How to Date Your Spouse~ 7 Date Night Ideas

With Valentine's Day this Friday, I wanted to write a bit about dating your spouse. Yes, I have only been married a little under a year, but I have somewhat of an insight on dating my husband in this past year. I have also experienced a "healthy" marriage from my parents and my grandparents. These are both marriages that I try to learn from and use as a guide to keep my marriage healthy and interesting.

The one this week I wanted to focus on with dating your spouse and keeping it healthy is to date each other. Jake and I are newleyweds with a 7 week old baby and we have still made it a point to carve out a few hours a week to have a "date night." I will say we are super fortunate that we have 2 amazing moms that will always watch our daughter for us, and plenty other family members or friends that would be more than willing to watch her and love on her.

With that said, here are a few date night ideas. We live in St. Louis, so I have tagged some local places we have enjoyed and the deals that they may have. For this post I will share my Top 7 Date Nights. We have done our best to make most of these dates around $25-50. Which I would consider reasonable for dinner, maybe a drink or two, and a possible activity.

~7 Date Night Ideas~

#1 ~At Home Beer or Wine Dinner Pairing~

Last Valentine's Day, Jake and I were engaged and about a month away from our wedding. So, we were buying items for the wedding, paying and planning for our honeymoon, and just low on cash. I wanted our one and only Valentines Day as an engaged couple to be special, but financially reasonable. So many restaurants have V Day specials that cost $100 and up per couple. I am sure they are amazing, but not in our budget this year. Jake is an avid craft beer lover, so I decided to plan a 4 course dinner with beer pairings. I went to a liquor store that sold individual beers and bought 8 different beers. This way, he could pick what beer he wanted and we got to try all kinds of different beers for a low cost. Each beer was $1.50-$3.00 each. The total dinner cost under $50 and we had a 4 course meal, 4 beers each, and I got a chance to pull out the fancy dinnerware I was dying to use.

This is the menu I made for last years Valentine's Day.

#2 ~Visit a Local Brewery~

Like I said, Jake loves craft beer. So, we enjoy visiting the local breweries here in St. Louis. It's fun to taste the beers with a tasting menu or beer flight. I have certainly surprised myself and my palate on my new love for darker beers like stouts and porters. St. Louis has some amazing local craft breweries and their beer and food is very reasonable. A few of our favorites are 4 Hands, Six Row, Urban Chestnut, and Civil Life Brewery. We also enjoy our closest craft brewery, Trailhead on main street in St. Charles. Trailhead has an amazing happy hour, check them out for some great deals.

#3 ~Coed Sports Clubs~

Jake and I met playing sand volleyball through the St. Louis Sports and Social Club. This group organizes different coed activities all year that you can participate in. In the spring and summer they have sand volleyball and kickball. In the fall and winter they organize bowling and bags/corn hole . We have only participated in the sand volleyball and bag leagues, but we love it. It's also a great way to meet new people and socialize with other adults, together, for a night. Our sand volleyball group has been fortunate enough to win our league a few times as well. What's better for a marriage than coming together on a team and WINNING...multiple times :)

 

Our sand volleyball team, winning the Spring session in 2013.

#4 ~Cicero's Beer School~
Cicero's is located on The Loop in St. Louis. It is an italian restaurant and bar that also has live music and hosts a little thing called Beer School. Best part, Beer School is FREE! Thats right it is free to attend and you get free beer. Don't let the "school" aspect of Beer School fool you, you really do learn and most people take notes during the class. Cicero's brings in a different craft brewery each week from all over the United States. We have even met the developer and creator of Blue Moon, which I thought was pretty cool :) Beer school is offered every Wednesday at 5:30pm and 7:00pm. It happens right in the middle of happy hour, so you can get great deals on food as well. It's great time, and if you or your spouse enjoys learning about the science of how beer in made, you should make Wednesday your next date night.

#5 ~Bowling~
We get coupons in the mail weekly for deals on bowling. Bowling is a great date night activity. You are able to do something physical with each other, with a bit of competition. It is also an activity  that can be done year round, rain or shine, -10 degrees or over 100 degrees, you can have a great comfortable time bowling. Bowling is also a great activity for just you and your spouse or to add other couples into the mix. We enjoy the Brunswick Zone in St. Peters. There are always coupons and deals, you have a waiter to order drinks and food from, and later at night they have cosmic bowling.

