52 Date Nights, Week 23: Light Candles ...and Take Pictures

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Friday night Thomas banished me to the basement after the kids were in bed. It's a testament to how tired I was that I didn't suspect anything beyond what he said: he wanted to pick up a little and then he'd be down to watch The Office with me.

Ten minutes later he asked me to come back upstairs. I sighed heavily as I dragged myself off the couch. When I reached the top of the stairs and found this:

That right there is our unity candle, some much-needed munchies, and glasses ready for wine.

The whole room was filled with candles. We got out the tripod to take pictures, which led to messing with the self-timer and my new lightscoop for self-portraits (another date night activity!)

(flash free)

Taken in the same lighting with flash + lightscoop

The best part is that when I downloaded the pictures a few days later I found this:

(Taken the next morning while I was still in bed.)

52 Date Nights, Week 22: Play Twister

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We’ve been trying to do this date night thing on the cheap (figs and brie nonwithstanding) and we don’t own Twister. I asked all my local facebook friends if they had one we could borrow (no luck) and checked the game aisle of Goodwill several times.

Then we went to my in-laws for Easter this weekend and Thomas spied Twister in the game closet. Which led to…

What, do you guys just hunt eggs and stuff?

Playing Twister in my Easter dress.

Having your daughter man the spinner and your mother-in-law take pictures completely takes the flirting-while-Twistering option off the table, but it was still a lot of fun.

Our taskmaster:

Later she said to me "Mommy, I had fun playing Twizzle."

Of course, once we played with the kids we wanted to buy our own. It was great for Margaret to work on right/left (she knows which is which, but it takes some thought) and Paul to work on colors (his favorite is BOO). I think after all that searching I’ll end up just buying one from Target. Looks like flirting is back on the table.

52 Date Nights, Week 21: Watch a Movie

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For this week's super thrilling date night we...watched a movie. It didn't provide too much blogging material, but we were pretty excited about finally seeing Argo. Plus, Thomas, knowing I needed some sort of picture for my post, went through all of our movies and picked out the ones that won a Best Picture Oscar. (Aww.) He also cued up our not-yet-fully-watched Academy Awards recording to the point at which Argo won and we watched it before the movie.

We didn't have any movie candy, but Oreos worked juuuust fine.

52 Date Nights, Week 20: Make Music

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This was another one where we were at a loss. Neither of us really plays an instrument and the 'pots and pans' idea wasn't really floating our boat. Then I realized we do have some musical instruments in the house.

We didn't even have to disturb the kids because all of their musical instruments have migrated to the back of a closet in the basement. (I admit to nothing.)

I pulled out the instruments pictured above, then gave the closet one last glance. And that's when I saw it. My nemesis.

Please no.

CAT PIANO

Pretty soon we were torturing each other with "witty kitty songs." (witty kitty songs, people. This is what they're actually called.) If you're not careful, I'll come after you with "'Where's our gerbil,' sung to the tune of Skip to my Lou." A classic. Thomas might even come along to accompany it on the toy drum. We scared the daylights out of the real cat.

WHAT THE CRAP IS THAT??

I like to think that with enough practice we, too, could find "The Sound."

52 Date Nights, Week 19: Create a Playlist of Love Songs

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We thought this would be a quick and easy ‘throw some songs on a list’ thing, but we actually ended up doing it more formally. We each came up with a list of songs, then alternated playing them for each other.  We picked a lot of songs with memorieeeees attached and it was fun to reminisce and awesome when the other person would come up with something you hadn’t thought of in forever.

(I almost left off Fly Me To the Moon! I've loved that song forever! So much so that we danced to it for the first dance at our wedding!)

Now, just so you know, my taste runs toward cheesy love songs in the country pop genre. Thomas even let me put one of my all time favorites, Bless the Broken Road, on the list.

