Cloudy with a chance of Sprinkles
loricunningham
My husband and I planned a little overnight getaway to Newport Beach this past weekend to take a reprieve from the busyness of our lives and enjoy some time together. There's nothing like taking a sidestep away from your life - even if it's just for a couple of days. No schedules to keep, no chores to get done, no responsibilities to uphold - ahhh. We stayed at one of our favorite hotels in Newport, the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa. Why is it our favorite? Because every time we stay there we get an awesome view of the ocean, we get fantastic service, the steaks at Sam & Harry's are the best kept secret, and the hotel just so happens to be in the parking lot of Fashion Island! Can it get any better than that? Just a one minute walking commute and I'm in shopping heaven.
Unfortunately, the weather forecast predicted a cloud cover for the weekend. Bummer. There's nothing like being down at the beach and seeing clouds. But that's OK, there's always a silver lining to every cloud, right?
Getting back to my previous question, "can it get any better than that?" the answer is, "yes it can." Just a three minute drive away from the hotel is everybody's favorite cupcake bakery, Sprinkles. Where we live, there are no Sprinkles bakeries in sight. So every time we go down to Newport, you can be sure we'll end up at Sprinkles' door - (and more than once I have to confess!). If you've never heard of Sprinkles Cupcakes, check out their website and see if there is one coming in near you (they have aggressive plans to hit major cities throughout the USA and abroad).
So I'm going to let you in on one of my best social media tips. If you join Sprinkles Facebook Fan Page, they offer you a chance to get a free cupcake -- everyday! Each day they post a word or phrase of the day on their Fan site. The first 25 or 50 people who come into any Sprinkles Cupcakes store and say the word, get the cupcake of the day for free. Sprinkles usually posts the word or phrase anywhere between 10:30am to 12pm PST.
On the way down to Newport Beach I used my Tilt2 to check the status of the Sprinkles Fan Page. Unfortunately, my husband and I got there too late the first day - either that or we terribly butchered the enunciation of the keyword phrase "fleur de sel." Oh well. We chose our favorites, dark chocolate for me and black and white for my husband and made our way to the hotel.
The next day, we were about to head down for breakfast when I noticed on my Tilt2 that Sprinkles had posted the word of the day, "Neapolitan." Breakfast would have to wait. We hopped into the car and headed for Sprinkles! Even at 10:30am in the morning, there was a line for Sprinkles cupcakes - but no one else was whispering the secret word. We knew we had scored our free cupcakes this time! Sure enough, we were presented with two strawberry cupcakes with dark chocolate ganache. Pure heaven. $7 saved. Thanks, Tilt2! So what do you think, did we eat them for breakfast???
Lori can be found on Facebook as WellConnectedMom Lori.
May 20, 11:31 am