Date night idea’s and giveaway #3!
I wrote this post a while ago but have been waiting to get my camera cord back to post it because I needed the pictures to go with!
When you’ve been with someone for four years, dinner and a movie doesn’t always cut it anymore. Here’s some fun “dates” that Eric and I have been on lately.
The day after the half-marathon in Vancouver, downtown was SO busy we just wanted to get out of there, so even though I was starrvving (I had just ran for 2 hours!!) we decided to hoof it out of town asap because the traffic was stressing us both out.
We decided to stop in Abbotsford, about 45 minutes out of Vancouver, for food and what did we find there–Castle Fun Park! (Please excuse how frumpy I look, lack of straigtener that day!)
I’m sure you’re laughing at us right now, but it was the most fun time we’ve had together in a LONG time. We ate corndogs and pizza, played in the batting cages, rammed each other with bumper cars and raced go-carts! We both had an absolute blast for about $50.00! A lot cheaper than a fancy dinner.
The sad truth is, once you live together and have been together for a long time, little things like going to the movies or out to dinner just aren’t as exciting anymore. So even though we still occasionally will go out to dinner, we’ve found that doing more active things, like going to this theme park or hiking are both cheaper and more fun than more traditional dates!
Another thing that’s led to lots of quality time together is our recent purchase of a Wii. Eric is a big game nerd and he usually plays his Xbox for a couple of hours every night. While he’s doing that I go on the computer and read blogs, work on freelance stuff or read books. We’re “together” in the same room, but we’re not really spending quality time together, you know?
So, Eric traded in several of his old Xbox games at EB Games about a month ago and got us a wii for only $70! Now we play wii together almost every night, and it’s SO much fun! It’s a way we combined his hobby (gaming) with one of my hobbies (being active)! And it’s not like it’s a chore for Eric to play with me either, the other night I was about to go cook our dinner when he settled in on the couch, I assumed he was going to play Halo or Call of Duty but no, he fired up the wii to play COOKING MAMA a game that we only rented at MY insistence! So while I cooked our real dinner, Eric made lasagna, sushi and salisbury steak on Cooking Mama! Too funny.
Onto giveaway #3, I’m giving away….A DATE NIGHT! There were a few technical difficulties with this one, allow me to explain. While at Costco the other day I purchased this handy-dandy gift certificate for Cineplex theatres that gets you two admissions, two regular sized drinks and one regular sized popcorn. Then, yesterday I’m doing a little digging around online and find out that even though Cineplex Odeon and AMC are partners, there gift certificates aren’t valid at the opposite theatre. So, Cineplex Odeon theatres are only in Canada.
So here’s what I’m going to do, if a Canadian reader wins it, they will get the certificate that I originally purchased mailed to them. However, if an American reader wins it I will purchase a similar certificate for a movie night off of AMC’s website and have it sent to you and Eric and I will use the Cineplex Odeon one for ourselves. If you are not in Canada OR the United States, then I will send you a gift certificate to whatever movie chain is in your country (as long as they are still a reasonable price).
So, you are entering to win a MOVIE NIGHT! Three ways to enter:
1. Leave me a comment telling me what your favourite UNCONVENTIONAL date is, so even though I’m giving away a movie night, try not to list that. I want fun, out-of-the-ordinary date idea’s people!
2. Link back to this post on your blog and leave ANOTHER comment with the link to your blog post.
3. Tweet about it and leave ANOTHER comment with the link to your tweet. If you don’t have Twitter, join. Kidding, kidding–if you don’t have Twitter send me an email letting me know and I’ll give you another entry!
Please remember to leave three separate comments if you are entering three times!
This is really specific to a certain place, but it was definitely one of my favourite unconventional dates. There’s an interesting little “theme” park in PEI called Woodleigh Replicas. It’s filled with small scale replicas of a number of castles and other structures from the British Isles. There’s even a few that you can walk through. We had a great time wandering around and looking at the little buildings (my guy loves history) and then it was relaxing meandering through the gardens. It was a wonderful day.
