Street Style, Gabi

Taken in the garden of the new Isabel Marant store on Melrose Place!

Street Style, Gus (?)

Yeahhhh, I can't tell what his name is from what he wrote down! Looks like a "Gus". Are people even named Gus these days?

Street Style, Michelle

Street Style, James

Street Style, Jenny

WGACA

This assignment was such a great experience: I got to work with a model and tell her where to stand/how to pose, and more importantly I worked with beautiful pieces of vintage clothing from What Goes Around Comes Around. Chanel... Pucci... I was in complete awe. I shot a total of 14 outfits and here are some more that didn't make the cut: 

Street Style, Elizabeth

Street Style, Judy

Street Style, Kimberly

Street Style, Adrian

Street Style, Buket

Fashion Plates

New Fashion Plates article featuring three restaurants around LA. I photographed RivaBella, a gorgeous new Italian restaurant in West Hollywood, and Juicy Lucy, a burger spot in DTLA. 

Blueberry Oat Bars

Not much to say about these bars - really easy to make and delicious!

Day Pass - The Valley

Living in the Valley for the first 14 years of my life, I was both excited/worried about shooting a handful of the 'best' places to hit up while there. Excited because I never go there anymore, and worried because I didn't know if the list was 'perfect'. R29 readers are a bit crazy when it comes to "the best of" lists and they don't understand that a lot of hard work goes into making these articles. If we don't include YOUR favorite restaurant or bar, don't be so hard on us. We've done our research, we took the time to go to these places to photograph them - please don't say we didn't put any "effort" into it. It's really not fair. 

Moving on. I shot 10 of the 26 places, but I am more stoked on the fact that I told Brenna to include Handmade (#1 in the slideshow). That shop was my favorite favorite favorite when I lived there and I miss it so much. So I'm glad I got to add something to the list, even if it was only one place.

Here's the article!

Multipurpose

I'm pretty sure that this 'jewelry holder' is actually a soap dish but I find that displaying my favorite pieces of jewelry on it is much more useful. I mean, does anyone even use soap bars anymore?

Werk It

Although I'm not one of those people that constantly talks about working out or eating healthy, I still take working out seriously. It has taken me a long time to figure out what works best for my body and I can definitely say that running on the treadmill or working out on the machines at the gym is not for me. At the gym, I put most of my energy into people-watching and making fun of the weirdos.
I did Pilates in college because at my school's gym we had THE BEST instructors (and most of them were fellow students), but now since joining 24hr Fitness, I've come to the realization that Pilates isn't popular anymore: it's all about turbo kickboxing and Body Pump, both of which I have no interest in.

What I'm now obsessed with is PiYo Strength. I go twice a week and I leave every class cursing the instructor because I'm in so much pain (and that's after going for about three months). And the thing is that I can tell that I'm taking the right kind of class because when looking around, all the women, regardless of how young or old they are, have the best bodies: long and lean. I also do Zumba only because my mom teaches it and I love dancing, and hikes are my go-to when it comes to cardio. Within 5 miles of where I live, there are at least 3 amazing and tough hiking trails that I fully take advantage of.

ANYWAY, I mostly wanted to dedicate this post to booty exercises. I've recently started caring about getting my ass in shape (literally) because I've neglected it for as long as I've been working out. Now that I'm getting older, I need to not let gravity take its toll and realize that although my butt is kind of non-existent, it still will sag when I'm 40 (nice visual, huh?).

So here are some of favorite youtube videos that are devoted to working the butt:


I've been doing Tracy Anderson workouts for over 2 years and I am still not bored.





The two videos above are part of a 30-day butt routine, but I just stick to these two. The woman leading the workout cracks me up every time and has a crazy-good figure. So that's inspiring.



This one is great for when you don't have much time to work out. Warning: a lot of air-humping takes place in this one.



Kathy Smith annoys the hell out of me (sorry Kath), but the lady knows her stuff. I also do all the other workouts from her Peel off the Pounds series.

So yeah, try these! And definitely give PiYo Strength a chance!

