One of the BEST things we got to do during our trip to Palm Springs was go and tour one of Frank Sinatra’s Twin Palms estate. Since I grew up on his movies and music from an early age I am a giant Sinatra fan so getting to go and see his house was definitely a dream come true. Frank’s always my answer to the question, “If you could meet one person living or dead, who would it be?” and being in his personal home is probably as close as I’ll ever get to ol’ Blue Eyes since he passed away in 1998. 
The house was built in 1947 but unfortunately someone that bought the house after him let it deteriorate rather badly until the current owners renovated it back to it’s original look and feel. 
These two twin palm trees were the main reason that Frank chose this spot to build on and it was originally next to a dirt landing strip that was the Palm Springs airport in the 1940’s (his other requirement was to be close to the airport for traveling).
Sinatra had his pool built in the shape of a grand piano and the holes in the ceiling of the walkway above me cast shadows like piano keys when the sun is setting over the mountains. So cool!
Orange was Sinatra’s favorite color so they’ve re-decorated the house with lots of orange accents like in the master bedroom above. While a lot of the original flooring, tile, and wall treatments had to be replaced, there are still some things in the house that are original like the sink and tile in the master bathroom. Why does that matter? Well, you can still see a crack in the sink and wall behind it where a champagne bottle was thrown during one of Frank and Ava Gardner’s fights (they were kind of famous for their over-the-top fights in the day).
Another original piece to the house is Frank’s recording setup in the living room. Obviously all the musician boys in our group were fascinated by it and if you look closely at the photo below you can see where Frank marked his favorite settings with pencil. It didn’t really hit me until afterwards that I was standing in a room that Frank Sinatra was singing in all the time. Woah. That was a big deal for me.
This room with the palm wallpaper is called the “green room” and it’s where he would hide his celeb friends who were going to perform that night at one of his parties until it was showtime. It’s hard to get the full scope of the room but even the ceiling is wallpapered with the palm leaves. It’s amazing. It’s not the original paper, but they used the closest they could get so it would have that same overwhelming feeling. I have such a star-struck look on my face in the above photo, but I promise it wasn’t posed! Just trying to take it all in…
Apparently Sinatra originally had a flagpole set up between the two palm trees and he would raise a Jack Daniel’s flag (his favorite liquor) at cocktail hour to signal to the neighbors that the Sinatra bar was open for business. How cool is that?!
While we had so many memorable experiences on our first trip to Palm Springs, I will certainly never forget the few moments that I had to spend some time in Frank Sinatra’s house. My current favorite Sinatra song is actually from a much lesser known movie called “Higher and Higher” where he made his first movie appearance ever and sings this reeeeally sweet little song (it starts about 2:12 in the clip) that literally makes me want to do one of those fainting sighs that you see at Beatles concerts. Thanks for letting me come over Frank, I only wish you could have been there too!
xo. Laura
It’s not over yet! There’s still a few special spots to show you on our tour of Palm Springs. Just when you thought things couldn’t get anymore colorful…
The rainbow details at the 
For a fancy dinner night we went to a place called Melvyn’s that Frank Sinatra used to frequent back in the day. It certainly looks like it hasn’t changed much since then (which is part of its charm) and they still do all the “fancy” table side service for different dishes. I got the Steak Diane because that was Sinatra’s favorite, and while it was a fun place to try, the food was just ok and we actually had a rather bad end to the meal due to some incredibly rude waiters so I don’t think I would go back next time…let’s just say Frank would not have stood for it, so neither did we. HA!
For our last brunch before we hit the road we went to King’s Highway at the 
We also stopped to see the 
We also went to brunch place called 
We’re baaaaack! I was a little worried that I was so excited to finally get to go to Palm Springs that I was building it up too much in my mind and I would be disappointed when we actually got there. Let me assure you—it was AMAZING! It totally feels like this dreamy mid-century oasis and the amount of cuteness and color everywhere is just far too delicious to be real (except that it is!). Another reason we decided to do Palm Spring for our Babymoon is so we could invite a few couples to come out with us on the trip and it really made the whole adventure a lot more fun. The other bonus is that all three other couples had been to Palm Springs before (
We had to get up super early to catch a flight from Nashville to LAX, and when we got there, we had to stop for some In-N-Out before making the drive out to the desert. I will say that they don’t make my favorite fries in the world (they always taste stale to me…) but the burger is pretty great so it’s worth it.
It was raining off and on while we drove up to Palm Springs so we were basically following a giant rainbow for the last 45 minutes of the trip. So special!We loved the house that we chose to stay in for our trip! Since we had 4 couples going in January we needed a place that had enough space for everyone as well as the wintertime necessities (heated pool, hot tub, indoor and outdoor fireplace) and 
As you can see, I enjoyed the pool floatie they left for us! Probably my favorite part of the trip was just soaking up some warm sun while I read dumb magazines by the pool. I even declined the chance to do some Palm Springs vintage shopping because I didn’t want to miss the afternoon pool time. I do love shopping, but pool or beach will win every time. I was so glad to finally find a cute 
Just going for a walk around the neighborhoods with Todd was magical—the adorable houses and palm trees never end!! (Rainbow dress is ModCloth by the way).
We had brunch at Norma’s at 
I’m not normally an orange person, but those doors!!
Another amazing indoor/outdoor restaurant we went to was 
Helloooo bell sleeves! This pink dress is actually a jumpsuit, but I could still get the belly inside it and the sleeves are perfect for a mid-century themed trip. It’s sold out at Zara, but 
OMG, seeing 
You may remember a few weeks back that I said we were hoping to take a Babymoon trip someplace warm while I was still in my second trimester, and we finally decided to go to Palm Springs! If you’ve seen my house it may be a bit of a shock to you that I haven’t already been to the mid-century-lover’s oasis, but this is my first trip out to Palm Springs and I’m SO excited. I originally was trying to find a beach destination for the trip, buuuut the US beaches weren’t quite warm enough yet in January (the water would be cold too in a lot of spots) and looking at flying south of Florida or Hawaii was getting expensive so we decided to save the beach for later and finally make it out to the desert. I’ve been trying to shop for this trip ever since I thought it might be a possibility and let me tell you that it has not been easy! There’s a lot of boxes you’re trying to check off when shopping for such a colorful town and in the middle of winter and for a pregnant lady. If I didn’t already count swimsuit shopping as one of the nine circles of hell, let’s add the 24 weeks preggo component and see how that goes…
So, you’ve been waiting either days, weeks, or months for your partner in crime to finally come back from road life and spend a bit of time at home. You’ve dreamt of romantic picnics by a lake, riding horses through fields in slow motion, and sounds of “I love you more” and “no, I love you more” ringing through the halls….but…that’s not always quite what happens, is it? I think with most touring families there’s some sort of mathematical equation that says the longer he’s been away, the longer it takes to get your “couple’s rhythm” back after the tour is over. I mean, practically speaking, you’ve been basically living a single person’s life that whole time (meals for one, laundry for one, doing whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it) so it can be quite an adjustment to suddenly have to think of another person being in the house again. Oh, you didn’t want to spend the whole Saturday at flea markets and the mall? What’s this about a new pinball arcade that just opened up downtown?? Competing interests aside, just the act of doing daily tasks can become a war zone now that you have a buddy who you would like to help with the chores while they’re around. Not that being on the road isn’t a lot of work on that end buuuuuut when they haven’t taken out a trash or cleaned a toilet in 3 months, well, it can be easy to forget that someone’s been doing all of that back home (and a million more things) during that time and some chore relief would be well appreciated.