When You Say Nothing At All was a last minute addition, after I watched Notting Hill last week. (Man, I am a sucker for that movie.) Cheeseball as the song is, I just love it. I also find it especially appropriate because Thomas is a do-er and while he does still say he loves me, he also shows it constantly with no words at all. I realize the song isn't so much about doing without saying anything, more just looking at each other and not needing words, but whatever.

Font downloaded from here! (It's cora.)

Songs I recommend if you're making a playlist of your own: Then (Brad Paisley), I Won't Give Up (Jason Mraz), Wanted (Hunter Hayes). They're pretty sappy, but that's the way I like 'em.

52 Date Nights, Week 18: Home Improvement

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This one was technically called "paint a room," but the fine print said any home improvement project would do. My mom found an old Curious George book in a thrift shop last week and I just loved the artwork. I thought it would be a cute decoration to go above Paul's crib and, luckily, Thomas was on board.

We went on a family excursion on Saturday to look for frames and found these that were just the right (odd) size AND on clearance (what are the odds?!).

So, 75 cents for the book, $12 for frames, and $1.50 in hardware to hang them = new art for our little monkey's room.

While we were already measuring and hanging, we put up all of the rest of the artwork we had for the kids' rooms - something that had been on the to-do list for YEARS.

I bought these prints before Paul was even born. (I was six or seven months pregnant, so the one in his room was purchased for him specifically.) A year later I finally got them framed. Another year later and we finally put them on the wall.

The one on top (Paul's) and the lower right (Margaret's) came from Emily Burger Designs on Etsy. Maggie linked to something from her once, I think, and I noticed she lived in Des Moines, like us, so I got to go to her house and buy these directly from her! How cool is that? Handmade AND local. (Plus, no shipping cost!)

The one above Margaret's head in the lower left is one of these custom personalized maps from Leen Machine paper studio. A'Dell recommended them on Style Lush and I thought instead of doing it as a wedding gift, I could make one birth-announcement style for Margaret. The heart is over Des Moines, where she was born, and her date, time, and location of birth are listed. The colors are custom chosen to match her wall colors and I can't say enough good things about Leen Machine for going back and forth and back and forth with me to get the colors right. I cannot believe I bought this two years ago and just now got it on the wall!

52 Date Nights, Week 17: Comedy Night Done Right

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We decided to do #47 Have a Comedy Night with a little twist. We've tried watching comedians on Netflix and have never really thought it was that funny. So Thomas came up with the idea of Comedy Night Done Right/ Must See TV. We love us some NBC shows. And TV on DVD. A lot.

We were laughing before putting in the first DVD and it was pretty great, especially considering we'd just spent a half an hour staring at both the available Redbox movies and the Date Night list and not finding anything we were in the mood for.

We went from oldest to newest:

Seinfeld (No soup for you!)
Friends (Could I BE wearing any more clothes?)
The Office (That's what she said.)
30 Rock (Uhh, I don't really have any quotes for this.)

Also, no proper night of Must See TV would be complete without...

Sadly, this is not even the extent of our TV on DVD collection. Anybody want to watch some House? SNL? Sex and the City? Bridezillas? (That was a gift. An engagement gift.)

52 Stay-at-home Date Nights, Week 16: Spend the Night in Italy

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from the 52 Simple, Stay-at-home Date Nights PDF

Originally, I thought I’d be creative with this one and come up with my own thing. I took French in high school (can’t speak it now) and this is one of our dining room walls:

Atmosphere! It’s like we’re already there!

In the end, though, can you really beat pizza, wine, and gelato? No, no you cannot. So that is what we did. 

Neither one of us are big fans of Roman Holiday, though, so we decided to go with another movie in the grand Italian tradition...The Godfather. Which, I know, isn't even set in Italy, but whatever. They're Italian. It counts. (Plus, it's super romantic.)

So that was the plan. But then Skyfall came out on Tuesday and we both really wanted to see it. Especially since we hadn't had so much as one kid-free night to see it in theaters. So...007 it was.

