BRANDY LOVES MELVILLE

This adorable boutique is located in Westwood Village right near my apartment. The reason why I love it so much is because; if you can see under the name of the store, it says "From Italy With Love." So before I even walked into the store, I was immediately obsessed with it!! Once I walked in, they had the cutest clothes ALL from ITALY! And the best thing about this was all the clothing prices were in euros! They had signs that said 1 euro = 1 dollar, which is obviously not that right currency exchange, but I thought it was such a cute and clever idea! It made me feel like I was right back in Italy! Although this store is definitely way cuter than any of the boutiques I visited in Italy. FAVORITE. STORE. EVER.

Celebrity Sighting!

Today I saw this dude, Kieren Hutchison. Okay, well unless you're a One Tree Hill fan, you probably have no idea who he is but he's the first semi-celebrity I've seen so far! He played Andy, Karen's boyfriend in One Tree Hill for a bunch of episodes, and I think he's a total babe. I saw him while I was walking to Starbucks in Sherman Oaks, I first just glanced at him, then did a double take, and although I couldn't place him, I refused to look at him again because he totally saw me check him out twice. For the next hour, I literally just sat there trying to figure out what the hell he was in. Don't you hate it when that happens? Anyway, I figured out that this is who I saw, at least I think so. After I passed him and awkwardly did a double/almost-triple take, he immediately put his sunglasses on. Come on dude, chill, you're not THAT famous. It was still really cool though to see a celebrity or whatever you may call him. I learned that people who live in LA don't really take notice of celebrities or really care when they pass by one. I guess that's one reason why all the celebrities like living out here so much, PRIVACY. I feel bad for any celebrities that run into me, because I definitely will not be relaxed about it. I will most likely run up to them and ask for pictures and autographs, and awkwardly stutter a combination of words at them that will probably not make any sense. I want to go to Malibu beach soon because I hear that you will run into a lot of celebs there since it's so small and a lot of them like to retreat there on the weekends, but what do I know, I just moved here. I did find this list of other places around LA where you might bump into celebrities.

Celebrities I really want to see while in LA (in no particular order):
James Franco
Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen
Brad Pitt
Angelina Jolie
Leonardo DiCaprio
Will Smith
Jake Gynahall
Bryan Greenberg
Selena Gomez
Gweneth Paltrow
Michael C. Hall
Drake
Patrick Dempsey
Kate Walsh
Adrianna Lima
Jennifer Aniston
Courtney Cox
Zach Efron

And probably so many more that I'm forgetting, therefore this list is pointless because I want to see them all.

<3 Loni

Diddy Riese & UCLA

This may be my absolute favorite thing in all of LA so far (well, of course besides the bubble tea place). Tonight, MARMOL, and I went to Diddy Riese, a place that has been recommended to me countless times from a variety of different people. Basically, it's this crazy popular ice cream/cookie shop that sells custom ice cream sandwiches. Once you survive the line down the block and finally make it into this quaint little store, you get to choose the type of ice cream that you want to be sandwiched in between 2 soft, gooey, cookies of your choice. They had every kind of cookie and ice cream flavor imaginable! I decided to get 2 chocolate chip cookies with regular vanilla ice cream, because I am super plain when it comes to desserts and love the classic combinations. I saw people getting all sorts of crazy ice cream sandwiches though, so next time I'll have to be a little more adventurous with my selection. Now that I think about it, you can definitely get 2 different types of cookies, instead of 2 of the same. Anyway, the line was down the block and it took maybe 20 to 30 minutes to get through it, but it was well worth it. The ice cream was marvelous, the cookies were soft and gooey, and it was just perfect in every way. My only complaint is that it was difficult to eat, but who cares about that anyway?!

 You can kind of see how long the line was for the Diddy Riese from this angle. The line kept growing too! And no, I didn't cross the street just to take this picture, I had to get money out of the ATM! I probably would have though even if I didn't need the ATM.

 Marmol was not too happy to be waiting in the huge line for an ice cream sandwich. I said that obviously it had to be worth it if all these other people were waiting, AND I WAS SO RIGHT!

Check out their website: Diddy Riese - you'll want to book a flight out here immediately after.

Since Boca Loca (the bubble tea place) was open and right next to Diddy Riese, I obviously had to get a bubble tea, my second of the day, ice cream makes you thirty alright?! I introduced Marmol to it and he ended up liking it and ordered his own! Wooo! I turned another person into a bubble tea fan!

This may be my dream come true, bubble tea AND a delicious ice cream sandwich!

I mean, COME ON! It doesn't get better than this.

After bubs, we decided to drive around the UCLA campus, see frat row, and watch all the drunk kids stumble across the street. This was definitely a bad idea, because now I miss college more than anything. There were tons of students running around, dressed up, and drunk. We spotted maybe like 20 different parties and we saw friends all hanging out aka getting wasted on their balconies, which reminded me of the 500 building in Courtyards junior year, RIP. It was the ultimate college town, exactly like Delaware, maybe even a little nicer. All the houses were gorgeous and the frat houses were monstrous. Anyway, my new goal in life is to become friends with people who go to UCLA so I can go to all those fun parties and pretend I'm in college again. Screw the real world and work, I'll just pretend I'm a UCLA student while I'm out here. Sounds good enough to me! I still love Delaware more though, and wouldn't have traded it in for anythanng!

Go Blue Hens!
<3 Loni

SMC

Today, after one of my interviews, I headed over to the beach for a run! It was 80 degrees out today, so the beach was more packed than usual. In the parking lot, there are never more than a few cars parked on a normal day, but today it was completely full. Since it was warmer than usual, it was a little harder, but I ran about 5 miles. Afterwards, I had plans to meet with my friend Tim (here come your shout out, Tim), and go and check out Santa Monica College, where he is the Assistant Coach to their football team. When I was walking through the school, although it was a small, "Junior College," it still had that close-knit, college feel to it. The school was still on winter break, so not many students were around and the campus was pretty much empty. I got to meet the other football coaches, as well as a few of the players.

Since Tim works for the school, we were able to work out with the cheerleading team. I was informed that it was a 2-hour workout, that started with a timed, 1 mile run around the track, and then exercises for abs and arms. This is when I realized, I probably shouldn't have run 5 miles before coming to SMC. Bad decisions. I knew we were going to be working out too, but I couldn't not go for a run on the beach today in this beautiful weather! Honestly guys, I'm not normally this active. I had to have broken some sort of record with the amount of time I spent exercising today.

Anyway, considering I was already exhausted from my first 5, I ran the mile in 8:15 minutes - no laughing, I'm no track star. After we were finished with that, we went into one of those gym studios, got mats, weights, and jump ropes and did a series of workouts targeting arms and abs. I didn't have a big lunch, so the entire time I was working out, I was day dreaming about what I was going to eat for dinner! Typical. After the workout, I sat in about 30 minutes worth of traffic just to get home. I quickly grabbed Boston Market, which is interestingly not what I was day dreaming of, but when I passed by it, I immediately thought: CORN BREAD, so I made a quick, and most likely, illegal turn and picked up dinner there. Once I got home, I had a lot of things to do. I had to figure out everything for this shoot that I am working on this weekend, which is super stressful because there is so much to get done and not enough time. I also had to prepare for my interview tomorrow, which I don't want to write about here because I'll probably jinx myself or something. I've been so busy these last few days that I haven't had time to keep in touch with all my homies back on the east coast. Hopefully, after this shoot is over, I'll have some time to catch up because I miss the shit out of them. If only they would come and visit *Hint, Hint!*

Happy Jerz Day,
<3 Loni