Happy. Easter Weekend.

Wow. What a whirlwind weekend. So many champagne bottle caps. And to think, it all started on Friday...

While working on Friday I received a phone call from a couple friend of ours:

"It's our 14th anniversary and we are staying in hotel!"
That's so cool. Are you calling everyone to tell them?
"It's such a great room we decided we couldn't keep it all for just ourselves. You wanna' join us for drinks tonight at the hotel?"
Sounds fun. Which hotel? What time?
"Drinks at 9-ish. We're staying at the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood. Call on the cell when you get here because I have to come down with the key to bring you up."
Great, see you then!

We decide to take a bottle of champagne for the couple and another bottle for drinking that night. This is a very auspicious beginning. We also decide to take a taxi because a) it's close, b) parking up on Hollywood Blvd is CRAZY, and c) won't that be fun?

We get to the hotel and our friends come get us in the lobby. Which by the way, if you don't know the history of this hotel it is amazing. It was the home of the first ever Oscar ceremony. It was old Hollywood Glamour waiting to grab you and eat you up. By the time we moved to Los Angeles in the early '90s it had already slid into the category of faded glory. But recently they did a major overhaul of the property and the place is once again stunning. Really beautiful how they managed to bring a modern sleek design sense and meld it with old Spanish style architecture.

Anyway, we are whisked up to the hotel room and are stunned to discover they are in the Gable /Lombard suite. This was the love nest of Clark Gable and Carol Lombard. and it has been lovingly updated to be lean mean pleasure palace machine.

We walk in and literally my jaw drops. Luckily I brought my camera. And though none of these will do it justice, here I go with my photos and a few I stole from the web.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt recently helped christen the "Gable and Lombard" suite at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

The three-floor penthouse suite, where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard once secretly trysted before going public with their love, is reopening after a major face lift. The 3,800-square-foot suite, decorated in hues of black, white and platinum, had to be a hit with Pitt, who's a fan of sleek contemporary design.

It boasts a stainless-steel soaking tub, black leather dining table with Mies Van derRohe dining chairs, floor-to-ceiling arched windows, a four person jacuzzi tub, and three plasma TVs. A star feature: the 1,000-square-foot private roof deck.

Enter room. First seating area.

From the dining area back towards the living room.

The nook off the dining area where the bar and kitchen are.

From the bar and kitchen nook back towards the dining area. (gaming table designer's link)

We took ourselves on a private tour to just gape and ogle everything. We even explored the bathroom off the living room which features an extremely large shower with a full length picture window that opens to the bed. Love palace indeed.

On the left, the view from the bed to the shower.
On the right the view from the shower to the bed.

We re-joined the other guests all a twitter about the scandalous bathroom. "That bedroom is for the servants!" said our hosts, "You should see the bedroom upstairs..."
UPSTAIRS!?! Lyle and I said in unison. And off we went...

See those stairs in the background? Those lead up to the rooftop terrace...

The silver cowhide ottoman.
Oh. My. God. I. Must. Have.

I love this window treatment. The windows that existed were very small about one foot by one foot. So they framed them in like a picture frame. I need this in my life. Everywhere I go.

Next we were led up another flight of stairs to the terrace. When I got out there I asked How many other rooms share this deck? "None. It's all ours." That deck is as big as my house. I kid you not.

Soaring out of the deck is the Roosevelt Hotel neon sign. The one you can read from the freeway.

See up there? That little inset below the sign?
I'm right there. Taking this picture below.

I was still so stunned. And from under the neon sign is the most incredible view of Hollywood blvd where the Oscars red carpet takes place. I remember a couple of years ago E Television had Jennifer Holiday standing on top of the Marquee for the Cinegrill Lounge at the Roosevelt Hotel singing during the pre-Oscar telecast - I am now about 10 floors above that.

The view from the room of Hollywood Blvd by night.

And The view from the room of Hollywood Blvd by day
(there's the Chinese Theater and the Kodak Theater entrance).

I think our friends bought the hotel room as part of a charity auction. But if you must know for curiosity's sake how much Suite 1200 goes for for a night. Click on the picture above to embiggen and find out.

