A Fun Way To Date Your Spouse!

Now that Valentine's Day has come and gone, and I've given Jake his gift, I can share with all of you what I made him.

First off, let me start by saying one of the things we are working on is having more consistent "date nights" :-) It can be tricky at times if we don't plan ahead because we don't have family here who can easily watch our son. We have to find a babysitter or friends to look after Toby if Jake and I want to go out alone. Too often we look back and realize it's been weeks, if not months, since we went out just the two of us.

We started trying to plan two dates a month in January. Being intentional has helped, but, for Valentine's Day, I thought I would take it one step further.

Do you ever get in a date rut, where you got to the same restaurants or always catch a movie? I feel like we are totally guilty of that! Haha! I mean, nothing is wrong with that, but the reality is you don't really talk or connect during a movie, and repeat visits to the same restaurant don't foster new shared experiences and fresh conversation—plus there's just so many great restaurants we still need to try!

Insert my Valentine's gift. It was a simple idea that I found thanks to Pinterest and I tweaked it to work for us—date night ideas that we could pick out at the beginning of the month to change things up.

All you need is:

• Markers
• A jar
• Popsicle sticks
• Labels or paper & tape

I chose to create 4 categories:

1. At home date nights that are free.
2. At home date nights that have a small cost.
3. Date nights out that are free.
4. Date nights out that have a cost.

This will work with our budget, babysitting availability, and keep us changing things up!

Some of the ideas I came up with include:

• Board game night
• Sunset picnic
• At home theme night (like Italian and make Italian food together, listen to Italian music and maybe learn a few words in Italian. It could also be a movie theme, decade them, etc.)
• Try a new food truck
• Walk on the beach

To create my list I scoured the internet for ideas. I also added some things that Jake and I often talk about doing but for some reason never have. I also threw in some of our favorite things to do that are always fun.

Then I color coded the four lists and wrote them out on the popsicle sticks marking the top part of the stick with the right color. At the beginning of the month, we pick two popsicle sticks based on our budget and childcare availability.

The main reason I did an equal amount of at home date nights was that I was keeping in mind that we are expecting our second baby in April and getting out of the house might be tricky for a while. This way we won't sacrifice our time together during that crazy, sleep deprived season!

If you try this out, I'd love for you to share what some of your date night ideas are! I'm always on the lookout for a new ones :-)


Filled with HOPE,