Date Jar.

As one of my shower cutesy things for my buddy who is getting married in 2 weeks! was a date jar.  I decorated up a mason jar with things that were on her invites (re-purpose and she was a fan of the colors already), and then used scrapbook paper for ideas.  When I sent the invites out for the shower, I gave people AT LEAST one piece of paper to write down a date idea on and to bring to on the shower.  Not difficult at all right?  I know sometimes its hard for people to come up with something right off the top of their heads, not all people work like that and I get it.  (Look at the empty(ish) jar and that one had 6 in their already.  Hmmm, so IF people did their 'homework for the shower, I'll still need more.  I brought a BUNCH to work one day (bunch about 50) and had co-workers fill them out.  I got some ideas I would have never thought of and some were kinda far out there to be perfectly honest.  After hassling friends, co-workers, and my family I thought okay this will be plenty, any more and the shower patrons won't have space to put theirs in and they know the couple better than all my people.  Guess how many people brought in OR wrote an idea down?  (I had a cute little station all set-up with the twine to tie around and everything.)  I got 3 people that came up with ideas...  THREE.  One was the bride, one a child, and one was my bff who was 'stressing' out about her homework... Lesigh.  So I had to go back to people at work and say, hey remember I asked you for date ideas?  I'm going to need more please.  I like other people's suggestions and that it wasn't in just my handwriting.  I.E. I asked my pops to write one down so it was in his handwriting, and he fludded it up and wrote exactly what I said without making it make sense on paper.  

  

Long story short of it, I of course realized some things after I had about 227 date ideas in there (yes I counted,) and I will give you heads up... I SHOULD have made a list what they were so I could either do this again for another wedding (I think this is cute and it takes time, but very cheap gift, and I could have given it to the man friend for some kind of gift)  AND I should have color-coded things (yellow free dates, blue summer, brown expensive, peach day time/ etc...)  I started to make a listen of some of the ones I remembered and then after my mom took few to her work and I went to the interwebs to google ones that I may not have had already.

(This post was not done in one sitting and now looking back....) ha The manfriend and I don't live in the same city full time.  If I made him something like this, I'd have to make one for his town/ one for mine and that seems silly.  I'd don't know what to do in this situation, if anybody thinks of something, let me know.  I was thinking put on a HUGE bulletin board paper and put on his wall with all the ideas and can cross off when we do, but I like the SURPRISE aspect of hmm, we don't have shit going on, lets pull a DATE idea.

WELL, I wrote down for my own personal ones (only 173) and I will now tell you my FAVORITES must date dos' that are not related to just my city

• Take a train ride to a town about hour away (we have wine country hour away)
• Day trip to a cave
• Get Thai icecream
• See whatever scary movie is showing in theaters 
• Get take-out and eat by candle-light
• Do a project together (re purpose a thift store item/ plant a garden)
• Go to comedy show
• Tour Brewery/Winery/Whiskey tasting
• Go on a hike further than hour away (the newspaper had their hike and sip section so that was VERY helpful) preferably by a waterfall
• Picnic in park
• Grill a pizza and listen to podcast outside
• Horse track
• Go get pie
• Drive in movie
• Drive your dream car
• Take a trial class together (fitness or something you may be both into)
• Tandem bike ride
• Ride the ferry
• Go to dollar store and spend 3 dollars or less and get the most romantic thing for each other (some of the things people got
• Competitions (at park/ at home/ whatever doing things that both you CAN do and have fun wagers... think back massage or they have to get take-out for next month anytime you order it)
• Steamy bucket lists 
• Get out of town and star gaze
• Puzzle
• Scavenger Hunts (I found a lot a cutesy ideas at Dating Diva's blog, and they had things that you could print out and do if you may be little extra, or you can alter so it fits.  I suggest you go and flip through there because they had a lot of cute ideas.  One of my favorites was the bookstore date.  You each have three tasks and give x amount of time.  ((They had two different prompts here but I would take my favorites))  from find a recipe you want to try together, to find a quiz to do together, favorite childhood book, dream place to travel, funny joke, an interesting fact... and then bring back and talk about it.    They had selfie scavenger hunt where you have to kiss in front of something that starts with the letter a.b.c.d and so one and take a picture.  Scorecards for competition ideas,  And if you were doing a group date/ suggestions.  

I have a plethora of STL ideas/ restaurants/ bars/ but if you have any suggestions that you did on a date, let me KNOW!