Thank you to Collective Bias, Inc. and Walmart Family Mobile for sponsoring this post and inspring me to come up with 60+ fun and inexpensive date ideas! All opinions are mine alone. #DataAndAMovie #CollectiveBias
At this stage in our life, it is hard to go out on dates.
We have a nursing baby who doesn’t love to have his mama out of sight. Babysitters are expensive (and I don’t particularly like getting babysitters), though having my parents nearby definitely helps. And really, most of the time by the end of the day, we are just exhausted!
But still, I believe it’s important to date your spouse no matter what stage of life you are in! Even if I’m not always the best at remembering it.
Dates don’t have to be fancy – in fact, you don’t even have to leave. Even before we were married, Forrest and I often had dates at one of our apartments. On our first Valentine’s Day, we watched a movie and made pizzas (lots and lots of pizzas.)
We like to take advantage of deals that make at home dates even more affordable. For instance, right now with our Walmart Family mobile plan, we get a free VUDU movie each month with our valid service plan. It’s pretty awesome – since it’s a $7 value, and we don’t have to worry about buying a movie to watch, we can splurge a little more on treats. Since it’s tax season and many of us are getting refunds (hopefully!), now is the perfect time to upgrade your phone and plan. We just picked up the LG Leon, which was on rollback for $49.82. It’s a less expensive phone filled with lots of features!
You can send your sweetie a text message inviting them to one of these fun at-home dates. It will give them something to look forward to after a long day of work.
Movie Night with your favorite treat: We love watching movies together. We use different systems on our Roku to watch movies, but we really enjoy using VUDU – especially when we get free codes! It has lots of new movies as well as old favorites. You can make it more special by going to the store ahead of time and picking out a special treat for you both to indulge a little on (especially if you are getting your monthly free VUDU movie.)
Make homemade pizzas: This is something special we really love to do. As I said before, we made pizza on our first valentine’s day. It’s fun to make the dough together, put together different toppings, and then enjoy the pizza together! Our homemade pizza crust is super fast, and it gets rave reviews!
Chocolate tasting: This is kind of like doing a wine tasting…just with chocolate instead (because we don’t drink wine!) I think it would be so fun to get all sorts of different kinds of chocolate (have you seen the kinds that are spicy?!) and make an evening of it.
Video Game Night: I’m not a big video game person, but there are a few I really enjoy. Forrest and I used to LOVE having Mario Kart tournaments when I was pregnant with Jack. A few other fun, interactive ones are Just Dance (any version), Wii Sports and Wii Sports resort, and Glee Karaoke!
Make homemade ice cream: Extra points for whoever comes up with the most creative idea! We certainly love making ice cream with our ice cream maker, but there are other methods for making homemade ice cream (such as the method we used to make our homemade Graham Canyon ice cream!)
Indoor Picnic: Spread out your picnic blanket, make your favorite sandwiches (like chicken salad), and have a picnic on your living room floor!
Karaoke: You can find karaoke songs on YouTube, do it on the Wii (we love Glee Karaoke), or maybe break out your old school karaoke machine. This can be so fun!
Movie with a themed dinner: This is one of my favorite ideas – pick out a movie and make a dinner based on that movie. You can watch The Hunger Games and eat lamb stew! Just pick your favorite movie, and I’m sure a quick Google Search can bring you up some ideas of food from that movie.
Fondue Night: Who doesn’t love fondue? I sure do! Make some cheese or chocolate fondue with all the fixings (fancy bread, marshmallows, fruit…the sky is the limit!)
Remake the first dinner out you had together: Or maybe a memorable dinner you had together. For us, we had pupusas on our first date (even though I wasn’t 100% sure it was a date.) Make the dinner together and reminisce on old times.
Blanket Fort:
Movie marathon: Pick a movie that has multiple sequels and watch as many as you can in one night. Or you could pick a theme (such as, cheesy love movies) and watch a bunch of different movies in that genre.
Take personality tests: These can be really fun and revealing! You can do silly ones on Facebook, or more serious ones such as finding our your Love Language, or one based on the Myers-Briggs personality types – that is my personal favorite. You can learn a lot about each other.
Game Night: We love to play games in our family, and it’s one of my favorite things to do with Forrest. We used to have an ongoing game of Scrabble at all times, and a few recent favorites have been Sequence and Blokus. There are a lot of great two person games out there, and it can make for a fun (somewhat competitive) night!
