-To Do With or Without Kids-
Parenting can be tough! You are constantly running to practices, changing diapers, playing outside, or re-watching their favorite movie for the 5,000,000th time. With all that running around, what time is left for you and your partner?
After the birth of my son, My husband and I found it harder and harder to find time to spend together and rekindle our love. That’s when we decided that it was time to set up some date nights! Although we’d love to spend time talking over a nice five course meal and then go party downtown, that just wasn’t going to be a sustainable solution. So what did we do? We scheduled at home date nights! That way, we could put our son to bed, not have to pay for a sitter, and still get a night dedicated to us!
So let me set the scene. It’s Friday night, you just got home. The kids are fed and you just put them down to sleep. Now what? It’s easy to get lost on tik tok or instagram, but instead, you can use that time to grow closer to your partner! With that being said, here are my top FIVE at home date night ideas!
- Wine Down and Paint!
One of my husband and I’s favorite things to do is grab a bottle of wine, and get creative! This is also a super budget friendly activity! Grab some of your favorite colors and some $5 canvas’ and have at it! Don’t worry!! You don’t need to be an artist to have fun painting! My husband (as I found out doing this) is actually a REALLY good artist and creates masterpieces! Mine are -uhm- a little more abstract, but we both have so much fun doing it together! This is by far one of our favorite things to do together! In fact, we started painting so much, we covered my son’s nursery in paintings made by us! (See picture below) You can mix it up too and try and paint the same thing to see whose is better, or you can have a themed night, or even work on the same piece together!!
PRO TIP: The more wine consumed = The better the painting! (Or at least the more you have)
- Dance The Night Away!
My husband and I LOVE dancing! Seriously! We even met each other at a country dance bar! After having Luka, it became much more of an ordeal to try to go out and dance, so we got creative! When we get bit by the dancing bug, we push the coffee table and sofa over, crank up some of our favorite songs and dance the night away! We even have a little strobe light we can turn on if we want a more club feel! It’s a great way to let loose, laugh, and spend quality time together!
- Bake Something New!
This idea actually came from a pregnancy craving I had late one night! I woke up at about 10pm craving CRAVING Lebkuchen. For my non-German friends, Lebkuchen is a spiced cookie with a soft, chewy texture, typically containing ground nuts and citrus peel and covered with a glaze. Since we are NOT living in Germany, these are hard to find. They are even harder to find at 10pm on a Tuesday. So, we got up, googled a recipe, and got to baking! By the morning we had a delicious batch of cookies, and a week’s worth of laughter! We had so much fun baking something new together! Both of us love cooking and baking, so experiencing something new and doing it together was amazing! Now, whenever we see something we don’t know how to bake/cook, it becomes our personal challenge to figure it out! Some creations definitely turn out better than others, but it’s never short on fun!
- Game Night!
We are HIGHLY competitive people. So, game nights are some of our favorite nights! What games you play is completely up to you! For us, we are Mario Kart junkies! We also love playing board games, card games, other video games, etc. In our house, one of the things we do is keep a massive scoreboard. Yup. We are THAT competitive. So, on our game nights, we agree whether or not that game counts towards our overall scorecard. If we both agree it does, then whoever wins gets to add a point to their scoreboard. This is basically a running tally of every game we’ve played since the beginning of our marriage!
- Movies and Munchies!
Obviously, movies are a no brainer, but we like to mix up our movie night with our snack selection! Sometimes, we have themed nights where we get snacks that match the theme of the movie. For example, if we watched a movie based in Mexico, we might opt for some salsa, chips, queso, tacos, and other things like that! We also do a “bring something night”. Basically, we pick a theme like bring your favorite dip, then each of us brings something that fits that category, or we make something together that fits! For our last movie night, we did a “bring a dip” theme, so Andrew brought a cheese and bacon dip with pretzels and a chocolate pudding dip. I brought Spinach and artichoke dip with crackers and a cake batter dip with animal crackers! This is also a super fun way to mix up movie night with friends!
Getting out of the house can be hard as a parent, you not only have to budget for the date, but you also have to keep babysitter fees in your mind. With these ideas, you can have a great night without all the hassle!!
If you loved this read, You’ll love these women’s thoughts on Dating too!!