He's in Europe. Close enough.

52 Date Nights, Week 15: Make presents

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This one has been nagging at both of us since we first looked through the date night list. Make presents? Uh...

The suggestion was to "set the timer for 30 minutes and race around the house collecting things from which you can each make a homemade gift for the other." My first reference for homemade gifts was, of course, Friends (make the presents), and I kept putting this one off because, well, crotchless panties really aren't appropriate for a guy. (I know you're confused right now if you don't know Friends. It's ok. Just move past it. Forget I mentioned anything.)

I was struck by the idea last week that we could just take this down a notch, pressure wise, and create homemade Valentines for each other. Seasonal! Fun! No need to make something that will be treasured forever. Also, with each person making the same thing, no comparison of who rose to the challenge and who...borrowed a sock bunny. (Friends again. I'm sorry.)

52 Date Nights, Week 14: Sample Aphrodisiacs

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The article the description in the date nights PDF linked to is titled “10 Aphrodisiac Foods To Eat This Valentine’s Day” so I decided now is the perfect time to get back in this thing (you may have noticed the month-long date night hiatus...)

We selected seven of the ten supposed aphrodisiacs, which was a lot of food, so we spread it out over a couple nights.

Friday Night
The first one we selected was a no-brainer: Chocolate. If you’ve ever been on a Carnival cruise, I hope you tried the Warm Chocolate Melting Cake. Because, I swear, it’s almost worth taking the cruise just for that. This was our third cruise with Carnival and I had to restrain myself to keep from blurting out “I want a Chocolate Melting Cake!” before we were even seated for dinner.

Thomas found this recipe and, well. I may not be losing weight this year after all. But, man, will I be happy.

Saturday Night
Our menu was:

With the kids: Black Bean and Spinach Enchiladas with a side of avocado.

Mid-chopping for the ridiculously good enchilada filling

Asparagus with Toasted Almonds and Garlic. I figured these three potential aphrodisiacs would go together well, so I googled and voila! Three birds with one stone! (Aka, don’t waste precious room on the main course when desserts are coming your way.)

I think anything would taste good smothered in oil and butter.
(Yes, oil AND butter.)

Bananas: The article suggested this recipe for caramelized bananas, another one of my favorite desserts.

Also, to round out our dessert plates, I bought some figs from Trader Joes. I didn't know how to serve figs, so I went with their suggestion of brie (which coincidentally was on sale) to make this.

Unfortunately, I got a little enthusiastic swirling hot olive oil in the frying pan for the asparagus and ended the night looking like this:

Second degree burns are not an aphrodisiac.

Between that and the fact I had already spent three hours in the kitchen cleaning, making sugar cookie bars for a Super Bowl party, and doubling dinner so I could freeze half, we decided to put off the figs and caramelized bananas for another night. The avocado got put off, too, because after all that work making enchiladas (including homemade sauce!) I forgot to put avocado on the side.

Tuesday
At this point date night has gone out the window and we're just trying to use up the food in our fridge. We invited my mom over for dinner since my dad is out of town. I made the figs & toasted almonds brie for an appetizer and it was amazing. Paul, who is 19 months now, especially liked it - figs, almonds and all. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture. We also made more chocolate melting cakes to share with my mom, since my parents were on the cruise with us and undoubtedly missed the cake as well:)

We still haven't gotten to the caramelized bananas and the avocado went bad, so maybe next week on those...

Verdict: That was a lot of cooking. I think I did it wrong and this is meant to be a thing where you just throw everything on a plate, as opposed to going fancy turning the chocolate into cake and making enchiladas to go with the avocado. Also, indulging for four out of five nights (including the Super Bowl party) means those calories are going to take a lot of, uh, exercise to burn off. Was that the point?