#6 ~Groupon & Living Social Deals~
Become a member of Groupon or Living Social. There are always so many great new ideas on these two sites. We have tried new restaurants, gotten tickets to shows, bought massage and pedicures, and even discovered new little hot spots that we now enjoy going to regularly.

 

#7 ~Dessert~
Go ahead and have a normal dinner at home with your fmaily. In order to save some time and money just take an hour or two to go somewhere have have dessert, just the two of you. Our favorite place for this is in Cottleville, MO at VB Chocolate Bar. VB's has great choclate drinks like an spiked milkshake or a classic malt. This is a great place, small and intament, lovely outdoor fire pits, and homemade truffles that are melt in your mouth good. Other places we have tried are Bailey's Chocolate Bar in Lafayette Square and Cyrano's in Webster Groves.

For the most part, just making time for each other is always treasured time, especally when you have children. As far as I am concerned, if I don't have to plan it and my husband actually went out of his way to plan a special night for us...its a great start to a great date night. A lot of our date nights we plan together and base them on places and cuisine we enjoy. But, if your spouse is thoughtful enough to plan a night or even few hours away for you, that is all the difference. When I don't have to worry about getting a sitter and where we will go, who's car has gas, and all those typical organization things, I am a happy lady. I hope that these ideas can help spark up a date night for a few couples. Whether your date night is this Friday on Valentine's Day, or any other day of the week, make an effort to date your spouse. Date nights make you a happy wife, husband, mom, or dad. Dating your spouse just keeps that connection and bond between the two of you strong.

Much love,
~Stacy
 

Confessions of a First Time Mom #1

I decided to write this post the morning after my 31st birthday. This was my first birthday as a wife and mom. This birthday was...well...different. I thought I would take a minute to explain why it was different and how I came to an overwhelming realization that my life, including this birthday, was never going to be the same. 

Let me start by saying I have always wanted to be a mom. I have known since I was a kid, no matter what, I was going to be a mom. I never knew how my mommy journey was going to start, but whether I was going to foster, adopt, or have my own children...I was destined to be a mom. So, as soon as my husband and I got married, I wanted to try for children right away. We got lucky, and got pregnant sooner than expected, we were blessed with a "honeymoon baby." I was beyond excited, it seemed to good to be true!

The entire pregnancy, it's about you and the baby. People ask you daily how you are feeling? You visit the doctor so many times and they want to make sure you and baby are healthy. Ultimately everyone is concerned about you. Some days the attention is too much to take, and others you are offended that someone didn't ask about you or the baby. People also like to tell you how much life will change and how nothing will ever be the same. I would just think to myself, of course it will be different we will have a baby. I don't think anyone could prepare me for how different it was going to be.

Like I said before, I decided to write this blog post the day after my birthday, because my birthday was not what I expected. I am big on birthdays, I love celebrating them. I love celebrating family birthdays, friends birthdays, and mostly mine :) I mean, I have already started a secret Pinterest board planning my 6 week olds first birthday if that explains anything.

The things is, the day was overall great! I went to lunch with my best friend and my mom. I went shopping, this was not fun because I still have a long way to go in the baby weight department. My mom helped watch Savi while I got ready for dinner, and my family took me out to dinner where we had a great time. The thing was throughout the whole day, it never really was about me. My entire thought process was about my daughter.

For 31 years, my birthdays have always been about me. This may sound selfish, but I have amazing friends and family that do the best job making my day AMAZING! Well, as much as anyone could have made my day about me, my world revolved around my daughter. I no longer felt special, I just felt like Savanna's mom. She needed me all day. Whether I had to nurse her, change her diaper (she pooped all over me on my bday :) I guess it was her present to me), or soothe her to sleep. Everything about "My Day" was about her. This was hard to take at first. Every other day, I was ok with my world revolving around my daughter, I love it that way. Yet, on my birthday, I guess I expected different...

Overall, the overwhelming realization I came to is that I am striving so hard to be so many things, a wife, daughter, friend, sister, teacher...but before every role in my life comes my daughter. I had dreamed of being a mom for so long, it is now that time, and it is time that I embrace it. I never expected to feel the way I did on my birthday, but I am sure it is a feeling other first-time moms have as well. Am I right? Are there other mom's out there that have felt this way?

Life has changed. Life is rewarding. Life is messy. Life is different. Life is me as a wife and mother and it is more of a joy and blessing than I could have ever imagined. People were right, life has changed, it will never be the same...Life is better, so much better!

Much Love,
~Stacy