Date Night Ideas

If you’re brave enough, I double dawg dare you to try this date night idea. My wife was major impressed! I love these kinds of crazy date night ideas because you really don’t need to have much cash and they are much more fun than an expensive dinner and movie.

The other night we had almost a full moon and since it was a nice summer weekend, I thought I’d get a little creative. The first requirement is that you CAN’T have a real hot tub. Those are too expensive and too costly to maintain. Make a homemade one! It’s much more fun, WAY cheaper, and requires zero maintenance.

We used the kids’ inflatable swimming pool (yes, that picture above). I then CRANKED the hot water heater up to max (despite my wife’s concern):

Once that’s done you’ll need to find a hot water hookup in the house for the hose. That’s probably the trickiest part. Luckily we have some hookups in the basement that were built in for a washer that aren’t in use:

You might have to disconnect the washer temporarily to get to the hot water. The hot water will run out after a few minutes depending on the size of your hot water heater(s), so prepare well in advance. It might take a few fillups in the pool.

To add a little refreshment to the date night, we made some mango smoothies. Here is how they turned out:

This mango smoothie is amazing! I seriously think it beats Jamba Juice. Check out our easy recipes for two section for this recipe and enjoy!

BTW, the thing that made this date night the best was having the homemade hot tub nice and hot out under the stars. My wife said it was very romantic so a clear starry night is key!

This date night idea is another great example of how to have a fun date night at home for pennies. We had fun with this one since my wife and I are both Medieval fans. I’m definitely no historian but I managed to find some easy date night ideas for this theme. Here’s what I did.

Date Night Ideas: Medieval Story Time

Ever heard of the video game called King’s Quest? This is an OLD game originally made in the 80′s and there is a more modern remake of this game that is a lot of fun. I remember my wife telling me that she really liked King’s Quest as a kid and so I searched for it online and found the remake by AGD Interactive. It’s a free download! The remake is excellent and the graphics are beautiful (from AGD Interactive):

When you download this classic game, it comes with a PDF that tells about the story. It’s a fairy tale just as good as any classic. To start out our date night, I read her the short story without telling her about the game. In short, the story is about a kingdom (Daventry) which has 3 treasures stolen – a magic mirror, a magic chest, and a magic shield. Sir Graham, the main character in the game, is given the quest of finding the three treasures and restoring Daventry’s glory.  After reading the story, I said “we’ll finish the story later in the night, after we make these medieval tarts”.

Medieval Mini Fig Pies

So here’s the recipe for the night. These medieval mini fig pies are very authentic and they do take a bit of time to make but if you’re making them together, that can be a lot of fun. I enjoy trying new recipes with my wife because it gives us some time to talk and work together. These mini fig pies were fun to make. I found the recipe from a great blog called TastyTrix (also at CookEatShare). You’ll basically need some figs, a bunch of spices, and some ingredients to make the dough. Then you roll up the dough, cut it into circles and add your flavored figs in the middle, fry them and pour honey on top. When you taste these things you’ll see what I mean by authentic! The final result looks like this (from TastyTrix):

After cooking time, we “finished” the story and tried out King’s Quest 1 together. She was totally surprised and loved playing the game (I’m sure it brought back good times). We even got the kids into it later on (we finished the second one today). Try it out & have fun!

After coming up with the idea of using themes for our date nights, I decided to treat my wife to a Hawaiian night. She loved it! There are a lot of creative things you could do with this date night idea. Here are just a few to help get you started.

Hawaiian Food
On the way home from work, I picked up some tropical fruits. I bought a coconut, a kiwi, some kind of exotic pear (not sure if it was Hawaiian) and some other exotic fruits. A pineapple is a good idea. You could never go wrong with cooked pineapple and a brown sugar glaze! The nice thing about these fruits is that they’re popular and cheap. For dinner, try out Hawaiian Haystacks. They are super easy to make.

Dress, Activity and Music
I had some old Hawaiian shorts in the closet so I wore those. For your date night activity you could make a lei with a few simple supplies. I like to use Pandora for my playlists and I found some pretty good Hawaiian stuff there. We played the music through our whole date night and it really set the Hawaiian atmosphere really nice.

I hope this gives you some good date night ideas. Have fun with this one. She’ll love it.

Everyone loves Star Trek. Since my wife is a major Patrick Stewart fan, I came up with this unique date night idea. If you’re willing to boldy go where no one has gone before, try out some Star Trek action.

Date Night Ideas: Easy Star Trek Cuisine

First, try out some Star Trek cuisine! This is where the true test of geek comes out and it’s a chance to really impress your date. Trust me, she will love this. These are all tasty desserts that you can pick up at the grocery store. I found this stuff at The Memory Alpha, an online Star Trek encyclopedia.