52 Date Nights, Week 13: Make s'mores indoors

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The past week has been one of those weeks where Thomas and I haven’t gotten more than 15 consecutive minutes together and are mostly just passing each other in the hall on the way to unpacking/laundry/making dinner/putting kids to bed. I guess we did have time one night to take the Christmas tree down together and assemble this to put in its place, but unfortunately I couldn’t find “play with easel magnets” on the date night list.*

{Edited to add: I knew I was going to forget to put in the picture I wanted here. It's on Thomas' computer and I meant to get it! Here's a blurry one from Amazon.} {Also, doesn't that little girl look just like Michelle's Peanut? You didn't tell us she modeled, Michelle!}

My parents got this for Margaret and both kids love, love, love it.

So, when opportunities for a date night look slim, you can either think: bummer, not going to happen this week OR you can grab one of those 15 minute stretches and use it to set things on fire with your gas stove.

(This picture was staged because we are FAR TOO COMPETENT to accidentally set marshmallows on fire.)**

Chocolate graham crackers because they were what we had and I didn’t want to buy a whole new box. Extra dark chocolate because I’m fancy. And kind of a snob. Baileys because…you know. Why not?

Thomas opted for a Reeses minis s’more and it was quite delicious.

*Neither was “assemble pieces in the wrong order, screwing up the whole process and making your long-suffering husband fix your mistakes.” Weird.

**OK, fine, we did set a couple on fire briefly. The picture was staged, though – the next morning, when Thomas was gone. I was alone in the kitchen setting things on fire with one hand while trying to take pictures with the other, all while the kids were eating breakfast in the next room. Safe!***

***This won’t affect my homeowner’s insurance rates, right?

52 Date Nights: Week 12, Sing Karaoke

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Karaoke is a date night that requires extensive preparation in the form of alcohol. Unfortunately, we decided to squeeze it in after several hours of packing for our family trip to Memphis and absolutely no drinking. I don’t feel as if we did the activity justice.

This is the site the date nights PDF linked to. It was…OK. But
you can’t beat free, right? That’s really all we’re looking for.

I was pretty tentative, but after Thomas belted his song out I got a little more into it. We wanted to try a duet, but apparently you have to create a paid membership on this site to do that. Who knows, maybe we’ll search out a karaoke bar in Memphis!

Thomas belting it out at the bar. (The bar in our basement, that is.)

52 Date Nights: Week 11, Re-read your wedding readings

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While we were in the tent last week, we decided it would be a nice cozy place to tackle #25 Re-read your marriage vows and wedding readings. This one was tough, as we don’t have a copy of our marriage vows. We didn’t write our own, just assumed the church had standard ones. That was a bad idea. The pastor did not use standard vows, but wrote his own. I thought every church ceremony included the whole “in sickness and in health, til death do us part” stuff, but no. I dreamt about saying those vows for MONTHS.  My whole life, really, and he didn't do them. I was really, really mad and disappointed. Still not over it, actually. This was my one wedding day and I didn’t get to say “til death do us part.”

(Also, don’t give me that line about how being married is the only thing that matters. Obviously the marriage is much more important than the wedding, but it doesn’t mean the wedding doesn’t matter. If it did, why do we even have weddings? Why not just go to the justice of the peace? We both believe in and act upon “until death do us part” despite the fact we didn’t say it in front of our friends and family, but that doesn’t mean there was no POINT in saying it. Also, how belittling is it to say to someone who is planning a wedding or whose wedding didn’t go like they planned “all that matters is that you’re married at the end”? OTHER THINGS MATTER. Sure, they don’t have the lifelong consequences your marriage does, but they’re not meaningless.)

(You know what else doesn’t matter? The fact some people don’t say “standard vows”, either by not having a wedding ceremony or by deliberately leaving them out. I made the choice to say those vows - but didn’t communicate it well, which was my fault - and just because some people choose not to doesn’t mean the fact I didn’t get to is OK.)

Let's take a break to look at me signing our marriage license!
I'm still a big fan of the decision to do it during the ceremony.
(I have no idea what's up with the lighting on my nose. Is that a shadow?)