Husband loves to hike and boulder, so a couple years ago, we decided to hike up to his favorite rock. We had packed a picnic lunch, and we used his crashpad to sit on. We sat under the huge rock, and just enjoyed time together, eating and listening to nature. It was really relaxing, and a great way for us to truly be alone.
I tweeted about the giveaway! — http://twitter.com/somewhatvoluble/status/1946584213
(Unfortunately, I’m not sure if there are AMC theaters in Tennessee… Hmmm.)
Here’s my attempt at getting the word out on Twitter!
http://twitter.com/tfrankl/status/1946765959
My boyfriend and I love to ride around on the weekends just looking at the countryside talking about places we’d like to live and commenting on houses we like. It’s really fun for us to see how our tastes are alike and different at the same time. We also spend a lot of weekends in our favorite local hotel just to be able to have some alone time. We don’t live together yet and he now has 2 roommates… this wouldn’t be a problem, but it’s a studio apartment! Yeah, how’s that for romance haha.
And there aren’t any AMC’s in my area
The only thing I can think of is last year we celebrated Alex’s birthday for three days. We headed down to the beach and had an “all weekend long” event! It was really fun. We just took our time, watched movies, hung out at the bay house and beach. It was a lot of togetherness with cake and ice cream!
yea after two kids and 10 years of marriage, dinner out has certainly lost the shine, and movies are completely out these days. dinners are limited to wherever the kids can eat free that night and won’t destroy the restaurant.
you wanna know the most fun “date time” we did? it was many years ago, and we’re lucky enough to live in a centralized locationn. But the theory is to take a circle weekend. Friday after work we drove down to atlanta and had dinner in a fancy restaurant and got a hotel room. Then saturday morning we drove up into tennesse and went to the chatanooga aquarium and had lunch there. Then we headed up to knoxville for dinner, shopping, and plenty of drinking. Sunday we headed to asheville, north carolina to tour the Biltmore House, and back home to greenville south caraolina.
Each drive segment was about 2 – 3 hours. we never stayed in the same place long enough to get bored with it, and we got to see the entire region. The coolest part? i surprised her with it. picked her up after work with her bags packed and in the car already. that was maybe 12 years ago and we still talk about it.
movies are kinda difficult for me… I don’t really fully enjoy them in theaters. even though they’re occassionally captioned, I’m not a movie person, really. I will rent lame chick flicks, and that’s about it! i’m much more of a loyal tv person!
but i did want to comment on fun things to do! — things definitely do change when you do live together! it definitely changed our dynamics. Basically in march, I talked him into buying bikes. He was not really for it, but then all of a sudden, we were test riding them, and he got into it! so we bought a couple. now, we’re psyched cuz we’ll be a lot more active, say, hey you want to go for a ride (but the last month, it’s been rainy on the weekends, so this weekend, i’m looking forward to it!). and we already want to take our bikes with us on trips to see friends, and family in july. he even wants to go to ocean city, ironically we both don’t like it. but he thinks we’ll enjoy it if we had our bikes to ride around instead of being stuck in a car to get to places!
oh and wine festivals are a great way to have fun! usually we pack a picnic & take our food with us. taste some wine, then do some eating as well.
the best date would be some activity like “trapeze” classes or even mini golf! something to get the competitor out of me lol….
ps I am OBSESSED with movies so crossing my fingers for luck
linked back
http://www.honeynutlo.com/2009/05/thank-god-for-my-girls.html
I love the Wii, we have so much fun!! If you guys have mario cart Steve and I will have to have a “double date” one night and school you and Eric!!! LOL
Steve and I are always going on interesting dates….lol well to us anyways…..we hardly ever go watch a movie at the theater. But we do watch a bunch at home….we order pizza or some kind of take out, have ice cream and popcorn…all the things we shouldn’t and just watch movies all night snuggled up like bunnies!! LOL
My faves are our road trip weekends….driving wherever and camping out or staying in hotels. We live near the mountains so there are tons of places to go and explore! Or when we go to the garden center and just walk around looking at plants….lol sounds boring but we absolutely love it! Mini golf, going to the driving range or actual golfing…..or going to our fave coffee shop, we LOVE coffee…..going to the zoo, we love love love animals!! I hope we can get a ton of stuff in this summer because we’re both starting school again this fall…..we’ll never have time with work and class at night.
