A Years Worth of Date Nights

As I reveal more and more of the Christmas gifts...the one to Matt is especially fun.  I gave him a years worth of Date Nights. Our 'default' is dinner and/or a movie, so I wanted to branch out and try to pick things for us to do during the year that we enjoyed and that we would look forward to.

I planned out date nights once a month for a year. Once a month because I'm being realistic...I know there are experts out there that recommend date nights once a week and I'm all for that, but we're lucky if we get to see each other once a week sometimes...a whole date night once a week just seems a little unrealistic right now.  We'll get there, but we'll start with something a bit more manageable.

The gist is, he got 12 envelopes, each labeled with a month on it.  He got another envelope that explained what the overall idea was and that he was to open the corresponding envelope on the first of the month and we were - at that time - to coordinate schedules and pick a date night for that month. And stick to it.

I also gave him some extra envelopes....one with gift certificates to places in town and another with places to a town where his parents are (and subsequently we are quite a bit), so we have additional date night options that we can add in if time permits. An added bonus, many of the gift certificates utilized for this don't have expiration dates, so I'm in the clear if we end up not using them. Note: not all of the months include gift certificates, but restaurants.com has great deals and you can use coupon codes to get gift certificates at an incredibly low rate (ex. $1 for a $10 gift certificate or $2 for a $25 gift certificate, or even less...)

I'll try to update this particular post with the date night themes or topics as the months progress.

January - Gift certificate to Potato Shack & Trip to Toys R Us to buy birthday cards for our kids and niece for the year (starting the year off right with organizing!)

February - Registration for a Love & Respect Marriage Conference, complete with child care arrangements

March - Gift certificate to Italian restaurant, Gift certificate (for family) to a family-fun restaurant for us all to go to over spring break, Gift certificate for another restaurant for he and I to go to lunch

April -

May -

June -

July -

August -

September -

October -

November -

December -

I tried to vary things...keeping most of these local and inexpensive.  So what are your ideas for fun date nights?