Hi Everyone! With COVID and quarantine, Kevin and I (let’s be real, mostly me) have had to get pretty creative with date nights or just remaining entertained. I put together a list of different at home date night ideas that aren’t just popping popcorn and putting on a Rom-Com. We’ve tried some of these on the list and can’t wait to give the other ones a try!
1. Paint and Sip If you’re friends with me on Facebook you saw that Kevin and I did an at home paint and sip a couple weeks ago. We did an in-person paint and sip in 2015 at Pinot’s Palette in Naperville, IL. We were there for my birthday, and had such a great time. Considering we are in the middle of a pandemic, we decided to just give it a try at home. It was pretty painless to set up and do ourselves.I started on YouTube and searched for “Paint and Sip At Home.” This led me to a channel called Michelle the Painter. To get in the Christmas spirit we landed on the most adorable snowman painting, but she has a wide variety of different paintings to choose from.At the start of her videos, Michelle lists out all the tools and paint colors you will need (she also puts it into the description of the video). From there, I made a a note of the different brushes and paints I had at home and went to Michael’s to fill in the gaps. I didn’t get the exact paint colors she listed… but got ones that were close enough to get the job done. From there, it was pretty easy! We got the YouTube video ready on our TV, set up easels at our coffee table (covering it, of course!), poured ourselves a drink, and pressed play! I definitely recommend! We had A LOT of fun with this one. Because we can’t just do things for fun… I posted each finished canvas side by side on Facebook and let my friends vote on which was better. (I won. Just needed to acknowledge that.)
2. Book Club Truth be told I don’t know that Kevin would be into this at home date night idea. It would take a decent amount of preparation, but I think it would be a lot of fun! (Hear that, Kev?) Choose a book that was created into a movie that the both of you agree to read. (For example, Harry Potter, Twilight, The Fault in Our Stars, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close). Set an amount of time to have this accomplished (1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month) and plan a date night shortly after finishing the book. Discuss your favorite parts, your favorite character, least favorite character, or what you would change. I know this sounds like an adult book report (it kind of is), but I just think it requires more effort than the typical dinner and drinks date nights and would be rewarding to do together. After you’ve had your book discussion– watch the movie together! You can compare characters throughout the movie, talk about how you imagined the scene in the book versus how they portrayed them on-screen, or what did they leave out? I know of a few friends who would really enjoy doing this with their significant other. As much as I love being silly and playful with Kevin, I always love when we can have in-depth discussions that don’t necessarily have to do with anything too serious.
3. Wine Tasting Night I won’t go too in depth with this one because I have already dedicated an entire blog post on how to have an at home wine tasting. (Charcuterie board ingredients included!) We had a blast with this one as well and will definitely be doing it again! *If you don’t drink alcohol, a chocolate tasting night would be fun, too!
4. Craft Beer Tasting Night Surprisingly we have yet try this! Both of you make a trip to the store and buy 3 bombers of local craft beers each and try to pick a variety. You can do the same idea as the wine night and score each beer and see which one comes out on top for each of you. This is a fun way to get to know some of your local breweries without having to leave your couch! I definitely recommend having some pretzels with beer cheese near by. 🙂
5. Island “Getaway” This one I thought of based on events that shall not be named (*COVID*) that caused us to cancel our trip to Hawaii in May. On the day we were supposed to leave we threw ourselves a luau. I went to Target and bought some Luau decorations, made some lava flows (here’s a recipe), and played Jimmy Buffet and Bob Marley all day. We even wore swimsuits. HA! It was fun even just envisioning we were on a beach (I’m sure it would have been even more fun to actually be on a beach, but we made some lemonade) together. I feel another luau may be in our future this winter.
6. Try a New Recipe Pick out a dinner dish that the both of you would be excited to eat and cook together! Try venturing out and trying something different than your typical dinner menu. Last year I shared one of mine and Kevin’s favorite meals– salmon with mango salsa— that would be a fun one to try together.
7. Karaoke “Bar” Night Again, YouTube is our friend. Go and search some of your favorite songs with lyrics and sing your heart out! Take turns and maybe turn this into a “bar” night without having to leave the house. For us, that usually includes pitchers of Bud Light and some darts… and maybe a cheap frozen pizza.
8. Themed Movie Night A little more amplified than your typical at home movie date nights. Choose a trilogy to binge, your top three favorite Jennifer Aniston or Jim Carey movies, or each of you pick a scary movie. We had a Halloween movie night and I bought Halloween themed pajamas to wear. Make it fun!
9. Unconventional Game Night During quarantine, we played a lot of conventional two player games like Gin Rummy and Mancala, but we also played some more unconventional TikTok games. We played a roulette shot game where we bought a pint of tequila and a pint of Malibu Rum. Put 2 shots of each plus 2 shots of water onto the table and played flip cup to see who would pick a shot first. I also found another drinking game on TikTok that was a mixture of tic-tac-toe and flip cup. Once you flipped your cup you could place it on a gird that we made on our dining room table with masking tape. (We are classy folks over in the Powers-Keefe household.) First to get three in a row wins. I’ve also been intrigued to try a mystery food game. Each of you makes a trip to the grocery store and buys 10 items of food for the other person to try blind-folded. Then they have to guess what each item is. The person with the most right guessed food items wins. Don’t get me wrong I love my traditional board games, but these kept things interesting.
10. Learn Something New Together Hey, YouTube, our old friend! (Maybe I should have named this article “Ideas YouTube Gave Me For At Home Date Nights” LOL.) Honestly you can learn to do anything from YouTube. I would have loved if we searched for dance lessons before our August wedding. It’s always fun for us to learn something new together… and it usually turns into a competition. I’m sure you’re not surprised. Much like most of our other at home date nights! HA!
I hope you get to try some of these ideas for at home date nights and have just as much fun as us! I know a lot of places have been opening restrictions, but I think a lot of these date nights can transform a “typical” date and make it so you don’t have to change out of your PJ’s if you don’t want to.
As always, let me know if you end up trying any of these ideas or if you have some of your own at home date nights that I need to add to my list!