Five Home Date Nights to Keep the Romance Alive

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Home date nights are by far my favorite way to spend some one on one time with my husband.

There are many reasons to stay home for your date night but in my opinion, the biggest advantage to date nights in is not having to find a reliable babysitter. These days, a reliable babysitter is harder to find than a minute to go to the bathroom alone. Another major advantage to date nights in is that you can date your significant other any night of the week. Finally, when we have a date at home, we save some time driving and can be in bed early enough to have a reasonable night’s sleep.

For the perfect date night in, there should be some ground rules before the night starts.

First, put the kids to bed. My kids go to bed at 8:00 pm, however, on date nights I will put my children to bed a little earlier. Second, put the phones away. Date nights are about connecting with your partner, and that can’t happen when phones are distracting you. Third, and this is just my preference, I like to get a little dolled up for our night and sometimes I will slip into a pair of cute pajamas or swipe a little mascara on to turn the feeling of the night from just a night at home to a date night in.

Now that you have set the mood, here are five of my favorite date night in activities.

#1 – Cook together

If we are having a date night in, we will often have a snack while the kids eat dinner. After we put the kids to bed, we will turn on some music and cook a meal together. My favorite dinner to cook is nearly anything from the meal delivery service, Blue Apron. I find their meals to be easy enough to make and restaurant quality. Open up a bottle of wine, and relax with a hot and interruption free meal.

dinner, love, plate, candles
A romantic dinner place setting perfect for a home date night

#2 – Relive your childhood

For Christmas this year, we bought our kids a Nintendo classic game system. This system comes with thirty preloaded classic Nintendo games including Mario Brothers and PAC – MAN. For date night in, we will borrow the kids’ Christmas gifts and play some old school video games together. It is so surprising to me how much I remember from playing these games during my childhood- from where that hidden extra life is to whose mom provided the best afternoon snacks.

#3 – Go on a pretend trip

One of our favorite things to do as a couple is travel, however, due to life, we aren’t taking as many kid-free trips these days. For right now, we travel vicariously through my favorite travel authority, Rick Steves. All of Rick Steves TV shows are on both Netflix and Hulu. We pop a bag of popcorn, snuggle in on the couch and learn a little more about a different country. Oftentimes after we watch the show, we will place the country we just learned about on our travel bucket list. We also like to start our pretend trip plans which include learning more about the currency, activities, and discovering must-have foods for the region.

#4 – Take a walk down memory lane

Grab some snacks, snuggle in together and pull out all of those old family videos and photo albums. Go through them all from the first pictures from when you started dating, to the big wedding day, births of your babies and everything in between. I love looking back at our past as a couple to see how far we had come and our growth as a family.

Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash

#5 – Take a quiz

After thirteen years of marriage, it seems like I know my husband inside and out which makes it all the more exciting when I find out something new. Online quizzes such as personality profiles are any easy way to find out more about your partner. After taking the tests, have fun discussing the results and if you agree or disagree with them. After you find out more about your partner’s personality profile, you can use it to improve your communication and work effectively as a couple.

Hopefully, this list of home date night ideas will get you and your partner out of the rut of just binge watching Netflix together, though don’t get me wrong that does have it’s polace. And I am always looking for more home date night ideas, so let me know in the comments below how do you keep the romance alive with your partner during a season of life when hiring a babysitter isn’t always possible?

 

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