Our Latest Release: A Chance to Win Up to $500 in Gift Certificates!

St. Augustine Bed and Breakfast Announces Chance to Win Up to $500 in Gift Certificates

The Bayfront Marin House, a 15-room bed and breakfast in St. Augustine, FL, is holding a contest on Facebook to rename one of their most popular guest rooms. Two winners--a fan favorite and a staff favorite--will be eligible to win $250 each in gift certificates to the award-winning bed and breakfast.

 

 

 St. Augustine, FL (PRWEB) September 10, 2012

 

Want a chance to win a $500 stay at the Bayfront Marin House, a beautiful waterfront bed and breakfast in St. Augustine, Florida?

Mike and Sandy Wieber, owners of the romantic inn, are holding a contest to rename one of their most popular guest rooms, currently called the Princess Margaret.

"We completely gutted the room and renovated it to the nines," says Sandy Wieber. "We used very soothing colors, and created a restful retreat for our guests. Since we were changing everything in the room--including its layout--it made sense to change the name as well."

"The bathroom is over the top," adds Mike Wieber. "Sandy picked out a beautiful slate colored tile, and accented it with glass tiles. The tub is jetted, and the shower has a row of body jets for the ultimate relaxation vacation."

The room is on the inn's second floor, and boasts water views from its two bedroom windows. It is furnished with a queen sized bed, a romantic electric fireplace, and an English armoire for storage. All the rooms at the Bayfront Marin House have flat-screen televisions, many with integrated DVD players, as well as private entrances, plush robes, and free wifi.

"We're looking for a name that will complement the other names of the inn, and one that suits the mood of the room," says Sandy Wieber. "The winning name will let future guests know that they can expect a relaxing, romantic weekend when they stay in this room. We can't wait to see what our fans come up with!"

For complete contest rules, or to enter a name in the contest, please visit http://www.facebook.com/bayfrontmarinhouse. The contest ends on October 31; winners will be chosen and announced within 30 days of that date.

More Information about the Bayfront Marin House
The Bayfront Marin House in Saint Augustine, Florida is a 15-room, luxury bed and breakfast inn. Located on the Matanzas Bay, the bed and breakfast offers stunning views of the water, along with a hot southern breakfast each morning, daily happy hours, delicious desserts, and the highest levels of personalized customer service. The lodging has recently been awarded TripAdvisor's Certificate of Excellence for 2012.

Whether or not you like The Weather Channel, You Have to Like St. Augustine (And they definitely like us!!)

St. Augustine was featured yesterday morning on The Weather Channel, as their meteorologists broadcast from our lighthouse from 6am til 10am.

You can check out the whole story in the Record here.

Speaking of weather, it's absolutely beautiful this morning. I need to get to the store to buy some things for our new bathrooms (they should be ready next weekend!), and then I'm headed to the garden.

Enjoy the weekend!

Sailing, Takes Me Away...

This is what a "not so spectacular"
St. Augustine sunset looks like!!

Have you ever noticed how many songs there are about sailing? There's John Fogarty's Sail Away, the Enya classic Sail Away: Orinico Flow, my Randy Newman fave Sail Away (he often closes with it), and the Styx classic Come Sail Away.

But that's just the beginning...there are tons of sailing songs and books and movies. (I only know because I had to look up the "real" name of Enya's song and I found this huge list on wikipedia). Honestly, I don't understand intellectual copyright laws at all, because it doesn't seem like you should be able to have 100 songs with the same name.

Legalities aside, there's a reason all these singers want to harmonize about life on the high seas: it's because it's mesmerizing. It's relaxing. It's like going to another world.

Last night, the hub and I enjoyed a sunset sail with a few friends, going out with the awesome Captain Chuck and First Mate Rose Ann of St. Augustine Sailing. (That's them above...the woman in red is our friend Mrs. Locklear, whose birthday we were celebrating). We took a 41' Hunter sailboat, which has a very nice cabin below deck, as well as plenty of room for the six of us to spread out and enjoy the lazy evening.

It's hard to be uptight on a sailboat. I mean, I guess if you're on the Bounty and Fletcher Christian is coming towards you with a big rope and a pistol, it might be a little nerve-wracking. But the likelihood of that is pretty low.