In the interest of avoiding another rant, I won’t even get (too much) into what he did use as vows. Let’s just say they included the lines “I will submit to you” and gave all our guests the impression I’d never be making a decision on my own ever again. I’m assuming the pastor’s views on submission are more nuanced than that, but he did not do a good job communicating. Also, in retrospect, asking him to do a short sermon without reading a transcript prior to the ceremony was a bad, bad idea. I should point out we asked him to base the sermon on one of our three readings (his choice as to which one) and he did not. On the plus side, pretty much everyone there remembers our wedding well! To this day we get remarks on the extremism of it. (Which I like, as it gives me a chance to clarify that's not exactly what we believe or how our marriage is structured.)

Anyway. We skipped the “recreate your wedding vows” part of this one and just went through the readings, which were: Song of Songs 8: 6-7, Romans 12:9-13 and 1 John 4:7-12. We talked about why we chose them and what we think about those choices now. It was quite nice, actually. I did not recreate my wedding vow rant for Thomas. He's quite familiar with it, so that honor was given to you lucky people!

52 Date Nights: Week Ten, Make a Tent

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When I read this one, I was thinking make a tent like you did when you were a kid. A fort, really. You know:  where the couch was one end of the fort and you dragged the coffee table over to form another side, maybe stacked a bunch of couch cushions on a third side, then draped a blanket over the whole thing. Low tech, nothing too strenuous.

Well. Apparently when you tell Thomas to build a tent, he builds a freaking tent. Isn't it awesome? Don't ask me how to replicate it; all I can tell you is it calls for a lot of twine, binder clips, two coat stands, and a curtain rod. Also, concrete blocks (visible in the pictures below). Way at the top there you can kind of see the back end of the roof blanket is tied to the basement windows.

I added the yellow tissue paper flower garland I made for Paul's birthday party. We tried to hang it over the entryway at the party and it didn't work AT ALL, so I am very glad I was finally able to put it to good use.

Clearly my contribution was vital to the integrity of the structure.

When we started this whole date night thing thinking it would be a good way to keep us from passing out in front of the TV every weekend night, we had no idea. This was definitely not your typical Saturday night.

52 Date Nights: Week 9, Exchange Love Letters

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Thomas took over date night last weekend. He made up cards of a few options and had me draw one. I drew #7 Exchange Love Letters. I’ll admit, I groaned. I’m not a big fan of love letters. They’re usually so awkward and overwrought. At a minimum, they’re often flowery and I don’t do flowery. I hate poetry.

Fortunately, Thomas also hates poetry. He graciously listened to me bitch about love letters, then wrote the perfect one. Not flowery. Not awkward. Not overwrought. Specific (I like facts) and genuinely sweet without being over the top.

The list suggested thinking of 10 things you like about your spouse and turning them into a letter, which helped me a lot. My letter was rather brief (basically the 10 things in sentence form) but Thomas said he liked it and I wasn’t in trouble for writing a letter half the length of his.

I doubt we’ll be writing weekly letters, but I’m glad I committed to doing every activity on the date night list, because if not I might have skipped this and it turned out to be nice.

52 Date Nights: Week Eight, Bartend

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Way back on the first date night, which was 'play a board game', I slipped in #31 Bartend because I figured we might as well try to knock out more than one a week. This week, though, we decided to give it its own night. (Or maybe we were just very tired and didn’t want to do anything that was too taxing.)

Thomas had spent all week gathering the components for fancypants Manhattans, though. He and his coworkers are trying to replicate ones they had on a business trip. One coworker special ordered the bitters. We…found them at the grocery store. (Same brand the upscale bar used and the liquor store didn’t carry!) Then we had to go to a different liquor store for the (cheap) vermouth. You’ll notice we did not stock up on fancy glasses.

I felt very glamorous and Mad Men-esque with my almost-Don-Draper’s-signature-drink (which is the Old Fashioned, but is pretty similar).

