Christmas in July (A Little Late)

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Violet's Date Night

Hi everyone!

So, we've been a little behind on dates (obviously) and decided to post some of the older ones that we had pictures of, but never got around to posting. It's a bit unfortunate I didn't get this one up in July, but hey, here it is now!

Sometimes you just miss Christmas. Am I right? Yeah, I am. ;) So I thought it would be fun to celebrate some of the more playful parts of Christmas during one of our July dates.

We started out with a "empty" tree (made out of construction paper), and some empty stockings:

  
First, we went to the store and bought some little treats to wrap and put in each others' stockings (and yes, we did wait until the next morning to open them). Then we took out some more construction paper in different colors and made our own ornaments!

We decorated while listening to Christmas music on Pandora.

We also made a snowman...for dinner!

Our lovely snowman pizza. Original idea from deliacreates.com

We also ate on Christmas plates:

One of the fun things about this date is that you can change it to match your own holiday traditions. Michael and I watched some fun Christmas themed movies, had nativity decorations, and tried to read A Christmas Carol (though we never ended up having the time).

 

We're Back! (With a Little Reminder)

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Hey Everyone! This is Violet. Wow, it's been over three months since Michael and I have done a post on here. I blame finals for the first month, but we really have no excuse for May and June except for laziness. ;)

Despite this, we've had a date every single week, and luckily for you we even took pictures of several of them! That means we're going to have a few date posts to roll out over the next few days.

In the meantime, I have a question for you: When was the last time you told your sweetheart that you loved them? If it's been awhile (or even if it hasn't) go ahead and find a way to do it now!

Even the sidewalk says "I love you" sometimes!

1. If your sweetheart is near you, just find him/her and say, "I love you"! Ready? Set? Go!
2. If your sweetheart isn't near you right now, text him/her a sweet message, or maybe leave a voicemail.
3. Try writing a sweet note to your sweetheart, or even go for a full love letter.
4. Write "I love you" somewhere your sweetheart is sure to see it. Perhaps with sidewalk chalk on the way to your front door!
5. Remember that actions can speak louder than words: find something you can do for your sweetheart that you know will scream "I love you!"

How do you tell your sweetheart that you love him/her? Let us know in the comments!

Indoor Stargazing

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Michael's Date Night

Sorry this date is more than a week late. Things have just been pretty crazy around here!

So last week, I had a lot of trouble coming up with a date. Finally, I was outside and looked up at the stars and thought that stargazing would be a good date. But it was pretty cold outside last weekend, so we decided to do it indoors.

How, you ask? Well, I'll tell you.

First, we each took a pin and a black piece of construction paper, and we stabbed a whole bunch of holes, like so:

 
When we were done, we had two unique "night skies:"

We attached them to a lampshade with tape:

Then we turned off all the lights except for the lamp, and we picked out constellations in the stars.

I also made some hot chocolate and put it an a jar for us to share!

This was a really simple and easy date that didn't take a long time to prepare. It was nice and relaxing, and it involved spending time together and chatting, which is always really nice.

Total cost for this date: FREE!!

Pick a Date, Any Date

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Violet's Date Night

I'm so excited to tell everyone about this date!

But before I get started, I want to apologize for us not getting our date up last week. We had a super cute, fun, easy date, and Michael will be getting it up later today. So that means two new dates this week! 

The inspiration for this week's comes from our local library, which had a "blind date with a book" event in February. They wrapped up a few books, wrote some words describing the book on the wrapping, and people would decide on reading a book without actually seeing what it was. I decided to do the same thing with our date night this week.

I printed out pictures of the posters for four very different movies and put them in envelopes, then added three treats and an activity to each.

The night before our date, I had Michael pick one of the four envelopes with only the different colors on the front as a guide:

He had a hard time deciding, but finally picked the orange.

Inside was Unicorn City, with some "Gamer treats" (Mountain Dew, Cheetos, and Nerds Rope) and the game "Munchkin" for an activity.

