Date Challenge – Ideas

As promised, I have put together some ideas that you can use to form your own version of your Date Night Challenge.  But before we get into it all I want to address 2 very important issues…

1.  Though many people seem to be up to the challenge, there are a few people that aren’t.  I am going to go out on a limb to say that I think that this is important, despite your age or how long you’ve been married, the age of your kids or whether you even have kids!  It doesn’t matter.  What matters is that we spend alone time with our spouses.  And maybe the idea of a “date night” freaks you out, because actually you are at the time of your life where you don’t actually want to go out and do things anymore.  I get that.    So when I refer to “date night”, what I actually  mean is “a dedicated alone time with your spouse for at least 30 minutes, at night or during the day”.  Does that make it a bit more bearable?

2.  One of my problems was not deciding to do it, but rather about putting it into a format that would work for us.  Knowing that any fluffy stuff would put off my man.  But I got in a couple of good ideas!  Here’s an awesome one from Carla:

Not that I have a husband, or kids for that matter, I thought that maybe instead of doing the “pick out a hat” idea and end up picking five times because you weren’t quite keen on the first four ideas, why don’t you make one of those decision-tree/ flow-chat-gram things? You know, those random “what kind of girl are you?” silly questions they have in magazines, and depending on your decision you are either end up at a) a princess, b) a tomboy or c) girl-next-door. Haha!

Anyhoo, you can think of a variety of date ideas and put them into four categories: “tried and tested” activities, eg. a movie; “something new” activities, eg. a comedy show; “tried and tested” food, eg. the spur and “something new” food, eg. yindees. Then, just design your decision tree (with words, or pictures if you feeling creative) – are you hungry? > yes > do you want to try something new? > no > the spur.

For me this sounds amazing and I may revert to it if my current idea doesn’t work.  So the current idea is that when it’s time for the date night (at least once a week), we check out this blog post and see what we feel like, slowly working through the list.  So that way we do everything, but on our terms.  I know it’s not very fancy or Pinterest worthy, so I got Seth to make this:

There you go.  As from 1 June the challenge is one to spend at least 30 minutes with your spouse once a week – connecting.  If you are into recording it, take a picture of the date and pop it on our Facebook Page – I would really love to see it.  Here are some ideas for you (I tried to break it up for convenience):

Expensive dates on them that require actual planning on our part.

• Bed and Breakfast away at a lovely place
• Dinner at a fancy restaurant that requires effort to dress up and look great together
• Hotel stay for the night
• Go and see a play at the theatre and dress up
• Go for a hike
• Weekend away (Consider me jealous if you get to do this)
• Couples Massage
• Tourist in your own city – spend sometime at a tourist destination and take photos like real tourists – with all the cheesyness.
• Visit the zoo
• Theme Night – pick and theme and run with it.  Eat Mexican, go salsa dancing – this may require quite a bit of planning.
• Cook a main meal together – preferably something new that you can stumble through together – including dessert.  Maybe even take the day to source all the ingredients from lovely butcheries and organic deli’s.
• Go for a lesson – a cooking class, dancing or pottery class.
• Create a “restaurant at home” – including a menu and vibe.
• Spend a day visiting places that you went to as an early/dating couple – take pictures.
• Go to a driving range and practise your golf skills, or in my case, see if you have any skill at all.
• If in Cape Town, go to the Grand Daddy Hotel in Cape Town CBD on a Monday night to go and watch the movie on the roof – it’s the closest us South Africans will get to a “drive in” that I know of.
• Do the sunset cruise at the Waterfront.

Stay “at home” dates:

• Have a living room camp out – making a tent, watching tv and sleeping on the floor in the lounge.  (I’d move my matress in for this one)
• Takeout and board games (I know Seth literally cannot wait for this one *note sarcasm*!  While searching for ideas I came across a website that said you need to get 80 balloons, 60 of which you fill with helium and the rest you blow up and put on the floor and surfaces of your room.  Then light candles and play board games on your bed.  To me this is just ridiculous!  How to start a fire the bedroom – and not the good kind).
• 1,000 piece puzzle (or any puzzle for that matter – I have one if you need it) and pizza
• Write up a Bucket List of things you want to do
• Popcorn and a chick-flick
• Crosswords and breakfast for dinner
• Make a dessert together – with all the toppings
• Homemade pizzas and an Italian movie
• Make your own fondue – melt your own chocolate and dip in various fruits and goodies.
• Fly a kite – even cooler to make it yourself
• Take a 5 Love Languages test and see how you can work on your relationship.  End with chocolate dipped strawberries.  (I take NO responsibility of how sucky this test could be – it’sm the only one I could find).
• Have a movie marathon – watch any movies that you may have been storing up on the PVR or go and rent some goodies that you haven’t seen.
• Have a Wii Night at home – hire games if you don’t have enough.  Make sure you have enough snacks to replenish the energy that you’ll be using up 😉
• Have a Series marathon – if you can – try and finish an entire season in one go!
• 20 Questions – try the 20 questions for married couples – chat through them and enjoy the answers.  (Again, not fantastic questions, but fun to think through)
• Make breakfast together and then go and eat it in bed – might need to be done early if you have kiddies.
• Have an excersice evening – do sit ups, squats or whatever, but work up a sweat and laugh doing it together.
• Draw up your own words (that will be memories for you as a couple) for Pictionary and then play it a couple of months later when you’ve forgotten what you’ve written.
• Have a candlelight picnic in your backyard.

Things we can do away from home but are less expensive and don’t require as much planning.

• Dinner and a movie (my choice and his choice)
• Laser tag – Do we still have this here?
• Dessert only date
• Window shopping for the house
• Bowling and try and make it interesting
• Coffee Date
• Ice-skating
• Plan a picnic – even if you end up eating it on the floor in the lounge because of the weather
• Go to the park and chill out there for a while.
• Go to a local museum
• Go to a local food fair or carnival
• Visit the Old Biscuit Mill for a morning.
• Try a new restaurant – avoid your local hangouts
• Restaurant Hop – eat all 3 parts of your meal at different places – starters, mains and desserts.
• Visit a bakery and choose a treat for each other.
• Go to the arcade and try and win some prizes.
• Visit Clay Cafe in Hout Bay and pick and paint your own pottery to then use at home and remember