Then I took a sip and HOO BOY those are strong. The glamour kind of evaporated as I almost choked. Over two hours I drank half of it. (The remainder is actually what is pictured, as I totally forgot to take photos before. I should have taken one of Thomas mixing them up!)

52 Date Nights: Week Seven, Dress to the Nines

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Turns out date nights are addicting. After we skipped last week, then I went out of town for the Blathering, I missed having them. As I traveled home on Monday, I thought about how excited I was to see my family and how, if I hurried, I had time to make our night a little special.

I decided clear off the dining room table (no small feat, given that’s where we ‘store’ all the junk mail), make it pretty, and we could Dress to the Nines (#5). I made turkey meatloaf – using Thomas’s recipe, because he’s the real cook around here – and Margaret* helped me spread silk rose petals from our wedding on the tablecloth. I finished the table with the beautiful welcome home flowers I found on the counter upon my return.

I was trying to stage this picture with just the one plate of food, but this 
unintentional ‘family dinner’ shot ended up being our favorite.

Afterwards we went downstairs and put a slideshow of my Blathering pictures on the TV so I could tell them all about the trip. We gave Margaret the camera so she could take a picture of mommy and daddy in their fancy clothes.

*We never call her Meg. It's time to switch. How much more googlable does using her actual name make this, anyway?

52 Date Nights: Week six, Take a bubble bath

Free stay-at-home date night ideas PDF download here. (Not sponsored.) Previous date night posts here.

For tonight’s date night, we decided on #40 Take a Bubble Bath. Since I obviously wasn’t going to post pictures, I tried to think of what to use as a visual. As Friends is pretty much always the first thing that comes to my mind in any situation, I considered Monica and Chandler taking a bubble bath. Which lead to “Chicken? I could go for some chicken.”

So, I give you: romantic bubble bath (with champagne, just like Monica and Chandler) and…chicken. Thomas looked up the quote so he could get the order exactly right.

Our life is usually boring and predictable, which I like, but its fun to do something completely weird every now and then. Two people squeezing into a too-small tub and eating chicken? That’s weird. It practically counted as #47 Have a Comedy Night, but I don’t think this was the original intention of that activity. We’ll save it for another time.

52 Date Nights, Week five: Look at family photos

We’ve been crazy busy (no date night last weekendL ), so decided to make last night a simple, laid back date night. We Snuggle(d) in Sensuous Sleepwear (#4), while #19 Look(ing) at Family Photos. I recently finished and ordered Paul’s first year book, so we looked at that and also grabbed Meg’s.

Then we pulled out photo albums from when WE were babies.

1985 Jessica is watching you.

For good measure, I propped the life-size Baby Jessica poster on the couch.

(What? You don’t have one of those? I was the first grandchild and my grandpa developed photos in his basement.)

Nothing says sexy like a baby staring at you. Not just any baby, either, but YOU as a baby.




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Free date night ideas PDF download here. (Not sponsored.)

52 Date Nights: Week 4, Watch a Sports Game

Week 1. Week 2. Week 3. Date Night Ideas PDF download here. (Not sponsored.)

With Thomas’ beloved St. Louis Cardinals playing for the National League Championship this week, #27 Watch a sports game and eat stadium food seemed like a no-brainer. Luckily, the game went pretty well for the Cardinals so no one got cranky.

We planned to have bratwurst for dinner, then nachos and beer with the game after the kids were in bed. We ended up still recovering a bit from the stomach flu last week, though, so we skipped dinner and just had nachos, which had the bonus of clearing out our fridge. We threw on rotisserie chicken leftover from lunch and vegetarian taco filling (black beans, mushrooms, corn*) from the day before. Plus cheese of course. Lots of cheese. I think cheese + chips should be the default method of eating leftovers.

*When I realized we were eating corn on corn (chips) I obviously thought of Diane. Corn!