Since love is in the air and Valentine’s Day will be here before you know it, have you given any thought to what you will be doing on your special night? Date nights are a huge passion point of mine whether it is Valentine’s Day or any night of the week. Tim and I go on a weekly date night. Thursday nights are OUR FAVORITE NIGHT! I thought I would give you some creative ideas for inexpensive date nights because the point is really to reconnect with your partner.
1. Go to a bookstore and pick out book describing ___________. A fun and zany date night includes going to your local bookstore. Come up with a topic and then go search out and book. Some we’ve done is find a book…
– that describes how you feel about me at this moment
– that is something you want to do as a couple someday
– that describes how you feel about life right now
– that describes me
– that describes each of our kids
Give each other 5-10 minutes to find something. It always ends up in laughs because one of us finds a book title that is so off the wall. It is fun, trust me.
2. Find a place to go play old school video games. Remember Pac-Man, Donkey Kong or Pinball? Usually, if you look hard enough someplace in your town will have old school video games. It is fun to challenge each other and reminisce about your childhood video games. We even have an old Atari and we will sometimes hook that up and play each other. (I am totally an Atari girl…I ruled Pitfall).
3. Do something you like to do by yourself together. I remember when Tim and I first got married I had a moment when I was like, “Holy cow how did we ever have fun dating we have nothing in common!†So what we decided to do was to write down things we liked to do by ourselves. We each put about 10 things in a mason jar and then pulled one out and we had to do it together. The only rule: You had to have a good attitude no matter what. Inevitably, I had to shoot hoops with him and he had to bake cookies with me. But we were together and we always had fun…the point is being together, right?
4. Buy a questions book and have a picnic dinner. There is a fun book that Tim and I will take on our date nights called The Complete Book of Questions: 1001 Conversation Starters for Any Occasions. We will grab this book and a blanket and head to our nearest park and just flip through the book and ask each other questions. It is amazing what we learn that is new about each other even after so many years of marriage.
5. Take pictures around town of you and are your significant other. Make sure you take your digital camera with you and get them all printed before you go home. If you want to make it a family adventure then show your kids and have them guess where you were when you took the pictures. Or hide something small in each picture for your kids to find. They love it!
(Find Tim in the picture below)
So do you date your spouse still? What holds you back from going on dates? What are some creative date nights you have done?
My hubby and I have set aside one night a week for date night. {Lately we haven’t been good about keeping up with this tradition.} One of our favorites is to pull out old board games {Scrabble, Yatzi, and a new fave, Scrabble Slam}.I love the idea of the question book and a picnic. I’ll be borrowing that one. 🙂 Thanks!
Jen
Scissors & SPatulas
Over the years we have done different things, depending on the stage of life we were in. When the kids were little, we had little extra money, so a date might have consisted of a picnic on the living room floor and a rented movie after the kids were asleep. When the kids were teens, and Saturdays were no longer spent traveling from one kid’s sports event to another, we started spending every Saturday together hitting Habitat Re-Stores and doing home improvement projects (or just dreaming about what we wanted to do).
When all but one kid had left home, and I had gone back to work, we would meet up at the last kid’s track or cross-country meets on weekday afternoons, sit together, catch up, hold hands, and savor the moments and the magic of this child that we shared. Those were the most bittersweet dates of all, as we knew our days with kid #3 were numbered, and he would soon go off to school like his older siblings had done….
Now, we try to keep Friday night as a date night, but we stay in, stream some TV and eat Chinese take-out. Love the book of questions idea!
~Amanda
We have date night every Tuesday AND Wednesday nights…it’s rather crazy! My son has a social skills group {he has autism} and the therapist likes to have his sister with him so we have nearly two hours alone…then Wednesday nights our kids are in AWANA {a Bible club at church} and we have 2 1/2 hours to ourselves! Summer isn’t as fun, but we definitely do our best to date a lot! I love your tips and ideas! So cute!
Becky B.
http://www.organizingmadefun.com
Organizing Made Fun
That is awesome that you have so much time together. I love it. Two date nights a week? That is sheer heaven right there.
We were able to go on a date last night. We went to the thrift store (and came out with a stack of books as usual!) then our favorite Thai place and after drove around scouting out hiking packs.
It’s been awhile so we really enjoyed our time together.
Hehe, I had to laugh when I read the header to your comment section…”speak your mind”. My mind if you could hear it would sound something like a computer during a dial-up connection right now…ive been computer shopping. Lol. Anyhow those were great tips! My husband and I started a date nught once a month this year but so far it has consisted of going to dinner and comung home, the time to just talk is great but gettingpretty boring. Yes love the 1000 question book, abd the bookstore.
Those are great ideas! Here’s another fun one. My husband and I went to the dollar store together and picked out 3 things for each other without each other knowing what they were. For example, I picked out huge ladies underwear, a princess wig, and some funny glasses with huge eyebrows for my husband. He picked out a piece of plastic armor, a cowboy hat, and some floam for me. Then we went to the mall and got our pictures taken in one of those photo booths. We took a nice picture of the two of us first, and then in each successive picture, we wore one of the items that was picked for us. It was lots of fun and the photobooth strip is still up on our door. Plus, the whole activity was only $10! Just make sure that you plan out what item you will wear, and how you want them to wear it, in each picture and have it handy so that you are ready when the camera starts snapping…..it goes pretty quickly. It makes for good laughs and lots of fun!
I am soooooo doing that! I love that idea thanks for commenting Erin!
What a wonderful post filled with great ideas. Thanks for sharing.
My husband and I got a souvenir from Busch Gardens that is a sort of eye spy/where’s waldo called “Dragon Quest.” It is not your ordinary children’s book as we originally thought. They will put only a portion of the object in the picture which makes it more challenging. It’s fun when we are looking for the last object forever!
I love date nights, but I don’t remember the last time I really went on one. We’ve only been married, coming up on 3 years, but we have an 18 month baby girl who needs babysitting and it’s too costly to pay for a date and babysitting when my husband is in school. Family is far away, so even if it’s a cheap date we still have to pay a sitter 🙁 Great ideas though! I love the photo safari idea!
When we can’t afford a babysitter one of us puts the kids to bed and the other goes and gets take out and picks out a game or movie and sets everything up then comes and “picks” the other up when everything is all ready in the living room or we put the kids to bed a little early and have grandma or a friend a friend come over or pay a babysitter half price because they are asleep and we go to the late-late show and then get dessert at an all night place.
Love that idea. I need to do that. Go out late and just hire someone to come over and just eat our food and play on our internet and just sit there to be here in case anything happens.
Our favorite date pre-kids was to go to a movie and dinner, then hang out in Barnes & Noble (which had a Starbucks) reading in chairs next to each other until the store closed. If one of us read a great quote or an interesting tidbit, we’d share. I love the bookstore idea! We use a deck of cards on road trips called UnGame for Couples, which is kind of like conversation starters but there are rules (like no interrupting or responding unless you get a “response” card) so everyone will feel free to speak. We’re big board game fanatics too, and we’ve amassed quite a collection of random games from thrift stores and peddler’s malls (a lot of our games aren’t even in production anymore).
When my husband & I can’t afford a babysitter but need a night out we ask a friend who has children to watch our kids & then the next week we watch their children. It works great if you both are respectful of the others time limits.