Welcome back everyone! I hope you all got to take a little time to yourselves over the holidays. I had lots of plans (as usual)... works goals, home goals, alllll the goals. And then I was just like wait, you worked so hard to take some time off, TAKE IT OFF. And so I did. But, I did work towards one of the things I want to do more in 2017, and that is get out of town. We have so much to do in Southern California, lots of it literally within 20 to 30 minutes of us, and we don't take advantage of it. So while we had our little bit of time off, we decided to head up the coast and spend a night in Santa Barbara.

We didn't have any expectations for the trip. We were taking our dogs, going on New Years day, and it's the middle of winter. So it was cold, lots of places closed early, but we had fun, found places we could hang out at and made the most of it! I found the cutest hotel on Expedia (my go-to, i'm pretty lazy about hotel research) that allowed our extra large + extra small dogs called Hotel Milo. Our room was super spacious and located on the adorable courtyard pictured below. There were complimentary bikes you could cruise around town on, a nightly happy hour (which we took full advantage of, obviously) with a few local wines, and about 1462 photo opps with all of their lush succulent and palm gardens. We're most definitely going back.

We took a walk down the pier, headed to one of the dog friendly tasting rooms, DV8, and then had dinner at a restaurant called Cadiz (trust me and order the mushroom risotto + ahi bruschetta if it's still available). Somehow all of this filled the entire day. We were hoping to visit a few more of the tasting rooms but since many of them were closed for the holiday, all that were open were completely packed. Much of our wine tasting was done at the happy hour that our hotel hosted (well, i guess more drinking than tasting)... they had cozy little fire pits that kept us warm for a few hours until it was time for dinner. The next morning we tried out Sambo's, a retro diner we pass every time we have been to SB but had never had the chance to stop at. They have giant mimosas and crab + avocado omelettes, enough said.

Basically everything we did was on a whim or something we quickly googled, and it all ended up being perfectly cute, comfortable, delicious and entertaining... sometimes not planning is the way to go! But, if you're going to spend 24 hours (or less) try out everything above and I don't think you will be disappointed. Now for the most important part, the pictures!

And a quick recap of our recs from this trip...

• Stay at Hotel Milo (dog friendly!)
• Wine at the dog friendly tasting room DV8
• Dine at Cadiz for Italian/Spanish cuisine
• Brunch at Sambo's

Enjoy!