The other envelopes contained:

Pink:

• Emma
• Herb Tea
• Biscotti
• Chocolate
• A walk in the park

Dark blue:

• Snow White and the Huntsman
• Sparkling Apple Cider
• Caramel Apple Slices
• Hostess/Offbrand Sno Balls
• Reading some Grimm's Fairy Tales

Light Blue:

• Atlantis: The Lost Empire 
• Jones Bubblegum Soda (Because it's blue)
• Goldfish Crackers
• Swedish Fish
• Swimming

We will save these for future emergency dates, so you may see them pop up again sometime.

The next day we took the papers from the envelope Michael picked

and exchanged them for the real thing:

We also dressed for the occasion:

Michael is wearing a wizard shirt, and I'm wearing a dragon shirt.

One of the best things about this date is that you can use the same ideas we did, or come up with different ideas for literally any movie (or TV show, or book) you want to. The possibilities are endless!

Sunrise Date

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Violet's Date Night

Last week Michael planned a day date. This week we took it even further and had a morning date! We went to a park early in the morning with our camera and a picnic breakfast to watch the sunrise.

Our breakfast:

Not super fancy or super healthy, but super yummy for sure!

There was a cute little gazebo at the park and we sat at one of the tables there to eat our breakfast.

 Look how dark it was behind us!


We snuggled and talked as we watched the sunrise, and of course took pictures:

This was a fun and simple date that we really enjoyed, and we hope you enjoy it too!

Total cost for the yummy breakfast: $5.61

Digital Zoo Date

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Michael's Date Night
 
Don't you just love the zoo? Cause we do. But unfortunately, we don't live anywhere near a zoo, and they're expensive. So I decided to take Violet on a date inspired by this one we found on Love, Actually. We went to a virtual zoo from the comfort of our own living room.

First, I came up with a list of animals to include. Then I found videos on YouTube of them, mostly from various zoos. I made a document with hyperlinks to the videos, which I made into a PDF and uploaded here. Feel free to use it for personal use, but please don't repost it online anywhere or give it to your friends; instead send them to our blog. :-)

If you want a different assortment of animals, you can make your own zoo guide in Microsoft Word, or just look up different animal videos on the web.

We did this as a daytime date, so we packed a lunch: peanut butter sandwiches and fruit cups. We ate them during the Sea Lion Feeding Time video.

On the actual date, I had the PDF open in fullscreen mode on the laptop, and we sat on the couch and clicked the links to watch the different animals. We enjoyed them a lot, especially the live videos the San Diego Zoo has of several of their animals, including these Koalas and Orangutans which we took pictures of on the screen:

Afterwards, we finished it off with Bear Claw ice cream and animal crackers (plus Tagalongs, since it's girl scout cookie season).

Total cost without the treat: FREE!
Cost for ice cream and animal crackers: $5.11

Warm Bodies and Cold Treats

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Michael's Date Night

Sorry we missed last week. We did have a date; Violet planned a very romantic Valentine's day date with a delicious dinner, fancy decorations (including candles), and lots of chocolate. It was a "cuddle date," where we sat on the couch listening to music and reading Pride and Prejudice. Things were so busy last weekend, though, that we didn't have time to put together the blog post.

This week we went and saw Warm Bodies, which is a funny romantic zombie movie based on Romeo and Juliet.  

We really enjoyed the film. It was funny and heartwarming, and very cute. Neither of us had ever watched  a zombie movie before, but this isn't a stereotypical zombie movie.

After the movie was over, we went to Krave, a local Frozen Yogurt place. We used some buy-one-get-one-free coupons and ordered some delicious frozen yogurt as well as some clam chowder and sandwiches for dinner. It was all very delicious. Violet got chocolate and cookies and cream yogurt, and I got pineapple and strawberry yogurt.

Yummy sandwiches

Delicious Frozen Yogurt

Movie Tickets: $12.00

Frozen Yogurt (with coupon): $5.85

Soup and sandwiches (with coupons): $7.49

Total Cost for this date: $25.34

People Watching

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Michael's Date Night

This has been a really stressful and busy week. I know we say that a lot, but hey, we're college students. Anyway, we wanted to do something relaxing and easy for our date, so we decided to go to the mall and go people-watching.

This has been something we've talked about doing for a long time, but we've never actually gotten around to it until now. We wandered around the mall, taking turns telling each other about random strangers and what they were doing. We're both creative writers, so this was fun and engaging for both of us.

