"Apple" Date

So, a few months ago I wrote a post about how hard it is to go on dates since Liv was born. I mentioned in that post that I was going to change some things. Well, I'll tell ya what. We've changed some things and I'm loving it. Every week we have a date night. Sometimes they are go out dates; sometimes we stay in. We don't always get a babysitter. Sometimes Liv tags along but it's still fun because we are doing something different. Usually when we stay in we just have our date after Liv goes to bed {which actually works now, because she goes to bed earlier than midnight - hallelujah!}. Regardless of what we do, we always enjoy being together. One of my favorite things is that we alternate who picks the date every other week. This way, I come up with two dates a month and so does Dan. I like this because we both have different ideas and this way, we don't exhaust our ideas. It's been a lot of fun.

I decided to share some of the ideas of different dates that we do. Keep in mind that I'm kind of cheesy. I like cheese. Some people may just roll their eyes about these dates. Some people are fine with the typical date every single week. I'm not. I get bored with that. I like it to be a little different.

So this first date I'm going to share with you we actually had last fall when apples were abundant. But the nice thing about this date is that it isn't seasonal so you can do it any time. And the fun thing about it is that you can do it together just the two of you or you can do it with friends or family.

I decided on the theme for this date {I really like themes} because we had a bunch of apples. I don't remember why we had a bunch of apples but we did. I was trying to think of ways we could use them and this what I came up with.
To start off, I wanted to give Dan some kind of invitation. We had recently gotten Liv's pictures taken and I wanted to get one framed that Dan could take to the office. So I bought a frame {really cheap at WalMart or you could do the dollar store} and put Dan's favorite photo of her in it {she is pretty cute, huh?}.

Then I wrote a cheesy -CHEESY!!- poem and printed it on some apple clip art. I just Googled free clip art, found an apple, saved it, and then used the Paint program on my computer {that's the most sophistication we have} to type my poem on it. You could always hand write if you wanted.

Here is a photo of the apple printout with the poem. You can click the photo to enlarge.

Then I stuck this print out and the photo of Livie on the kitchen table after Dan had gone to bed. I knew he would find it at breakfast the next morning.

The next day I prepped the rest of our date. I put the apples in a cute little basket on the table.
I assembled some caramels so we could make caramel apples.

I bought an apple scented candle and lit it so the whole house smelled yummy.

I also made some Apple Butterscotch Cookies

and found our Apple Dumpling Gang movie.

The plan was to go to Applebee's for dinner.

Well, Applebee's didn't work out. We just happened to be going on our date on Veteran's Day and Applebee's is super great to military on that day so it was waaaay crowded. We opted for something else instead but I don't actually remember what it was.

After dinner, we went home and ate yummy cookies and watched the Apple Dumpling Gang. Funniest movie! I love Don Knotts and Tim Conway. After our movie, we made caramel apples which didn't turn out very good. I'm guessing maybe I cooked the caramel too long because the caramel on the apples ended up being rock hard! But it was still fun.

Other things you could do for this date:
Play Apples to ApplesMake apple art
Carve apples similar to you would a pumpkin or make Martha Stewart's Shrunken Apple Heads
Check out apple party ideas at Celebrations or Entertaining.  

If you didn't want to go to Applebee's {or out at all} but still really want something "apple" themed for dinner, check out these sites: 

Apple Recipes

Best Apples

Or check out this recipe for Apple Stuffed Pork Chops. Yum!

 

So, there you have my first date idea. Cheesy? Yah. Fun? Totally! :D