deja vu all over again

so the hub and i were invited for the second year in a row to a client holiday party - a super fabulous one at the casa del mar in santa monica.  to add to the awesomeness, they comped us a room for the night.  but wait - there's more:  they threw in spa treatments for us, too.  pretty fantastic, eh?

of course, we ran totally late as we headed out to the west side on a friday evening after getting the bean all squared away for the night with MIL.  we managed to pull up with, oh, about ten minutes before cocktail hour started.  d-oh!

we checked in as quickly as humanly possible, hightailed it to our room, and threw on our party clothes.  i'd ordered a kate spade dress on cyber monday, which was over a week before the party.  i figured it was plenty of time to receive it - but they took forever and when i got the shipping confirmation, UPS had it arriving on THE day of the party.  i was so sad.  i tried to just order a second one to have overnighted and return the first one when it arrived, but because it was on super-duper sale, it was unreturnable.  i'd already taken last year's dress (which i do still love anyway) to the cleaners and was resigned to wearing it again, but it arrived the day before the party.  i can't tell you how thrilled i was.  totally cute, right?

i was busy admiring our fabulous room, taking pictures of everything.

 

i really dig the color on the walls.  and how they incorporated it into the built-in bookcase.  so purty.

i loved this cute little bag for shoes to be shined.  i debated swiping it, but settled for taking the toiletries instead.  heh.

this was a little freaky - a glass wall between the toilet and the shower.  i'm not really all about sudsing up, turning around, and seeing somebody dropping the kids off at the pool.  know what i mean?

i liked the books in the bookshelves.

and then the hub realized he'd forgotten to pack a tie.  double d-oh!  but he keeps an "emergency" tie in the car, so he called the valet to bring it back around to the front.  as we headed back out, he came to a second realization - the teen had helped him clean out the car, putting the emergency tie in our room in the process.  oops.

my breath was totally manky, but neither of us had any gum or mints on us.  bah!  so while he rummaged through the car in the hopes of finding a miracle, i headed back inside the hotel to see if i could find a gift shop to take care of the mankness.  i decided to make it easy on myself and stopped at the front desk to ask for help.

"ah, some gum?  well, let me see if i can help you with that," the front desk dude said.  and he reached underneath the counter and busted out a freaking treasure chest.  i'm not kidding - it totally looked like something that captain jack sparrow would be after.  he tossed the lid open and inside i spied about fifteen different packs of gum, tylenol, aspirin, clear nail polish, safety pins - the best emergency kit you could imagine.  i picked out a pack of gum, debated asking if i could take a picture, and decided i'd just skedaddle outta there without making a fool out of myself.  heh.

the hub wasn't so lucky - he ended up going without a tie to the party.  oh, well.  we found it easily and chatted with other attendees, and then took our places at our assigned seats.

we stayed as long as we had to, and then left quietly to go and relax in our sweet free room.

the next morning, i peeked outside to check out our view, and there was a wedding being set up somewhere below us.

we got ready and headed downstairs to find some grub (because the room service line was busy for a solid ten minutes), and checked out the holiday decor and other stuff in the lobby.

zoltar!!  anybody else love the movie "big"?

we decided to head over to shutters, just next door, and found breakfast there.

took a stroll along the beach.

went for our fantabulous couples massage.

checked out and headed towards the promenade to find the new-ish paper source for christmas card supplies.  afterwards, we stopped for a snack.

no, i didn't have the tomato soup cupcake.  but i decided that would be my second and final try at (not-so) yummy cupcakes.  blech.

i sure hope the hub does another deal with this company.  these quickie getaways on someone else's dime are far too fantastic for words.