Choose Your Own Adventure...

Do you remember those books we all used to read growing up?  They were called Choose Your Own Adventure books and allowed you to choose how the story would turn out. I definitely read my fair share of them.

A while ago I won an exciting giveaway from Krista on While He Was Napping.

She has a lovely etsy shop with all kinds of fun things for great prices.

But my giveaway prize happened to be a fully personalized Choose Your Own Adventure Date.

The first thing Krista did was to send me a questionnaire so that she could customize the date for us.  She included questions about prices limits and activities you would enjoy doing.  I had so much fun filling out the questionnaire and wondered how my Adventure book would turn out to be.

This is what I found in my mailbox:

I absolutely LOVED the packaging, and though what's inside is more important, I was instantly impressed with the presentation!

I scoured the book from cover to cover as soon as I opened it.  I was thrilled to say the least.  She had written a perfect story that fit us like a glove.  Since it was a "stay-at-home" date, it was inexpensive and economical.  However, Krista is good at writing pricey dates too.  Like I mentioned before, Krista can customize your date to spend nothing or to spend extravagantly.  She is a gifted writer, as I found upon reading our book.

Plus, there was a bonus.  She threw in vinyl decals to be applied to goblets.  Those were also customizable.  I chose to have our initials.   (She had some other great ideas like "His" and "Hers" or "His Majesty" and "Her Majesty.")

She also included two lover's lotto cards...which are basically darling, handmade scratch cards.

Our evening was completely blissful.  I had so much fun planning our date as a surprise for Patrick.  And it was so easy to do since I already had the date night packaged for me!

Here are some pictures I snapped during the night.

Our Candlelight Dinner

Bowling

Our "Dance Floor"

And after it was over, I cried.  I know I'm silly, but I had such a wonderful night.   It was the best night we had had for such a long time and I was sad to see it end.

But then Patrick reminded me that we can do it again...and choose the other choices! :)

Thank you Krista, for giving us this "adventurous" date night.

You can see Krista's blog by clicking here and here is the link to her etsy shop.

Fireproof Date Night

As I was contemplating what to do for our weekly date night last Tuesday, I had some ideas begin to grow in my mind until they became a reality last Friday night.  This date could be customizable to anyone...it just takes a little creativity.

I decided that we would begin the night with some "Love Tasks" to earn some prizes.
I wrote down a whole bunch of tasks for both of us to complete.  Some of them were silly, some romantic.  If you want the whole list, leave a comment and I'll post again.

I glued them onto some random sheets of scrapbook paper and laminated them...this would be a super fun group date night!

Then I put the four prizes under some towels:

And I let my sweetie pick a prize for every three tasks completed well.
(For your info: two of the towels are hiding new shirts for Patrick, one of the towels had a box of bakery donuts, and the last towel was holding the movie Fireproof, which we ended our date night watching.) {I would highly recommend this movie.  It is about stengthening our marriages through the Lord.}

As part of our tasks, we had to commit to doing something from each of the Five Love Languages (a book we love by Gary Chapman).  I cut out 5 pairs of scrapbook squares and we wrote our commitments on them.  We didn't let each other see them.  Every month for the next 5 months, we will choose one, read it, and perform our commitment for each other.  I'm really excited for this!!

The last task wasn't a part of the task cards.  This one was a spouses scavenger hunt I created:

If you can't read the items, here they are:
Find something they love
Something they like
Something they just tolerate
and something they dislike
Find something they made
Something they bought
Something they found
And something they got...from you as a gift.

We each had ten minutes to locate everything on the list and put it in a grocery sack for sharing.

Here are some of my favorites:

Something we loved.

Things we made (I chose the boys for Patrick and Patrick chose the ribbon to represent making our house into a home...)
The picture of us represents what Patrick found....ME!

And this is Scarftot. (Yes, Easton named him).  He lost him for a long long time and was quite sad.  But earlier this particular morning I had found him in the dryer! Patrick chose him to represent something I had found. :)

And last, but not least, something we gave each other.

Ironically, we both chose the wedding present we had purchased for each each other.  It was kind of a precious moment when we realized that.