Week 2: Dollar Date

As I'm sure many of us are, we are on a budget and can't always afford to do a lot of things we'd like to do. I spent a lot of time searching for fun ideas on Pinterest for a fun date that wouldn't brake the bank. I found a great idea from the Dating Divas blog (they are fantastic!). So...here is our take on the Dollar Date Night! 

We started by going to the Dollar Tree. Here we each got to pick out three things. 1. Something to use now 2. Something to use later and 3. Something for someone else. We had so much fun trying to pick out different things and putting them back and picking something else! In the end, this is what we came up with...

Greg picked out Dessert Skittles, a Cherry Coke, and a pink stuffed bunny. We had planned to go to a movie right after, so the Skittles were for now (yes, we did sneak them into the movie, shhh...), the Cherry Coke was for later, and the pink stuffed bunny was for Ella's (our daughter) Easter basket. 

I picked out Dessert Skittles, a Dr. Pepper, and a Jungle Book book. Similar to Greg, the Skittles were for the movie, the Dr. Pepper was for later, and the book was for Corbin's (our son) Easter basket. 

(For the record, most of these were my idea first, and Greg said that it was such a good idea he copied me) :)

Total dollar store cost: $6.42!

Next we took a short walk to the Picture Show, our local dollar movie. Unfortunately, movies here are only $1 on Tuesdays, and our date was not on a Tuesday. So, our tickets ended up being $1.75 each. 

HOWEVER, I had a coupon!!! (I LOVE coupons!!) We had a buy one get one free! 

We decided on the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Neither of us had heard of it, but decided it was only $1.75 so if we ended up hating it, no big deal. We actually ended up loving it! What a great inspirational movie! So glad we went to see it. If you have not yet seen it, we do recommend it. 

Total movie cost: $1.75

 

After the movie it was time for some grub! We were starving!! We have a variety of fast food choices that have a dollar menu, but we ended up setting on McDonalds. We don't eat there often, so it was kind of a change for us. Unfortunately, the dollar menu has been renamed to the value menu, meaning some things are more than a dollar. We each chose 3 things from this menu. 

Greg picked a BBQ ranch burger, a spicy chicken sandwich, a small fry. I picked a BBQ ranch burger, a double cheese burger, and a small fry. Notice we used our dollar store "something for later" drink as our drink for lunch. 

Total lunch cost: $7.78

Total date cost: $15.95

A fun filled date for less than $20!!! We had so much fun too. I can't tell you how many times Greg said, "We should do this again! I can't believe we did so much on so little!"

Overall, we will do this date again sometime, maybe try a different dollar menu, and of course a different movie. We give this date $ since it was under $20. 

We did a lot of similar things that the Dating Divas did, but also put our own spin on it. If you are interested in seeing how their date turned out, you can check it out here.

Week 1: Italian Date

For week one we had an Italian themed date at home (kind of). This date I would rate with $ as we did have to pick up a few supplies, but overall did not have to spend a ton.

We decided to make homemade pizza first. We had to stop by our local grocery store to pick up some crust (we used the pre-made kind out of a can), cheese, pepperoni, and some Cherry Pepsi to wash it all down. We had a blast making the pizza together! Putting the pepperoni on our rectangular pizza I started on one side, and Greg was on the other. Greg (he can sometimes say things that are so sweet, yet corny at the same time) said,"This is just like our love, we started out separate and then came together!" (He was comparing it to the pepperoni meeting in the middle as we put more and more on.

Our pizza turned out delicious!!

The pepperoni is under the cheese, and the cheese was so stringy and gooey! YUM!!

While enjoying our pizza we watched a movie on Netflix! The movie choice of the night...The Italian Job! A perfect move (though not really Italian themed) because it was a movie we both would enjoy (that little love story for me and all the action for Greg). 

I love dates at home where we can relax, have fun, and be in the comfort of our pajamas!! I think we will, without a doubt, do a repeat of this date! 

Here we are about to watch our movie and enjoy our pizza! 

Looking forward to next weeks date!! 

So the challenge begins...

Greg and I have always had awesome dates! We used to be so creative and had a ton of fun. Then, it happened...we had kids!! Time seemed to slip away from us, all of our time was spent taking care of the kids, talking about the kids, planning for the kids, the kids, the kids, the kids!!!! What happened to us?!?! I was starting to feel like I wasn't getting enough time with Greg and that our marriage was starting to lose that initial spark that brought us together in the first place. We needed to take some time to date each other and to remember why we fell in love and why we enjoy each others company so much.

At our church they promote married couples to set aside some time at least once a week to have a date night. (By the way our church is awesome, you can check it out here, www.lds.org). We have decided to take on that challenge. I did not want to do just the normal dinner and a movie thing every weekend though (that will get old really fast), so we created a date jar. I'm sure many of you have seen it on Pinterest. It's a jar with lots of date ideas so you don't have to waste a lot of time coming up with an idea.

Well, I set to work on our date jar, and before I knew it I had over 100 different ideas for dates. Some are low key, and some take more planning. Some are free, some require a little bit of spending, and a few are more on the expensive side (for those few times we can splurge).

As I was creating my jar of dates I started to wonder, how many other people out there are stuck in the routine of dinner and a movie for every date night? So, for those of you who would like to start dating your spouse every week, or if you are looking for some other ideas  for dates, I wanted to post our journey of dates as we take the ultimate dating challenge of going on a date night EVERY WEEK!

How it works is we pick one date out of the jar for a few weeks in advance (that way if we need a bit of time to plan we can). We choose a day each week and BAM, date night is locked in. I'm so excited to do this, and Greg is excited to see what date ideas come out of the jar. I look forward to your comments and other date ideas I can add to our jar!