Listen and dance to wedding playlist: If you don’t remember what was on your playlist, you can listen to all the songs on from my wedding song playlist suggestions. You could also download the Pandora app on your phone and select a romantic or love song station! If you have Walmart Family Mobile, you’ll have unlimited data (up to 10 GB of 4G LTE, which is awesome), so you could even bring your phone outside and dance to music from it under the stars.
Read books out loud (or listen to audio book): Forrest read the entire Hunger Games series out loud to me when I was pregnant with Jack. We both loved it. We’ve also come to enjoy audiobooks together as well. You can often get these from the Library, or you can sign up for Audible (the free trial is great) if you think you’ll want a lot of them!
Watch each other’s favorite movie or TV show: There are a few shows Forrest and I enjoy watching together, but for the most part, we have very different tastes. I’m a Grey’s Anatomy, Parenthood kind of person, and he’s more into the sci-fi world. If you are like us, take a night to watch an episode or two of each other’s favorite show – and actually pay attention!
Watch wedding video or look at wedding pictures or guestbook
Do brain teasers or riddles
Do mad libs: You can find these in the store, online, or you if you sign up for Dating Diva Central (which is awesome), you can get these love mad libs!
Stargazing on the roof or in the backyard: Buy some strawberries, chocolate, and sparkling cider for added romance.
Indoor campfire: I saw this idea over here. You can make s’mores indoors, or maybe one of those s’more skillet recipes that were so popular last year! Make a meal out of it and roast hot dogs over the stove top, too.
Decorate mugs and then drink hot chocolate: You can buy a pack of colorful sharpies, decorate mugs together, and then bake them for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Then, make a steaming up of hot cocoa and snuggle up!
Jenga: I love Jenga. I’ve seen people have Jenga kits used as a guest book at their wedding, so if you did that, it would be fun to use those. Or you could mix things up and use The Dating Divas (free) Jenga Love Game. It looks like tons of fun!
Learn something new together – knitting/crocheting, how to fix something on the car, etc.
Binge watch your favorite show together
Bake cookies together: Decorate them, try out a new recipe, or maybe even do some cookie competitions. For instance, you could find a few different chocolate chip cookie recipes, make them all, and see which ones turn out the best!
Spouse Scattegories
Make a bucket list together (for the summer, life, etc.)
Make a video together: This is something I always want to do on our anniversary, but I never do. You could create a video slide show with pictures and songs, or you could record something – either a message for each other (to open in 10 years? During a fight? haha.) or to your children! I think it would be cute to do a video of both of you talking about your love story.
Draw portraits of each other: This is something that Jack and I actually did a few weeks ago, and it was hilarious (he’s four though, so that might have been partially why.) I think it’s kind of a fun idea though!
Phone game competition: While I generally think that dates should be a phone free zone, you could do a few competitions against each other. You could see who could beat a certain level on Candy Crush the fastest, start a rousing game of Words with Friends, there are tons of trivia games (QuizUp is my favorite), or do Draw Something against each other!
Snap Chat filters: I think Snap Chat is kind of weird, but I love their filters. We have so much fun with them – way too much fun! You can send them to each other, do a face swap, and just have fun!
Make cakes together: You could try and recreate the flavors from your wedding cake, or you could do a Cake for Two night…which might be a little less messy and complicated
Make freezer meals together: This is fun and practical! Spend time with each other while making meals that will make life easier! Make it even more fun with this freezer meal challenge game.
Watch YouTube Videos: There are a lot of fun YouTube videos out there! Forrest loves Good Mythical Morning.
Activities that require no electricity
Do a DIY project together
Exercise video: Exercise together! You can be silly and dress up in funny exercise clothes, or you could really get your sweat on with something like Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred or Insanity!
Plan your dream vacation: Be careful with this one though – you might impulsively want to actually do it!
Virtual Tour of a museum: A lot of the world’s greatest museums allow you to do a tour online. If you need a little more culture in your life, this is a great idea!
Watch a documentary: There are tons available on all sorts of different topics. Think about something you are both interested in and search for recommended documentaries.
Paint: You could do water colors together, paint self-portraits on an easel, or anything in between. I think painting on plain white canvases can be fun. Make sure you watch a little Bob Ross in the process <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/72x72/1f609.png" alt="