All posts tagged: gina cholick

Yoga-urt: Meet Your New Obsession

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While other parts of the country are breaking out their new fall sweaters and snuggling up to pumpkin chai lattes in fuzzy mittens, our late-arrival summer is only just kicking into full swing here in LA. In honor of these last blazing days of summer, we present you with our current obsession and our absolute favorite way to beat the heat. Allow us to introduce you to Yoga-urt, the best soft serve frozen yogurt in town. It also happens to be organic, vegan, gluten-free, soy-free and uses no artificial ingredients of any kind. How can the creamiest, richest, smoothest, most delicious soft serve in existence be vegan, you ask? Come take a stroll with us… Yoga-urt first popped up in Glendale’s adorably quaint Kenneth Village in 2015. We’re always huge fans of any tiny frozen-in-time hidden gem neighborhood tucked away right here inside our bustling city (hello, Montrose!), but Kenneth Village might be the sweetest and tiniest of them all. The one-block strip of Kenneth Road just west of Grandview is as Bedford Falls as …

Descanso Gardens~ Enchanted: Forest of Light

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Words by Christina Huntington // Photography by  Sarah Prikryl // Contributing Photography by: Gina Cholick Our favorite Winter Wonderland is back! Grab your loved ones, bundle up with a hot cup of cocoa and prepare to be totally Enchanted by light!!  Two simple white string lights illuminate the long dirt path that leads to the entrance of Descanso Gardens. Despite being sold out tonight, I find myself alone on the path with only the sound of my own footsteps as my companion in the inky dark night. I can see my breath clearer with each step I take, amazed at this simple joy that almost never happens in LA as I practice blowing clouds around me, giggling in delight. A full moon peeks through wisps of mist above, a feeling of magic fills the air—and I’ve barely left the parking lot. My fellow Sirens await at the front, all bundled up for a surprisingly chilly Los Angeles evening. We’ve been drawn here by the promise of light. Enchanting light, to be exact. Never ones to turn down an opportunity for …

Bryce Canyon ~ Utah

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Words by Christina Huntington // Photography by Sarah Prikryl // Contributing Photography by Gina Cholick Deep in the heart of Utah lies a surrealist dreamland sprung to life. If Salvador Dalí painted the Grand Canyon full of drippy peach candlestick mountains all melting in the desert sun while Indiana Jones hosted an archaeological dig for extraterrestrial life at the center of it all…that pretty much sums up what Bryce Canyon National Park feels like. At once awe-inspiring, mind-blowing and really pretty trippy. We took a one-day excursion out to Bryce in the middle of our Zion adventure week to take in some new scenery and hit some new trails. An easy 2-hour drive east of Zion, Bryce is definitely the wild child amongst its sleeker Utah and Arizona canyon cousins. If the Grand Canyon is Mozart, Bryce Canyon is Bowie. Nothing to see here but mind-bending intergalactic rock ‘n roll mountainsides incarnate in nature. Upon arrival, we decided to take in the lay of the land as our first endeavor. The road into Bryce is laid out in a loop where …

Zion National Park

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Words by Christina Huntington // Photography by Sarah Prikryl // Contributing Photography by Gina Cholick A couple years ago, I came across a photo of a giant bright peach of a mountainside towering over a meandering aqua river adorned with patches of bright green fluffy trees dozing under a hazy golden sunset. It seemed like something out of a dream. Or perhaps a distant memory from some other world where only peace, beauty and tranquility exist. A mythological fantasy planet that someone managed to come back to Earth with visual proof of. I recognized it somehow, though I had never seen it before. This intense feeling immediately rushed up from deep down inside my soul and commanded, “We must go to there!!” I could almost taste the gorgeous landscape on my tongue, hear it whispering in my ear. My eyes searched for the name of this biblical Eden incarnate until they landed on the word “Zion”. Of course…Zion. I had heard the tales many times from others who had made the epic journey before me but this was the first time …

Descanso Gardens ~ Enchanted: Forest of Light

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Words by Christina Huntington // Photography by  Sarah Prikryl // Contributing Photography by: Gina Cholick Two simple white string lights illuminate the long dirt path that leads to the entrance of Descanso Gardens. Despite being sold out tonight, I find myself alone on the path with only the sound of my own footsteps as my companion in the inky dark night. I can see my breath clearer with each step I take, amazed at this simple joy that almost never happens in LA as I practice blowing clouds around me, giggling in delight. A full moon peeks through wisps of mist above, a feeling of magic fills the air—and I’ve barely left the parking lot. My fellow Sirens await at the front, all bundled up for a surprisingly chilly Los Angeles evening. We’ve been drawn here by the promise of light. Enchanting light, to be exact. Never ones to turn down an opportunity for enchantment, we dive in…ready to be immersed in some light magic. The moment we step foot inside Descanso Gardens’ “Enchanted: Forest of Light”, the world suddenly …

Eastern Sierras, CA

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When we met up with Daniel Mansfield of The Adventure Project for our San Bernardino National Forest mountain hike last month, we arrived with one burning question in mind. Our common mission is to get people out and exploring all the amazingness the West has to offer. But Daniel’s mission is, more specifically, to get people out into the mountains. So the one thing we needed to know was…if he could choose just one place in all of California to take someone to experience the Best of the West, where would it be? Without missing a beat, his answer: The Eastern Sierras. We were a bit surprised by this, having never heard particularly much about them ourselves. Everyone knows and loves the Sequoias, Yosemite, Mammoth, Big Bear—all our resident beauties. But “Eastern Sierras” wasn’t readily rolling off the tongues of our hike-loving friends. We had to know: what was it about THESE mountains that made them stand out so far above the rest? There was only one way to answer that question. Road trip. Three weeks later, …

The Adventure Project

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The forecast called for rain. Not just a chance of sprinkles here and there…full-on El Niño rain blasting with possible freezing temps and snow. After a winter of nothing but broken promises, it seemed our elusive stormy friend was finally arriving to unleash its downpour fury on Southern California. When iPhone declares 100% chance of showers every hour, you know it must be true. In LA, people cancel dinner plans just ten minutes away because they’d rather not “deal with the rain.” But now we were asking our friends to drive two hours outside the city in possible El Niño storms to meet a guy we’d never met and go to an undisclosed location to have an unknown experience—only knowing he was “taking us to the mountains.” I’m pretty sure these are all the things our parents warned us never to do. But, hey, we get to make our own rules now. And after all, we said we wanted an Adventure… We meet at a gas station at the base of the mountains on the way …