“We don’t have time for date nights.” “There’s no one to watch the kids.” There are so many reasons why dating your spouse can be a challenge in itself…but never impossible! When date nights in were the often the only option in 2020, I brought up a new idea to my husband: the date night challenge.
The idea started as a point-based competition where the partners would rate each aspect of each other’s date and while a little healthy competition is fun, I decided that might be way too complicated to start us off. So, here we are with the official date night challenge!
The date night challenge is a simple concept that helps to encourage couples to date each other but without all of the hassle of going out. Partners take turns planning one date night at home each month. The food, the activity, maybe a theme, everything is up to that particular partner to plan ahead of time. It’s like Valentine’s Day except a more frequently occurring celebration of love!
January’s Fondue Date Night
We’ve been doing our date night challenge since January. I hosted the first one and I chose to do a fondue night. It’s kind of a meal and activity rolled into one! We used to love going to The Melting Pot for our anniversary until our local one at the time closed down. I wanted to recreate that for us!
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For the appetizer course, I made a spinach artichoke cheese dip. The recipe calls for butterkäse or fontina but you have no idea how difficult that was to locate. I ended up using mozzarella (for the second time of making this recipe!) and it was delicious, just stringy! To dip into the cheese fondue, I put out baby carrots, broccoli, pretzels, and I made homemade bread!
Hubs surely does not like to have a dinner without meat so for the main course, I made a coq au vin broth to essentially boil our small steak chunks, chicken, and some of the vegetables as well, like potatoes. Just like when you eat at The Melting Pot, you want to leave these pieces in the broth for a certain amount of time so that they can cook thoroughly and completely. I want to highly recommend marinating the meat for this process because even though the broth is flavorful, it still leaves the meat tasting bland! Good thing there was cheese!
I was the most pleased with our dessert, which was a s’mores fondue! We dipped strawberries, bananas, apples, cookies, and the pretzels in this tasty chocolate. It was so creamy and rich, highly recommend it! All of this dipping treats made for a lengthy date night with lots of talking and relaxing together. And I was really proud of all of my homemade goodies for us!
February Spies
It was Hubs’ turn to plan the night and we are all about escape rooms. He found a deal on a couple of Escape the Crate boxes and for the night, we were a pair of spies! We love those Escape the Crate boxes because they’re extremely involved with a lot of details so they make for lengthy, brain-boosting date nights!
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He was really craving Asian food and I love spicy so our dinner for the evening was spicy chicken and onion lettuce wraps! They were delicious and we had a lot leftover to put on top of salad for the next couple of days.
A Bubbly Date for March
Soap making is among the goals for our homestead. He often muses about how interesting it would be to make our own soaps. I didn’t want to choose all of the colors and scents myself because I knew this would be part of the fun, so I brought him to the store with me. We both hate shopping but it was nice to be able to peruse our options in person.
This date actually had the kids in mind because we wanted to make soaps that would help particularly our oldest daughter’s eczema. We each chose a few fragrances and colors to toy with and I added tea tree oil for hers!
Before our date, I bought soap molds and floral mix-ins to add to the appeal of the soaps. Craft dates may not be everyone’s cup of tea but we loved trying something new. We listened to our marriage playlist and just poured soap and danced. The soap process is still a work in progress but the date was a success, haha!
It’s April now and his turn. I look forward to seeing what he’s got up his sleeve and I’m ready to start planning mine for next month. These dates are different and they’re what works for us and our relationship but I absolutely guarantee that you can come up with some spectacular ideas for your relationship so get out there and make it happen!
If you need some more ideas, I have an entire post devoted to date nights at home!
I’ll be sure to share our other date nights for the year but you share with us too! Tag us and use the hashtag #QuirkyDateNightChallenge!