Our stories included:

• A guy selling cell phones who was sad because he really wanted one of the phones he was selling, but he couldn't afford it.
• A young man looking at engagement rings in a jewelry store who really wanted to propose to his girlfriend of eight months, but he wasn't sure how she would respond or what kind of ring she would want.
• An old couple in Barnes & Noble who were both university professors who had fallen in love intellectually and went to Barnes & Noble every week for their date night.
• An older woman who worked at Dillard's who had worked at a department store as a young woman, but had quit when she got married. When her first grandchild was born, she started working at Dillard's and remembered how much she loved that kind of job, but she still got really tired every night at about 7:30 and she had to work until 9:00.

There were a bunch of others as well. We had a good time, and we also got in some window shopping!

Violet found this dress she liked at Dillard's

Always a great place to window shop!

We finished off with some delicious Valentine's sugar cookies with pink lemon-flavored frosting! Yum!

Total cost for the cookies: $3.22

The Alphabet Game

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Violet's Date Night

Michael and I have been traveling to graduate schools for him to audition. This week we left on Wednesday, and won't be back home until Sunday, so I needed to come up with a good traveling date. Though I came up with this idea for our trip, it can just as easily be done near home.

Because we would be on a road trip, to the magical land of Braum's ice cream, I knew we needed at least two things on our date:

1. A way to walk around after two days of driving.
2. A way to incorporate Braum's ice cream

So I decided to play a fun in-town version of The Alphabet Game. I started by inviting Michael with this printable, which you can download for yourself here:

After Michael's audition, we went downtown and played The Alphabet Game. Our rules were:

1. We had to call out the letter and what word it was in.
2. We had to take a picture of the letter.
3. We couldn't use the same word from the same location.
4. Whoever won got to pick out the ice cream for both of us at Braum's. 

Here are some of the letters we found:

  

And of course, the winning letter, found by Michael:

After the game was over we headed out for lunch, then went out to Braum's for ice cream.

Michael got peppermint and cookie dough for himself, and grape and dream (orange and vanilla) for me.

Price for the ice cream: $4.36 (I love Braum's)

43 Kisses

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Michael's Date Night

This is a very fun date that we got from HotDateIdeas.com. We've done this one before, shortly after we got married. We enjoyed it so much we thought we'd do it again (I promise I do more than just recycle old dates!) It's a great way to mix things up and try out new ways to kiss.

Go to HotDateIdeas.com and print out the cutouts PDF. You can either go through the 43 different kisses in order, like we did last time, or you can cut them out, put them in a hat, and take turns drawing them out, like we did this time.

Kisses in a hat

Since we don't drink, we skipped the Liqueur Kiss, so we really only had 42 kisses. Some of our favorites were the Frog Kiss, the Mystery Kiss, and the Lady and the Tramp Kiss.

Meet in the middle

 You need a few supplies for this date. There's some flexibility in what you use, as the instructions for the relevant kisses say. We decided to use candy for all of them, cause it's sweet! You can look at the descriptions and decide what you want to use.

Ingredients for the Mystery, Candy, Flavored, Fireworks, and Lady and the Tramp Kisses

 Total cost for this date: $3.58 for the candy

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

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Violet's Date Night

This week has been long and busy for both Michael and I, so I thought it would be nice to just watch a movie and have some down time. 

I got my inspiration for this date from this idea over at The Dating Divas. You can take ideas from either post, and of course watch any movie that would fit you better if you aren't as into musicals as the two of us are.

Neither my husband nor I are very country, but was able to come up with a few things to decorate our little table:

I think it turned out pretty cute!

I took the label off the bottle of root beer to make it look more old-fashioned, since the glass bottles were a little more expensive. Also, though we do have some cute cactus glasses, we thought it would be more fun to pass the bottle of root beer back and forth than just drinking it out of glasses.

I also made some yummy chili and corn bread for dinner:

Mmm...delish!

After dinner, we snuggled up on the couch and watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. 

We had most of the ingredients for chili and figured the rest into our grocery budget. We also watched the movie through our Amazon student account so it was free.

Total cost of the date: About $5.00 for the ingredients we didn't already have. And the pot of chili should last us a couple more days. ;)