Creative Date Ideas: A Roundup of Books!
Last week when I shared my word of the year for 2023, I mentioned that one thing I want to work on is being more silly with Corey and trying new things together. It’s something we’ve both been talking about a lot lately and really wanting to prioritize. After 12 years of marriage (and another 5 years of dating before that), we’ve done a lot together. And sometimes we can be a bit of a crotchety old married couple even though we’re still objectively pretty young.
But all that changes now.
Over the years, there are a few dates we’ve done together that really stand out in our minds. The time he signed us up for what he thought was a scavenger-hunt themed hike but turned out to be a really intense race that neither of us was at all prepared for. The time we went to Target and bought a ton of random $5 gifts for each other. All the times we picked up food from various favorite restaurants and brought it home for a ridiculous buffet. When he handed me a stack of envelopes with activities in them and we had a “choose your own adventure” style date.
What do they all have in common? They’re out of the box. They’re more than just dinner and a movie. They’re unique!
Each and every one of those silly little dates brought us closer, made us laugh, and brought us so much joy. So when we started brainstorming how we could bring more joy into our relationship in 2023, I immediately started looking for ways we could incorporate more dates like that into our routine.
And boy, did I ever find some great ideas!
Creative date ideas
Turns out, there are dozens of different dating guides that can give you so much fun inspiration. And, since I love you and I also want you to have fun with your partner, I’m sharing our findings here today!
- The Couple’s Bucket List: 100 date ideas, organized by available time and budget!
- 100 Dates Scratch-Off Poster: Choose a square (like “take a pottery class” or “create a time capsule” and scratch it off when you’re done.
- A Year of Us Book: Full of one question a day for a full year. Includes questions like “If I could take a magical wand and wave away one of your worries, what would it be?”
- Step Right Up Date Night Box: A full date in a box! There are lots of different themes, so be sure to click through and check it out. These look so fun!
- The Adventure Challenge Couple’s Edition: This is probably the most popular one on the list. Contains 50 scratch-off pages with surprise dates that are creative and unique.
- Mystery Date (Staying In Edition): Has 52 scratch off cards with at-home date ideas and conversation starters.
- Date Deck: This would be the perfect thing to bring along on a regular date to make it a little more fun. Includes cards with questions and conversation staters – perfect for getting to know your partner a bit better with questions you might not think of!
- Mix it Up Date Night Generator: There are three categories of cards – Dinner Challenge, Movie Challenge, and Mix It Up Challenge. You draw one of each to create your super unique date. Perfect for someone who loves dinner & a movie dates but wants to shake it up a little.
- The Ultimate Fun Book for Couples: This book doesn’t necessarily have date ideas, but it has questions, quizzes, challenges, and games for you to do together. Perfect for spicing up a regular date night!
- Date Night Ideas Scratch-Off Cards: Scratch off cards for your date night! Similar to the Adventure Challenge but a little more affordable, and a good way to dip your toe in.
- Couple’s Bucket List: 101 different date ideas, perfect if the idea of a scratch off makes you a little nervous.
- The Big Activity Book for Couples: And finally, we have another activity book with puzzles, games, and quizzes. I love the idea of doing one of these in bed with a glass of wine!
We considered buying several different ones and testing them out, but in the end we felt like that might be overwhelming. So, we ended up grabbing the Adventure Challenge Couple’s Edition to try out for ourselves. I like how it’s organized and that it has spots for photos and note taking. We are really excited to give it a shot, and you know I’ll be sharing all of the details over on Instagram stories as we work through it!
I’m interested to see how much fun we have with this over the next year or so. I have a feeling that this is gonna be a really great way for us to shake things up and have a little more fun together! Stay tuned, I guess!