LA's Best Cold-Weather Activities

Here's the R29 article highlighting fun activities to do in LA when the weather drops (below 60 degrees). I contributed to 3 of the 13 activities... enjoying a hot toddy, hiking the Corralitas trail in Silver Lake/Echo Park, and ice skating in Culver City. Here are some more pics of the hike plus one more pic of the hot toddy: these, in my opinion, are better than the ones that were chosen for the final cut! Gives you a better look at the trail, and the hot toddy in front of the fireplace looks soooo cozy.

Food and Wine Pairings

My favorite assignment given to me by Refinery29 is up on the site today (here)! It was my second time seeing/hanging out with my editor, Sarah, with the first time being my interview for the position back in October! She and I communicate solely through emails and so it was really nice to do this assignment with her. We drove to four of the five restaurants together, and so we had a lot of time to talk and were able to get to know one another much more than before.

One thing I kind of knew about Sarah is that her boyfriend is a very popular chef/restauranteur: Kris Yenbamroong of Night + Market. Being an avid visitor of Eater LA, I knew exactly who he was. Since Sarah is dating such an esteemed chef, it's safe to say that she knows SO MANY chefs in LA. For this article, Sarah chose restaurants where she has close relationships with the chefs/owners and so we were treated like royalty at each restaurant we stopped at. I'll talk about each restaurant/dish in more detail below.

Terroni

Before heading to Terroni, we picked up all five wines from domaineLA: if you live in the LA area and are a wine connoisseur, this place is perfect for you. An added bonus is that the girls who work there are hilarious and so helpful. Sarah was of course good friends with them.

From there we went to the Italian restaurant, Terroni, where we got the arcobaleno pasta. The restaurant was beautifully decorated and the pasta dish looked just as good. 

Short Order

We then worked our way on over to the Grove which was (surprise surprise) packed, and I had the honor of meeting the executive chef of Short Order, Christian Page. Such a cool/awesome/funny guy. He prepared the steak dinner for us which was steak with a smokey romesco sauce, onion rings, a salad, fries, AND a milkshake. It was heaven. I'm pretty sure the steak dinner doesn't normally come with all that food, but Christian was just being a nice guy.

After wrapping up, Sarah and I walked over to Short Cake (Short Order's sister bakery/cafe) where Sarah knew Hourie Sahakian, the baker. Hourie was so sweet and gave us brunettes (the bakery's specialty) and offered us anything else we'd like. Also, Christian had run after us to see if we wanted more milkshakes and to say bye... love that guy. 

Picca

I am always reading about how amazing Picca is, as well as the restaurant below it, Sotto. Although the two restaurants are not owned by the same company and are different types of resturants (Picca is Peruvian and Sotto is Italian), both are equally popular and on my list of places to visit. At Picca we ordered the ceviche mixto, which looked so pretty, but I didn't try it because I am not a fan of any and all seafood. 

Bar Amá

After Picca, we had to journey to DTLA for Bar Amá which was kind of a pain because of it being rush hour, but it gave Sarah and I more time to chat. I was lucky enough to meet Bar Amá and Bäco Mercat chef Josef Centeno.  He prepared chicken fajitas for us.

Superba Snack Bar

I went to the last restaurant without Sarah because it was on the whole other side of town and wasn't too much of a hassle for me to get to. Located in Venice, Superba is a teeny-tiny restaurant. I was able to sit at the counter overlooking the kitchen (best seat in the house) and ordered the kale salad.

And did I mention that I got to eat all of this food (minus the ceviche)?!?! Sarah and I took everything to go, split up the food, and had a very odd/delicious dinner that night consisting of fajitas, pasta, steak, etc. 

Mixed Berry Scones

Today was the first time I used my beautiful KitchenAid stand mixer! I wanted to try out a recipe/baked good that I had never made before, and so I thought making scones would be perfect. Besides chocolate croissants, scones are my next favorite pastry that I love to scarf down for breakfast. I found this blueberry scone recipe but decided to add raspberries as well. I know raspberries are hard to work with because they break so easily (which they did) but it made the scones that much better, and prettier!

MIA

HI EVERYBODY (or, the 10 people that are reading this). I just wanted to say that I haven't abandoned my blog! It's just that I didn't get many/any assignments over the holidays, so I had nothing to post about. But I am back in action... worked on a really fun assignment this past Tuesday - probably my favorite one yet - and will be working on another this weekend. So new posts will be up soon! I promise!