Although it’s been a while since we’ve enjoyed a romcom at the theater, it seems we’ll be able to make up for lost time with today’s opening of Valentine’s Day (New Line Cinema), Garry Marshall’s star-studded film that follows several romantic storylines (whether we’ll want to, based on the onslaught of scathing reviews, is another issue). The frothy feel-good comedy stars a veritable Who’s Who of Hollywood heavyweights, including Jessicas Alba and Biel, Bradley Cooper, Patrick Dempsey, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner (left), Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, George Lopez, Shirley MacLaine and Julia Roberts. We caught up with Roberts, 42, and Garner, 37, at a recent press event.

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For a stretch of our teens and twenties, we found ourselves repeatedly dumped right after Valentine’s Day, before our rose bouquets had even wilted. (To their credit, the guys were decent enough to give us our walking papers after the holiday.) These days, we’re much better at picking partners, but now our current long-term relationship has us in a quandary: the Valentine’s Day dinner/flowers rut. In light of this, we rounded up some advice in preparation for Feb. 14.

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Whether she’s performing a triple loop or dancing the cha-cha, Olympic gold medalist and Dancing with the Stars winner Kristi Yamaguchi is always entertaining. So we were pleased to hear that she’ll be doubly visible this month, both as a Today Show and Universal Sports correspondent for the XXI Olympic Winter Games, and as one of the 12 celebrities whose ancestral roots are examined in the four-part PBS series Faces of America.

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As snow softly blankets the trees outside or when a cold winter rain beats against our windows, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as a cozy chair, a great book and the promise of a lazy Saturday or Sunday. Good reads help us through our winter doldrums, transporting us to other places and times, as we’re absorbed into a compelling tale. Following are three very different new novels, perfect for winter reading — a little girl finds a sense of family she’s never known with her Southern aunt, a Manhattan lawyer plagued by a mysterious condition must walk away from everything, and a woman examines the sticky and sweet aspects of her ex-husband’s family candy business.

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Back in 1987, watching A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 with our fingers over our eyes, we never dreamed that the part that could come true was Freddy Krueger bursting out of a television set snarling, “Welcome to primetime, bitch!” More than two decades later, the once-verboten B-word permeates popular media. But rather than shocking, it’s acquired a veneer of sass. There’s Bitch Slap, a retro chixploitation film currently in theaters, starring scantily clad women squabbling over crime, and Skinny Bitch, the best-selling diet book series. The epithet pops up regularly on primetime television, everywhere from How I Met Your Mother to Grey’s Anatomy. A memoir called Bitch Is the New Black, about successful young African-American women, has already sold the film rights and gotten Hollywood buzz though it won’t be published by Harper until June.

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Like everyone else, we were saddened and horrified by Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake on Jan. 12. Though we wanted to help immediately, we also wanted to make sure our donation would be put to good use. Following are a few ways you can contribute to relief efforts, as well as tips from philanthropy groups to ensure responsible donations.

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Too often, we have failed to heed the call of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service. While celebrating the courageous civil rights leader’s works, we put off following his example. So rather than say, What could I possibly do? we’ll replace that negativity with responding to King’s famous query, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”

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We always start the year with two promises: To eat more healthfully (especially after the holiday indulgences); and to further shrink our impact on the environment. The Gorgeously Green Diet (Plume, 2009) — the follow-up to eco-expert Sophie Uliano’s bestseller Gorgeously Green: 8 Simple Steps to an Earth-Friendly Life (Collins Living, 2008) — promises that greening our diet is better for the planet as well as our health and wallet.

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When making donations to worthy causes, we like to make sure our money is being used in the best manner possible. We’re grateful there are resources such as GreatNonprofits.org, a website that allows beneficiaries, clients and donors to post positive and negative charity reviews, which are then posted to the organizations’ GuideStar reports. Perla Ni — GreatNonprofits CEO, Stanford Social Innovation Review founder and “philanthropy game-changer” as voted by readers of The Huffington Post — offers some additional tips for choosing the right charity.

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We’re just about partied out and yet we have one more to go … a friend is giving a bash to ring in 2010. Since we’re also just about shopped out, we have a hostess gift quandary: What to bring? A bottle of wine is fine, but not exactly original. Thankfully, celeb party planner Jes Gordon, author of Party Like a Rock Star (GPP Life, 2009), is never short of ideas. “I usually go for something unique or indulgent,” she says. “I look for the stuff people want but don’t usually buy for themselves.”

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