family

Me too! I’ve got a project that I’m working on, and I need to compile a list of cheap, free, fun, romantic or not date ideas. I’m mostly looking for ideas for couples, but if you have a great idea for a family “date” I’ll take that too. They don’t have to be in Little Rock, I’m open to ideas from all over the state! Send me your thoughts and I’ll post them for us all to share.

Here’s a list to get you started, courtesy of How Does She? :

1.Go out for pizza
2.Try live entertainment, such as a band at a local bar or restaurant, instead of a movie.
3.Pick a TV show, get a season’s worth on DVD and make a running date to watch it together every night. (we did this with The Office and Lost)
4.Head out to the dollar theater and splurge on snacks.
5.Try brunch and a matinee; fancy restaurants are way more affordable in the a.m.
6.Pick up a bucket of fried chicken and head for the drive-in.
7.Dress up your backyard picnic table with a white tablecloth. Add candles, fancy cheese, chocolate and voila: five-star fun!
8. Too cold or wet for an outdoor picnic? Spread a blanket on the floor and have a carpet picnic. (we do this when we eat pizza with the kids!)
9. Bring home your favorite fast food, but serve it on your best china.
10. Museums usually have one free night a week or month, so hit one then.
11. Find a happy hour half off appetizers and order a few for your dinner!
12. Take a sketchpad to a scenic bluff and draw your own version of the vista.
13. Grab a basketball and hit the free courts at the park.
14. Sample international food at a street fair.
15. Hit the local video arcade.
16. Go to the library and page through the coffee-table art books, or any books!
17. Suit up and spend a late afternoon at the indoor pool of the Y.
18. Head to the highest point in town. Spend an early evening watching the twinkling lights turn on.
19 Drive out to a country field, lie down and snuggle under the stars.
20. Make yourselves the biggest, craziest ice cream sundae ever.
21. Take a tour of the house you’d (someday) love to own.
22.Paint coffee mugs at a paint-your-own-pottery place.
23. Sign up for a one-night class at your local college.
24. Hit a farmers’ market and scavenge for your dinner.
25. Take a tour of garage sales in the ritziest neighborhoods.
26.  Head to an ice skating rink and strap on skates for some icy fun.
27. Book a double massage at a spa.
28. Take a balloon or helicopter ride over your town.
29. Rent a fancy car. Tool around as if you actually own it.
30. Find a nearby bed-and-breakfast. Spend the night someplace where someone else makes the bed and cooks breakfast.

The celebration of Valentine’s Day was a blur in our house. The snow totally threw my plans of baking and crafting out of wack. Thank God we started working on  for Nate’s class valentines a few weeks before their party on the 12th, because I somehow became a useless blob with the blizzard and got hardly anything done.

Check out that look...concentration or ticked off?

In January, I showed Nate the lollipop butterfly valentines I mentioned in a post that month and we decided to make them for his friends. I knew we would need some time to make them so we took one or two nights a week and worked on it together…cutting out the butterflies, sticking on the foam hearts and sliding the lollipops in the middle.

The finished project!

Nate probably cut out three of them. He mostly stuck to the sticker-application and lollipop-insertion part. And I know, I know…I should have gotten him to help write names on them. But I remembered Thursday night  that we had not written their names yet, so it was done in a rush. Next year, there’s always next year. He had enough cards for his classmates with tons extra that I told him to give to anyone else at the center that he loved. Needless to say, there were none left.

I couldn’t be there for his class party, but his teacher took several pictures for me.

The girls working away on their Valentine card boxes....

....and the boys hard at work on theirs.

THAT was why he didn't eat dinner Friday night. JEEZ!!

One of the class projects on the wall outside their class.

A very appropriate use for the DG, no? LOVE MS. JANNIS!

My heartbreaker.

Nate and I left early Saturday for a weekend trip Missouri to visit my brother and his family, leaving A to install hardwood floors over the weekend. It was sad not to spend the weekend together as a family, but the boys were so happy to see each other that it was worth it.

Valentine’s Day morning, the boys had surprises on their plates at breakfast.

Nate's Valentine breakfast plate.

My brother made the boys heart shaped pancakes for breakfast, and my SIL whipped up these little fruit kabobs-

Banana, apple and raisin kabobs

She took an apple and sliced it longways, then used a heart shaped cookie cutter and cut out the hearts and skewered it with a slice of banana and a raisin. They were so stinkin’ cute! You guys think I’m crafty…she takes the cake!

We left that Monday morning after some sledding-

"AAAHHHHH!!!"

Joy!

Aaron and I decided we’d celebrate Valentine’s Day as a family over dinner that night. We did not get him much for Valentine’s (a consious effort to not emphasis the gifts, but the LOVE) and I wanted to make the evening more fun. I turned to the post I did about the Valentine’s Day scavenger hunt and, while I was in MO, I made some hearts from construction paper and markers with clues guiding him to spots through the house. I hid them as soon as we got home, which took me a while….I kept getting them out of order and would have the last clue as the third. After 5 tries I finally got it right.

After dinner, we sat on the floor and opened cards from our family and each other. Nate had made Aaron a foam heart craft at the Wonder Placea  few weekends prior, and A and I exchanged cards. He got me a cala lily plant and Nate gave me flower seeds to plant in the garden at the new house. Then we surprised Nate with the first clue for the hunt. It took him a sec to figure out what was going on, but he got it soon enough.

He was SO EXCITED!

I'd read him the clues....

...and he'd take off running for the next clue.

There were 5 or 6 different clues hidden all over the house.

The last clue took him to his box of Star Wars toys.

His haul...I made his heart at Wonder Place, too.

The scavenger hunt was a HUGE success, definately earning a spot in the yearly holiday rotation. It would be great for Easter and Christmas, too. I also found some Valentine’s Day kitchen towels that I plan to turn into a “Why I Love You” pillow for Nate, and maybe one for A too.

A scavenger hunt is a fun idea to do for your kids on Valentine’s Day morning, before breakfast or giving them their basket o’ goodies. Thanks to Blue Eyed Blessings for the how-to’s!

Photo from How Does She?

I recently discovered How Does She?, a mama blog authored by three creative and funny moms, helping to unite us all in our universal search to figure out how to get it “all” done. 

Along with wonderful crafty tutorials, recipes and parenting advice, I stumbled across this particular post on dating your husband, with ways to keep that spark sparklin’.

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Wonder what was on my mind?

Months ago, when I knew I was going to be blogging some sort of crafty bit for LRM, I was listening to NPR when this little bit about children’s book author Mo Willems’  (Don’t Let Pigeon Drive the Bus!, Knuffle Bunny) crusade to get adults to draw came on the air. Here’s part of the piece-

One of the biggest reasons children stop drawing is that they see that adults don’t do it, Willems says. When he goes into classrooms, he says, teachers often ask him to get the kids to draw. But when he does, many of the teachers don’t participate. “Well, now the kids realize that this is just a baby activity,” he says.

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