After quite a few glasses of champagne and then a few cocktails it was time to leave. We made our way downstairs and asked the bellman for a cab. He came back and told us our car would be right here. While we waited, a Town car pulled up. Who would be getting out? Would it be a celebrity? WHO?! "Here's your car" said the bellman. Imagine my disappointment. It was just us.

On Saturday we started our "weekend project." We were building a room divider for the deck. Odd thing I know. But our deck off the back of the house is high up and unfortunately we have a really good view of the neighbors. I think the neighbors would like some privacy as well. Especially after Lyle saw one of the less than svelte ladies next door taking out her garbage completely topless. It was an honest mistake. He should never have had his eyes open in his own backyard. I promise you he regrets it more than she does.

We are putting up an attractive wall to stop from seeing the view next door. Nice enough people but can anyone explain to me why the ladies who emigrate from Russia and other former Soviet countries have no idea about pattern combining? This is really a hot topic for me. I've considered taking my camera to West Hollywood where there are many nice Russian ladies in a crazy clash of patterns and colors. I want to do a book. I think I'll call it "One of these things in NOTHING like the other".

Anyway, so we've been looking for just the right room divider since we moved in. About tow years. Some of the requirements were that it be attractive, not a big ugly wall, fit in with the surroundings, and not cost more than a vacation to Paris. Amazing how you can't find all that together. But last week while walking the dogs we passed by some old French doors that were being thrown out. I had an idea we could use them. We had to act quick as the idea came on Wednesday night and the garbage truck comes on Thursday. We walked over to get the doors and when we tried to pick them up we reconsidered the idea. The doors were real old fashioned solid HEAVY doors. But we took them anyway.

On Saturday we stripped them of hinges, doorknobs, weather stripping and dirt. Then we painted them out to match the brown trip of the house. Scrape paint off window glass, then spray with a frosting spray paint to diffuse any possibility of a see through view.
Both sides to clean. Both sides to paint. Oh, and there are two more small side panels as well. I thought we'd never finish.

As we painted on into the late afternoon and the sun began to set we suddenly remembered a friend from Lyle's work was having a birthday party that night. Oh my god! We had plans! Oh my god! We're supposed to be there in an hour, we're filthy and she lives about half an hour away in the hills above Malibu!

We decided we would go. We would show up late. But we would show up clean.

It was supposed to be a wine party, but I wasn't in the mood for wine. I was actually in the mood for champagne... So we decide to take a bottle of champagne for the birthday girl and one for drinks that night. Hey, it worked last night.

Since we had forgotten we were going, our champagne that we took wasn't cold. We apologized to our hostess and she said she had a bottle of champagne in her fridge that she had been saving for a special occasion and hey, we'd finally made it to her house, so this must be special... It was a bottle of Dom Perignon 1995. A very good year. By the time that bottle was done, the next bottle was chilled. I did not want to leave that party!

But Sunday beckoned and we still had our weekend project to complete.

From this...

...to this!

I can't even begin to tell you the messy story about our Easter chocolate experience. I'll boil it down to the bare points. We were tired. We did not want to deal with going to the neighborhoods where the best chocolates stores we know are (Teuscher in Beverly Hills, Leonida's in Larchmont) so we stopped at great cheese shop near out house that I thought might have good chocolate. They had some Italian novelties that looked cute by a company I've never heard of, Bedetti. We grabbed a hollow chocolate chicken. We grabbed a hollow chocolate egg. We didn't look at the prices. We wondered how chocolate, some olive oil, a sandwich and few other things could come to $150.00... oh, each chocolate treat was $45.00!!! I could have hired a courier to go to the other chocolate shops and do my buying for less. Lesson learned.

I had a great weekend in spite of our chocolate misstep. We completed a long waiting project. I had a lot of expensive champagne. I've eaten about half of all that most expensive chocolate. The sun was out and I got some good sun time (I'm very warm as I type this late at night) and I've rolled around in the same bed as Brad and Angelina - though I hope they've changed the sheets since then.