A relaxing sail is so nice, in fact, that the hub thought our guests might enjoy the outing. So he put together a great package--a two hour sunset sail on a sailboat, just for two people (plus the crew, of course--you don't want to help sail the boat). It's a totally blissful getaway, and it's only $129 with a three-weeknight stay. You can see all the details on our website.

If you're interested in learning more about the package, just give us a call at 904.824.4301. We'll be happy to give you the whole scoop.

Unless, of course, we're out sailing. (Check out some of the photos from our trip below...and yes, all of the photos on this blog are really from our trip. And Rose Ann apologized that it wasn't a spectacular sunset!)

The marina on Vilano Beach is beautiful in its own right.
 Our captain's favorite boat name? THE LAST BOAT #4.

The dolphins followed us all night--I didn't even have to zoom for this shot.

Saint Augustine: Beautiful any time of day!

Super Moon 2012

There's so much about Saint Augustine that's absolutely super: the romantic brick-lined streets, the fort, the wonderful Bayfront Marin House Inn.

Tonight, it's the moon that's super. It's 14% bigger than usual, and 30% brighter. I have to say, it's normally lovely, but it was nice to see so many people stopping to appreciate it tonight.

I hope you enjoyed it, too...wherever you were watching from.

A Behind the Scenes Look at the Bayfront Marin House

The hub and I dreamed about owning a bed and breakfast for 14 years, finally buying the beautiful Bayfront Marin House last September 1 (our year anniversary is coming up, if you wanted to send flowers!!)

During those 14 years, I did all sorts of things that I thought would be helpful to me in my new career. Things like:

• trying a new breakfast recipe every time we hosted a large group of people. I made breakfast burritos on Cinco de Mayo, French toast on Bastille day (it's best if you use Mexican vanilla and soak the bread slices overnight). I made homemade granola, muffins of all shapes and flavors, waffles, scrambles, omelettes, and maple-syrup baked bacon. Most of the time, these experiments were awesome. However, I'd like to take a moment to personally apologize to the family members who were forced to endure a batch of asiago scones that could have been used to build a retaining wall (I improved as I went along--the scones were an early venture into fancy breakfast baking).
• peppering my Christmas and birthday lists with cookbooks of every type. I got recipe books from bnbs around the country; I got all of Williams Sonoma's books on breakfast. I dug out all of the church cookbooks I had gotten in my hope chest (where I found a bunch of family recipes--thank you Mammy for submitting your raised cake recipe in 1972!!) I also got lots of good dessert recipe collections--The Mrs. Fields I Love Chocolate Collection, Semi Homemade Desserts, Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Secrets, etc.
• yelling at Mike every time we made a bed together, insisting he learn how to make hospital corners and keep his pillows EXACTLY even with the pillows I fluffed on my side of the bed. (Note: the key to always winning this "discussion" is to fluff your pillows first, and then let the other person try to match yours).
• keeping an extensive idea book. Every time my job sent me to a high end hotel, I always tried to "steal" two or three great ideas that I could use someday in my own high end bnb. For instance, one of the hotels I visited had free postcards for people to fill out and mail, complete with a picture of the hotel on them (I'm working on the artwork for that now). One of them left little notes for us about our special occasion--which is why we now do that (assuming we know about it--we always love it when guests tell us if it's their anniversary or birthday!) We're still working on implementing all of the ideas...but they're all carefully preserved in my little book!

Anyway, for years (14 years, in fact) I worked on perfecting my skills to be a perfect, skilled bed and breakfast owner.

And then I bought an inn that was so large (15 rooms) it came with a complete staff. A staff with mad skills, who put my little amateur skills to shame!!

That's how I became the head gardener at the Inn (no one else wanted to do it, and they were all too busy anyway). And head blogger. Other than those two areas, they completely leave me in their dust (or lack of dust--you should see these women clean!)

Which is why it was a huge surprise to find myself cooking a whole oven-ful of bacon strata yesterday. The whole story is that Mary, our amazingly talented cook, went to the Inn at o'dark thirty, only to realize that the oven (pretty necessary for bacon strata), didn't heat up!!

So she called us in a panic, and the next thing you knew she was bringing the casserole pans over to my house. And dropping them off.

Other than making desserts, and strawberry soup once or twice, it's the most cooking I've done for the Inn (and technically, I still haven't made breakfast for our guests--all the strata were already made, just not cooked).