My all time fav date was just before we started actually dating….we walked down 17th ave going into all the shops and eating gelato……..LOL it was weird at the time but he fed me a spoonful of his raspberry gelato….lol i was like who is this guy i don’t really know him and he’s feeding me gelato…..from his spoon….WEIRD!! LOL after spending the whole day talking and walking, i knew i really liked him and it was the same way for him! We still go for gelato now
Katrina
I love doing simple things like going on picnics. The Ex and I used to always have picnics and it was so much fun/romantic.
Here’s my first entry:
http://twitter.com/Nora_L
I RT about your contest earlier today =)
Okay, so the most offbeat date we’ve had? Probably Valentine’s Day. We we did see a movie but we saw a slasher film, went bowling and had pitchers of beer, went to a dive pool hall and finsihed the night off with dinner at White Castle (Which is a fast food restaurant which for one day a year turns into a “restaurant,” where the waitresses actually serve you.) We had the best time!
Another great date that we have repeated a few times: garage sale-ing the morning, usually in comfortable clothes looking for books, movies, cds, modern antiques followed up by a delicious breakfast at one of our favorite local breakfast joints. Not to mention that we usually take a mid afternoon nap which is super luxurious!
(love the fact that you are giving stuff away this week. I might have to step it up myself!)
I love out of the box dates. Even though me and my bf haven’t been together as long as you and Eric, we do live together and have pretty much been inseparable since the day we started going out more than 2 years ago. So yes, things have gotten dull. We do a lot of dinner dates, dinner and movie type things, but it’s so commonplace it’s not like a real date feeling, you know?
anyway, I love the idea of going hiking as a unconventional date idea! that would be fun for us to do this summer. I’m always a fan of day-trip “dates,” whether we jaunt off to LA for the afternoon or go a bit farther, like Santa Barbara. I’m also a big fan of museums! But it can be hard to convince the boy that they are as great as I think they are!
oh, and I have been dying to go on a picnic lately for some reason. It is like at the top of my list of things to do! haha. that would make for a cute, romantic date but laid back and cheap too!
ooh, another idea just popped into my head. how fun would it be to go to one of those places where you pick a ceramic and paint it?! loved doing that as a kid and I would still love it now! amber, this post is just giving me so many ideas!
Date? What is a date? It’s been so long since I’ve been on one.
One of the best dates I’ve had is going to the driving range. It was a beautiful summer night and such a fun thing to do together. I didn’t know much about golf so he showed me how to use different clubs.
Another fun date is cooking dinner together.
You & Eric are such a cute couple!! It’s good that you still make it a priority to do things together – like going to that Fun Park! It’s not dorky – it’s cute!
I can’t enter your contest because we don’t HAVE cineplex odeon in my town – reason #542,093,942 why my town sucks!!!
One of our best dates was at a video game/mini golf place!!! It was at Scandia in Kelowna (which I believe it closed now!). We played mini golf and air hockey and then finished with a bunch of video games – we played co-op in the “Lost World” game where you sit in the booth and shoot dinosaurs – SO COOL (we also did a “Dawn of the Dead” one that was similar!)…I love stuff like that.
NOW, since we are an old married couple (kidding) – we go on golf dates in the summer (or on hikes, something I wasn’t into until I started to care about my health) and we play Wii a LOT…but Danny hates playing with me because I always kick his butt at boxing (we also play rockband together)…it’s the same thing you said, we are spending time together, and he still gets to play video games and I get a good laugh!!!
(we live in a small town…so we don’t have a lot of excitement around here!)
Ummm…can you give away a cute guy for the date instead?! : ) : ) : ) I absolutely love your new blog. I’ve been a “bad blogger” lately… always takes a while to settle in after moving. I’ll be back soon with beach bungalow pics…yay! In the meantime, I’ll be reading your posts!
