Fresh Produce Blog

Today we started off in Santa Monica, and really ate breakfast at Urth Caffe! This was very exciting because the last time we tried to eat at Urth (you’ll recall Monday’s incident when we happened upon the taping of HBO’s Entourage series), we were unsuccessful. However, victory, and fabulous organic breakfast was ours! And boy were we ready.

After saying goodbye to our sweet van, we flew out of LAX. Aboard a fabulous Frontier Airlines flight, we landed in Denver 2 hours later…home sweet humidity-free home!

Thanks for joining us on our journey. We hope you enjoyed it and are looking forward more than ever to the Spring 2009 FP collection!

Live life, enjoy color…over and out good buddies!

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Day four started off with a ferry ride over to Balboa Island. A pair of dolphins escorted us over to the island to visit and shoot lovely customers at our year old Handpicked Store.

Happy Anniversary to Deanna, Stacy and their team! If you’ve never been there, Balboa Island is absolutely tiny, (yet oh so charming - in a storybook kind of way) so we had quite the time finding a parking spot for our van. However, we persevered and found a place right in front of the Balboa FP store, a converted fire station! After makeup and hair, we took our gorgeous models, Ashleigh, Diane, Margie and Linda out on location for their close-ups. Modeling our fantastic new polo shirts, the girls had some fun and kicked up their heels in the sand. Deanna’s man, Charlie, even brought his vintage Corvette out to Balboa for the shoot. Let us tell you, it’s in mint condition! After shooting more Spring 2009 product and great new patterns like Pick a Posey and Sweet Poppies, we headed to The Cannery for lunch. It was a nice break from the heat and humidity!

Diane in the Sweet Poppies print

Margie in Pick a Posey

Lunch was followed by an afternoon of shooting Ashleigh at Newport Beach and the pier. And even though it was quite hot and humid, the light was amazing and the Spring 2009 product, exquisite. We know you’ll love this stuff when it hits stores next year!

After saying goodbye to Ashleigh we packed up the van and headed to Santa Monica. During the drive we watched one of the prettiest California sunsets we’ve ever seen and ended our adventure with dinner at The Lobster on the Santa Monica Pier…sidenote: John Wayne’s grandson served us cocktails All in all, a busy but very eventful and fun California day.

And last but not least, our playlist…enjoy!

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Woke up to rain and dense coastal fog in La Jolla. We tried to check out a few old school surfer beaches on our way to the OC, but couldn’t even see the shoreline through the clouds! Rolled into Newport Beach to pick up Ashleigh, our covergirl, who had flown in from Miami. She lost her lugage on the flight, but still looked like a summer breeze even in a pinch. Model in tow, we made our way to the Laguna Beach Handpicked Store (our very first FP store 14 years ago), where we were warmly greeted by both store staff and the elusive SUN! Double bonus. Holly, Sandy, Marsha, Becky, Paulie & Irene graciously agreed to model for us - they did a bang up job and represented the Oxford Shirt and our collection of screen printed Ts very well!

Ashleigh gave them some insider modeling secrets as an extra special touch. A couple of our FP beach balls made their way on to the beach and into the lives of some sun worshiping families. Be free beach balls, be free! CELEBRITY SIGHTING ALERT! Alex from the original MTV series Laguna Beach was rolling down Forest Avenue in her BMW X5 - not a life-changing sighting, but apropos to our location for sure. Around 5:30 the light was amazing - Anne, the owner of FP Laguna and her precious baby, Luca, brought us to Agate Street Beach, a beautiful little stretch with really incredible rock formations. We took advantage of the sunny gift and shot Ashleigh until the sun set.

Then back to Newport for an exhausted, sub-par brewery dinner and off to bed. Another successful day on the road! Thanks everyone for your help today! Nighty night.

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Tuesday, we spent the day shooting in lovely La Jolla…luckily the U.S. Open was all wrapped up, although we were rooting for Rocco the underdog (no offense Tiger!). Torrey Pines had cleared out and we descended upon our awesome La Jolla store bright and early at 7am.
We started the day with 5 lovely customers…one of which was a surfer! The light was typical a.m. California…overcast. However, we persevered through the morning and shot all around town. Around noon we headed out to lunch at the Burger Lounge, which we highly recommend if you ever visit La Jolla. They serve amazing grass fed beef - deliciously gourmet.

After lunch, we had the most precious little 5 year old, Patience (above), ready for modeling. We headed down to the beach and she played at the shore and at the park with Sonya (below), our La Jolla manager.

Christie, another FP employee, discovered her inner model and shot all through the afternoon with kids and more FP employees! And of course, when the day was almost done, the sun came out, danced across the water and gave us some great La Jolla shots!

And last but not least…our playlist for the day!

enjoy:) fresh-E

Day One - Boulder, CO to La Jolla (penned by “Que Sera Sera”)

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It always seems like an 8:45 flight is not that early until you count back the bare minimum requirement of two and half hours from door step to stepping on the plane. We started early but are always grateful to Frontier Airlines for it’s sort of private and quick lines through security where we undressed once again for the TSA agents and make the tried and ture travelers jokes like, “was it good for you?” as we re-accessorize and head to the gate.

It was a typical Denver bumpy start, but then the flight to LAX was perfect due to our female girl power pilot which we took as a good sign for our trip. We met our friends with the van, loaded up and decided that we needed lunch before we could muster up the energy to drive a foreign van through LA to La Jolla our destination for tonight.

One of my all time favorite lunch spots is Urth Caffe on Melrose. It’s healthy organic food prepared in such a way that you really would drive across LA to get there. It’s also a great place to hang out and watch all the want-to-be actors read their scripts to their friends and be really cool. I had prepped. I had stapled an enormous amount of paper from the recycle bin at Fresh Produce to look like a script and I wore really big sunglasses so I looked cool.

We found Urth, parked the van in an alley, and headed to the resturant only to find a huge production going on out front. Before we knew it, we were in the middle of the television scene for HBO’s Entourage being taped at Urth!

Set of HBO’s Entourage!

All the patrons were actors. Fresh E and FP D-lovely were directed to a nearby bush as I continued to cut right through the apparent set. Directly behind me was Adrian Grier (adorable!) and apparently Jeremy Pivens. As I made it to the other side of the scene I was escorted to stand behind another bush as they continued to tape.

It was all so non-challant. I chatted with the stand ins between takes and counted at least thirty people with behind the scenes job. We made our way out of the set and had lunch at another organic perfect resturant down the street. Only in LA….

Off to La Jolla! All road trips require music. Today’s playlist is posted below. We met up with the friendly team at our newly expanded and remodeled La Jolla to prep for Tuesday’s shoot. The location is beautiful. We can’t wait to meet our customers and employees who will be modeling the Spring 2009 collection.

And don’t forget to check out our iTunes playlist today:

Until next time….”Que Sera Sera!”