Papalla Juice

Papalla juice was a beverage which came in at least two different colors: light, transparent purple, and opaque orange. Ten Forward on the USS Enterprise-D commonly
served this drink. In an alternate reality in 2258, Shipyard Bar in Riverside, Iowa, on Earth, offered this juice as a special item on its menu. (Star Trek)
Clara Sutter was fond of the drink and liked it especially with extra bubbles. (TNG: “Imaginary Friend”)
When Ambassador Loquel of the Iyaarans went aboard the Enterprise, he tried many foods enjoyed in the Federation; papalla juice was one of them. (TNG: “Liaisons”)
Neelix sometimes gave Naomi Wildman papalla juice with her breakfast cereal. (VOY: “Once Upon a Time”)

To create some papalla juice, you could just pick up some kind of exotic drink. I went to the fresh produce section and got some purple carrot/berry juice. Some fancy orange cocktail would do the trick too.

Tarvokian Pound Cake

Tarvokian pound cake is a dessert cake. The cake is apparently a favorite of Wesley Crusher’s. Worf personally baked a Tarvokian pound cake to celebrate Wesley’s visit to the USS Enterprise-D in 2368. (TNG: “The Game”)

This one is easy and probably the most fun. Just get her favorite kind of chocolate cake. I picked up some kind of caramel chocolate cake that looked weird and it could pass as Tarvokian I think. Another fun thing could be making a chocolate cake and then decorate it as Star Trekkie as you can.

Jimbalian Fudge

Jimbalian fudge was a type of fudge originating in the Delta Quadrant that could be used to make cake. Neelix prepared a seven-layer Jimbalian fudge cake with icing made of pureed l’maki nuts for Kes’ second birthday in 2371. (VOY: “Twisted”)
In 2376, after losing his memory, Tuvok prepared many desserts, including a Jimbalian fudge cake with peppermint coulis, while he was being reeducated by Neelix. Tuvok drew a Ba’neth frequency pattern on the cake’s icing while trying to recover his memory. (VOY: “Riddles”)
Kathryn Janeway appeared to have replicated a small cake like this for Tuvok after discovering his birthdate. (VOY: “Fury”) It may not have been an actual Jimbalian fudge, but it did seem to have pureed l’maki nut frosting.
In an alternate timeline, Neelix prepared a Jimbalian fudge for Kes on her ninth birthday in 2378. (VOY: “Before and After”)
A recipe for Jimbalian fudge cake, adapted for terrestrial kitchens, can be found in the Star Trek Cookbook.

For the Jimbalian Fudge, a box of her favorite chocolates will do nicely.

Star Trek Candy
Ok, this one might be too nerdy, but if you’re brave, snag some of these from Amazon:

I actually just grabbed a bag of sweet tart balls and called them photon torpedoes.

Date Night Ideas: Star Trek Activities

Here are two Star Trek activities after you enjoy the cuisine. First, try out this game of Star Trek Uno:

I know! I couldn’t believe it either!

Next, grab some old episodes of your favorite Star Trek series. We watched the last two episodes of Season 7 of Star Trek: The Next Generation (definitely the best in the series). The new Star Trek with Chris Pine is also really good – one of our favorites.

This Star Trek theme is definitely one of the more unique date night ideas and my wife loved it. Have fun!

Hey there! In this first post, I’m going to write about a secret date night technique that has worked magic for me and my wife. Enjoy! I’d love to hear your comments. Here it goes.

Our Past Date Nights
So there I was, driving home one day after a long day at work. The weekend was coming up and I hadn’t really planned anything fun. I thought about our date nights in the past. They weren’t bad, but definitely needed more spice. I thought about our past date nights. After the kids were in bed we usually did simple cheap stuff like play games, chat, read, maybe watch a flick. Although we had fun together doing stuff like that, I felt like our date nights were missing something.

We needed something more creative, fun, spicey, ROMANTIC (my wife really likes that), and cheap, oh and all while staying at home whilst the kids are asleep. Challenging, I know… (but possible??)

Date Night Ideas – Much better now!
So I pondered on it for a while as I was driving through traffic on the freeway, and all of a sudden it hit me like a wall. Call it pure genuis, innovation or maybe inspiration. The idea came, and it sunk in. “That’s it! That’s what we needed. She is gonna love this. WOOT!” And ever since that day, our dates have been 100 times more fun and she’s loved every single one.

So what’s the secret??  Themes!  Themed date night ideas. Think about how many different themes you could come up with:  Hawaiian, Disney, Indian, French, Sci-Fi, Jane Austin, Pirates, and list goes on. Basically what I try to do on a weekly basis now is come up with a theme for the weekend and try to add food, an activity, clothing, decor, music and other stuff related to the theme. It has turned out to be a blast for us.

We’ll Be Posting Our Ideas as we Go
This blog will be an ongoing list of themed date night ideas that I come up with every week. I’ll write up posts and let you know how it goes! My wife will also contribute and we’ll be adding more creative stuff like games for couples, dinner recipes for two, and some questions/answers from Yahoo Answers.

We hope you enjoy these ideas and hope that they will help add some spice to your date nights!