Oops…that anonymous comment was mine…”hot guy giveaway” coming soon I hope? : )
My favorite “unconventional” date has to include the beach. I live 5 minutes away and love being able to watch a sunset or take moonlit strolls. Or a picnic during the day is fun too. =)
hello from switzerland! i like the new layout and blog. fav unconventional date idea…grabbing dinner fixings and a bottle of wine and heading to a local park for people watching and chatting. or just put on some fun music and cook dinner together while you enjoy a drink together!
one time this guy took me hiking, not strange, but it was pretty cool, same with talking for 5 hours at a coffee bean. but hands down interesting date was he took me to a park near UCLA, and he played bball with a bunch of people that were there while i tanned and watched him and read one of his books he picked out for me. then we went back to his place and napped. hilarious.
Favorite unconventional date…going shopping! My husband and I love to clothes shop together, which is sweet!
Honestly most of our “date night” now really do consist of dinner & a movie. But back when we first started dating we had a few more creative night. Like the time he took me to a horse race track to bet on horses. We also went to one of his high school football games once (once as in last year when we were both far out of high school).
One of the coolest dates I’ve had so far this year happened last weekend…
My fiance wasn’t working and I wasn’t working, so I suggested a few things: make cocktails, BBQ outside with our small charcoal grill, watch the Chicago White Sox game, and afterwards, sit outside with a bonfire.
We spent quite some money on beer, organic wine (never had it until that day, and it tasted great), apricot brandy, orange liquer, lime and lemon juice, fruit for garnish, sparkling wine, and amaretto liquer…my fiance and I were bartenders for the night, just us two.
What did we grill? The man grilled a PORTERHOUSE STEAK while I grilled my little hot dogs
We enjoyed our food, and enjoyed watching the White Sox win the ball game. The temperature was warm, not humid. The best part was in the end when we sat in the backyard with a bonfire…
It was a perfect date. We’ve never made cocktails before, we haven’t grilled at his house until that day, and we certainly don’t enjoy bonfires as much as we should! Plus, his parents were away at their summer lot, his brother was at his girlfriend’s house, and his sister was working. I couldn’t believe how perfect the night turned out to be. We had fun, we relaxed, and we forgot about all the stress/worries we had from our jobs.
We surely don’t do that on a daily basis, let alone on weekends!
…and the link to your giveaway is posted: In Their Blogs: 05.28.09!
AHhh what a creative giveaway!!! My favorite date nights are when he bf and I cook each other dinner but without telling one another what we’re making…and then sitting outside on the porch (or walk along the beach) talking!! Ok…that’s probably not that unique, but to me, cooking together is the best part! Espcially when dinner is a surprise!!
For your sake, I hope noone wins who’s from Switzerland. I saw SATC over there, and when I purchased the ticket, the guy was like: it’s 18.50 (swiss francs and CAD $ are about the same). I was like…for John and I right? Nope, just for one person!!! lol!
Anyways, those are some great date ideas!!! John and I love going to the movies though, it never gets old
It’s right next to our house too so it’s not too much of a problem. I also love active dates 
Back when my ex and I were together, my favorite thing that we ever did was head up to Lancaster, PA. We went to a chocolate factory and saw how things were made etc.
The BEST part of it was the “Candid Picture” part. We’d each be armed with our cameras with the flash off, and we’d get pictures of each other in cute/weird situations. We got some very great shots of each other.
http://dontcallmekathleen.blogspot.com/2009/06/giveaway-mania.html
My favorite unconventional dates- Nathan and I like to do things like the zoo, museums, and COSI, which is like a science museum for kids. That way we can learn something at the same time we hang out, and plus it’s fun to see what different things interest each of us. I totally agree on the active date thing. I actually prefer active dates to inactive ones pretty much all the time, because dinner can get awkward if you aren’t a big talker like me. Even when Nathan and I were on our first dates (3 years ago!) I wanted to go to the zoo. So much fun. And now we have an annual zoo pass, so it’s basically free for us.
~Amanda
I linked you!
http://shoshanahg.blogspot.com/2009/05/mushroom-olive-pizza.html