A bite at b.b's

Anyone who knows me, knows that I LOVE to find awesome new restaurants. So, when business conveniently brought me to Jacksonville last week, my boyfriend and I decided to make the most of my extra time and go exploring downtown.

Aside from working at the WJCT studio on the outskirts near the stadium, I had never been to Downtown Jacksonville so I didn't know what to expect. As adventurous as we are, Sean & I still made 8pm reservations for Ruth's Chris Steakhouse just incase our search ended badly- I'm hypoglycemic, so our adventures have to have certain precautions...I'm not very pleasant when I'm hungry! After driving around downtown for a few minutes we soon realized it was no downtown Orlando. We saw a place called Jacksonville Landing right on the riverfront so we decided to walk around there and see what we found. Awesome location, awfully dated. It had a boardwalk vibe and was probably an awesome place 20 years ago, now not so much. So we picked a restaurant on the upper floor and sat outside right on the water, after glancing at the menu we realized that this place was not what we were looking for and we weren't ready to settle just yet! So we paid for Sean's coke and headed back to the car, pretty hungry at this point! We weren't ready to give up just yet so we jumped over the bridge to check out the "other side" of downtown inching our way closer to Ruth's Chris. We were just about ready to head over to our reservation when we passed this really cool looking building seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

Image from www.bbsrestaurant.com
View from the street

From my iPhone- view from the parking lot, love the vine covered wall!

Jessica Castro for Derrière de Soie

Late last March Jessica Castro and I headed up to Daytona Beach to shoot some exquisite little numbers for Derrière de Soie- a high end lingerie boutique out of  Charlottesville,Virginia. I'm a firm believer that the best images come out of working with talented friends. Jessica is an amazing friend (we both love Harry potter and hate roller coasters) & and absolutely PHENOM photographer. Sadly, I'll have to journey up to Atlanta now to see her since she's getting a change of scenery while finally being with her longtime Boyfriend who's working on the set of Drop Dead Diva (yes, he met Kim K haha)

So, when Jessica told me her client wanted me to model some of their items for their upcoming website launch I knew it was bound to be a great shoot. But not all great shoots are without their obstacles & that morning was a full fledged Wipe Out course. My 5:30 am alarm was actually set for pm, advice: don't set alarms while half asleep. I woke up in a panic and rushed to Pick up my boyfriend Sean who miraculously agreed to bring your boyfriend to work day. After some chaotic breakdowns which ended in me calling McDonald's Walmart & Winn Dixie... Sean made the well minded decision to take the wheel. It wasn't until we reached our exit that I realized I had forgotten all of my extra clothing items Jessica had told me to bring just incase. But when we pulled up to this awesome old vintage home I knew it would still be an awesome day..

Not that the rest of the day was without hiccups- I actually also sat in an old chair and broke it, & also attempted to lay in al already broken hammock resulting in me on the ground!
Apart from all that our shooting space was great. The home had awesome wall papers and 3 stories to play in. The top loft was my favorite with its natural lighting, light wood floors, multiple windows & awesome bookshelf. The area actually used to be a yoga classroom and I could definitely see why! The only other person in the building that day was an awesome life counselor who was busy in her office with clients all day, so we were basically on our own! We didn't have a hair or makeup artist with us so we went with natural hair and light makeup that I did myself- sometimes light powder & some mascara is all you need! I'm really happy with how they came out and even happier that the client loved them too!

See? Awesome wood floors!

Be sure to check out Jessica's other awesome work & follow derrière de Soie on twitter.com/silkybottom if you liked the pieces- they'll be launching their website soon for orders, & I'm pretty excited to get my hands on some of these pieces for good :)