We took the strata back to the Inn at 7:55 (the first guest was eating at 8). Three of our staff came out to the car, all wearing oven mitts (I'm telling you, these ladies are always a step ahead of us!)

And the crisis was averted. (And a financial crisis was avoided as well...the appliance repair company--the amazing Appliance Technicians--fixed the oven for under $100!!)

Back to business as usual--the Eggs Benedict were completed this morning without any excitement!!

Don't Even Ask Me about the Secret Handshake

Since I've paid my first mortgage, I guess I'm officially a small business owner.

I know I've said this before, but I never really thought of a bed and breakfast as a small business. I didn't think of it as a business at all, just like I don't think of people who sell vitamins or jewelry as small business owners. (Sorry to all of my friends who do that. It's not that I belittle the work; in fact, I tend to think of you all as industrious people with a part-time job. I just don't think of it as a small business).

But I've been told I'm wrong about that. We are all Small Businesses (in capital letters), and we comprise a vital part of the country's economy.

You can imagine how excited I was when the media declared two weeks ago that Congress and the president wanted to help small businesses. I stayed up all night at the bed and breakfast with a toilet brush and a bottle of Greenworks. After all, if Congress really wanted to help me, Nancy Pelosi could swing by and clean one of the rooms. And Barbara Mikulski looks as if she could really scrub out the inside of a Jacuzzi; she's small enough to get in there underneath the faucets.

Needless to say, Nancy and Babs never came.

Then I scoured the mail, assuming that help would come in the way of a nice check to help me "jumpstart the economy."

Again, nothing.

I was starting to think that being a small business owner pretty much sucked.

Until, that is, I learned about "the cult".

The cult of small business owners, that is. The secret society of people who have to pay their taxes every single month. The sleepless cell of business owners who answer their emails at midnight, shop only when things are on sale, and do their "books" in a corner of the tv room.

Now, being pretty slow, I didn't "get" what was going on at first. I just thought people were being nice. Like the green trolley people, who sent over a nice plant welcoming us to town, along with an invitation to happy hour. And the ghost tour people, who invited us to a VIP tour, along with a cute bag full of homemade soaps.

"Southerners sure are nice," I thought, as I pocketed the soap and put the plant in the Marin's dining room.

But then, I went to Meehan's on Matanzas, and something started to click with me. When the bill came, it didn't include our drinks (being the big drinkers that we are, it was just a single iced tea, but still). So I pointed it out to our pleasant waitress, who said, "Oh, that isn't a mistake" and she gestured towards John Meehan, the handsome owner of said restaurant. He smiled like Robert Redford, then gave me the ol' finger slide down the side of the nose. I was suspicious that something was going on, but then I just assumed that he had nasal problems.

A few weeks later, I got a nice note from Stacie at the Green Trolley, who said that she'd be happy to drop off a Yellow Pass. It was free entry to almost every.single.venue in St. Augustine.

"That way," she said, "you can talk first-hand about the different activities with all of your guests." Activities like riding the Green Trolley through town (which I do highly recommend, incidentally, but more on that later).

So here's the deal: it seems that being a small business owner is hard. Really hard. And we're all pretty interdependent on each other (is that even a word?) So...I send someone to Raintree Restaurant, and recommend the seafood chowder; they send someone to the Bayfront Marin, and recommend having breakfast in bed. I suggest taking the Schooner for a sunset cruise; they recommend the sangria at our happy hour.

It's all very mason-like, isn't it? Without the confusing symbols, of course (although there are all of those quatrafoils around the town).

Of course, I'll probably be thrown out of the club, or shunned socially, for mentioning this society to you. But I feel like I have an obligation to take you on this ride with me, and that means sharing everything.

So, to all of you non-small business owners...I feel sorry for you. As you sit back and enjoy your company-paid holidays and flu shots, I have a perk that you don't have. I have peeps...comrades in arms...buds. I am a member of the *club*, baby. And I have a yellow pass, which is just as good as having keys to the city. (Better, actually, as my keyring is already overloaded with all the keys to the b and b).

I'm going to do as many of those free things as I can. (And maybe even a couple that I have to pay for--in the interest of being thorough). I'm going to visit as many restaurants as possible, too, and report back to you on what to do and don't do in this beautiful old city of mine. I'll try new drinks, dinner specials, and more historic tours than most people could stand.

It's going to be hard, netties. But I'm willing to do it. Just for you. And the free drinks, of course.