Date Nights
A friend and I were talking about a spouse's birthday and the conversation slowly evolved into talking about date nights. There are a gazillion ideas on where to spend your date night. (Just google those two words and you'll get some amazing ideas.) But actually putting them into practice isn't so easy.
Two Christmas's ago I was trying to come up with a creative gift idea for my husband. I didn't want to just buy him another shirt, or box of chocolate covered cherries. A lady in a study group suggested an idea, which I think she used one year herself. So I took 12 pieces of paper and on each one I wrote a day from each month. For example, I looked at my January calendar, and knowing there would be swim meets and basketball games, I found a day that was open and so I wrote that on slip of paper: Jan 12. Then I did that for the rest of the months, checking my calendar, mentally reviewing what goes on in each month, or certain birthdays/holidays/school events, and then picking a day.
When I was done marking them down on the papers, and marking them in my own calendar, I wrapped them up in a box for his Christmas gift.
Now did we go out each time the slip of paper came up? No, I don't think we hit each one. But we did get a lot of them. Having it set on the calendar made it a priority. We put dental appointments on a calendar, or other meetings, and they are not as fun as a date, so why not write those in on your calendar as an appointment that can't be missed?
So that was one year. This last Christmas I wanted to improve that gift. This time I gathered 12 slips of paper and 12 envelopes. On each slip of paper I wrote down an idea or a place for us to go on our date. And then I labeled the envelope with the month. So for the January envelope, I slipped in the paper that read Go out for breakfast. February's enveloped held the note Go lingerie shopping. For March we were to Go to a Comedy Club. So far 1 out of 3 we've hit. But that's ok, because I think April is Choose your own Adventure.
Some other ideas I might or might not have used
"Pack a picnic lunch"
"Go star gazing"
"Go dancing"
"Test drive a car we could never buy"
"Go hiking"
"Try a new restaurant/new cultural food"
"Spend a night at a hotel"
"Go to the beach"
"Browse a bookstore together"
"Paint pottery"
"Ice skate/rollerskate"
"Go clay shooting"
"Drive to the coast and watch the sunset"
"Photoshoot"
Part of the list is about connecting with my spouse; and trying new things is often a fun way to do that. So often we get caught in the same trap of What do you want to do/eat? I don't know, what do you want to do/eat? And then we end up at the same restaurant or at Home Depot, talking about the kids or talking about what we want/need to fix on the house.
Maybe this will help you and your spouse find some fun together.
Two Christmas's ago I was trying to come up with a creative gift idea for my husband. I didn't want to just buy him another shirt, or box of chocolate covered cherries. A lady in a study group suggested an idea, which I think she used one year herself. So I took 12 pieces of paper and on each one I wrote a day from each month. For example, I looked at my January calendar, and knowing there would be swim meets and basketball games, I found a day that was open and so I wrote that on slip of paper: Jan 12. Then I did that for the rest of the months, checking my calendar, mentally reviewing what goes on in each month, or certain birthdays/holidays/school events, and then picking a day.
When I was done marking them down on the papers, and marking them in my own calendar, I wrapped them up in a box for his Christmas gift.
Now did we go out each time the slip of paper came up? No, I don't think we hit each one. But we did get a lot of them. Having it set on the calendar made it a priority. We put dental appointments on a calendar, or other meetings, and they are not as fun as a date, so why not write those in on your calendar as an appointment that can't be missed?
So that was one year. This last Christmas I wanted to improve that gift. This time I gathered 12 slips of paper and 12 envelopes. On each slip of paper I wrote down an idea or a place for us to go on our date. And then I labeled the envelope with the month. So for the January envelope, I slipped in the paper that read Go out for breakfast. February's enveloped held the note Go lingerie shopping. For March we were to Go to a Comedy Club. So far 1 out of 3 we've hit. But that's ok, because I think April is Choose your own Adventure.
Some other ideas I might or might not have used
"Pack a picnic lunch"
"Go star gazing"
"Go dancing"
"Test drive a car we could never buy"
"Go hiking"
"Try a new restaurant/new cultural food"
"Spend a night at a hotel"
"Go to the beach"
"Browse a bookstore together"
"Paint pottery"
"Ice skate/rollerskate"
"Go clay shooting"
"Drive to the coast and watch the sunset"
"Photoshoot"
Part of the list is about connecting with my spouse; and trying new things is often a fun way to do that. So often we get caught in the same trap of What do you want to do/eat? I don't know, what do you want to do/eat? And then we end up at the same restaurant or at Home Depot, talking about the kids or talking about what we want/need to fix on the house.
Maybe this will help you and your spouse find some fun together.
I love This! Thanks for posting. I might have to try scheduling out a few times a month for the rest of the year for Tim's birthday! We hit the big vacations and getaways but seem to fall into "I don't know, what do you want to do/eat" in between because it isn't scheduled. Thanks for including ideas too.. That's often the hard part:) I love all of them except for the test driving a car. Seems selfish to waste the sales guy's time.
ReplyDeleteWe recently tried number 7 on the list... we reserved a Saturday night at a hotel that I won at a silent auction fundraiser. For The last month, I've been so excited about our mini beach getaway... until I looked up the address the night before and found out we were nowhere near the beach but just 10 minutes from where we live. Oops! It was still fun to pretend we were in vacation in our own city.