cheering for his beloved Tigers team from a cell rather than the plush luxury suite he still owns in the Auburn stadium. Yeah, good luck with that.
Via: CNN Money
20 comment(s) 
8 comment(s) 
4 comment(s)
Los Angeles
Jan/Feb 2012
FASHION :: COUPLES’ RETREAT
COUPLES’ RETREAT
With the resort collections oozing throw back references, a high-society escape to the confines of a once-again-new Eden Roc Renaissance Miami Beach is the perfect scene of the crime for two couples to get caught up in the swing of things.
