Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Date 28 - The Almighty Dollar!

Date: 2/25/12
Type: Creative, Casual, Funny, Fun
Cost: $
Planned By: Adam

What can you buy with a dollar? Not too much, but you will be surprised what Adam came up with for our dollar themed date night!! Now people you may think you can't afford a nice date, but you all can afford this! OK, the other person may call you a cheap skate, but it is a very creative and really fun date. You don't need to spend tons of money as long as your with the person you love a dollar is enough. I bet my bottom dollar you and your date will remember this night.

We started out at the Dollar Tree. We each got to buy one fun thing for $1 a piece. We saw lots of silly stuff, but Adam quickly found a 350 piece puzzle of New York City that he wanted. It took me a while, but I decided to get a blowing bubbles set. We checked out and moved on to dinner.


We had to pick a restaurant with a dollar menu. Adam chose Taco Bell. Not exactly a dollar menu, but they have a value menu with a bunch of dollar or less items. We got a bunch of tacos, nachos and a drink. Yumm... we love taco bell!

Next, we had some fun at Giant Eagle. First, we both bought a couple of $1 lottery scratch off cards. Then we have a fun competition in the candy aisle. We each got a bag and whoever was the closest to 1/4 of a pound or $1 worth of candy won a kiss. We were both under, but I was almost at exactly 1/4 of a pound. I won!!

We went to the dollar theater in Willoughby Hills next. We decided to see The Muppets. The dollar theater is actually $2.00 for the night movies, but close enough. We didn't get any popcorn or pop because those prices were normal. While waiting for our movie we scratched off our lottery tickets. I won a dollar! The movie was really cute and funny. We are both fans of the muppets, and also the main human actors Jason Segal and Amy Adams. The music and plot made the movie really great, and we recommend it. Also they just won an Oscar for best original song; Man or Muppet, which I think deserved it. The rest of the audience in our theater was pretty obnoxious. Mostly children who couldn't sit still or shut up, but that's OK because it was cheap and the movie was good.

Our last stop was at McDonalds for a $1 fudge sundae dessert. It was delicious!

This date was a lot of fun. We had a great time being frugal together. The entire date cost less than $20! If you don't have $20 then you could always take a couple things out.. and if you have more than $20 you can add some things in!

Ratings:
Dollar Tree: 10/10 - had tons of stuff to choose from and everything is a dollar!
Taco Bell: 9/10 - they could have cheaper drinks.
Lottery Tickets: 5/10 - fun to play but we only won $1
Candy Competition: 10/10 - super fun and we got to keep the candy! :)
Dollar Theater: 6/10 - snacks should be a dollar, too!
The Muppets: 9/10 - really cute, could have had a little more adult humor.
McDonalds Fudge Sundae: 10/10 - ice cream and fudge... how could that go wrong. :)

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Date 27 - It's A Mystery To Me.

Date: Saturday, February 18, 2012
Type: Group, Out-On-The-Town
Cost: $$$
Planned By: Friends

A couple friends from OU invited us to go out downtown with them. They wanted to go to a murder mystery dinner theater at Pickwick and Frolic. We have been wanting to go to one of these for a while so we jumped at the opportunity. We were also excited to see our friends, Jen & John, since we hadn't seen them in a pretty long time.

We started the date by meeting them at the Clevelander for a pre-show drink. It was nice catching up with them and talking about how excited we were for the show. We all walked in the cold a couple blocks to Pickwick and Frolic. I should have worn pants it was way to cold for a dress.

We all pre-order our tickets so we went to the box office to pick them up. Then went downstairs to the show/dinner area. This place was so much bigger than it looks from outside and really nice. We got seated right in front of the stage. Everyone gets a three course meal with their ticket so the salad was waiting for us when we arrived. It was just a regular house salad, but it already had the dressing on it. Adam doesn't use dressing on his salad, but he dealt with it.

Before the show started some of the characters walked around asking people to sing karaoke. Jen and I volunteered to do a duet and we sang You're The One That I Want from Grease. I would have to say we were amazing. Probably the best performance of the night.

The theme of the murder mystery was psych ward. There was a doctor, nurse and three patients. They were "celebrities" and all had different reasons for being there. One was a sex addict, one had anger problems, and I think one was suicidal. The show was a musical and all of the songs were from Billy Joel. It was a really funny show and the singing was great.

During the first intermission we had the entree. All four of us had a different dinner. I had Chicken Marsala and Adam had the Prime Rib. Both came with mixed vegetables and mashed potatoes. The food was really good. I enjoyed every bite. During the second intermission we got cheesecake for dessert and as a table had to decide who we thought committed the murder. The table with the correct answer and most information won 4 tickets per person to Hilarities Comedy Club. Our table got the correct person, but apparently didn't put enough information. Oh well. I won't give it away just in case if any of you go see the show.

After the show we walked through the Arcade to get to our cars faster. There was a wedding reception going on downstairs. We looked down and saw a big blown up Rufus the OU Bobcat. We were so excited since we all went to OU and made sure to get a picture with it.
It was a really nice night downtown. We got yummy food, great entertainment, and had an overall fun time with our friends!

Clevelander: 7/10 - normal bar, expensive well drinks.
Pickwick and Frolic Dinner: 8/10 - 3 good courses and a wide variety of drinks
Pickwick and Frolic Murder Mystery Show: 10/10 - I definitely recommend going to a show at Pickwick and Frolic for anyone in the Cleveland area. It was pretty expensive but worth the price.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Date 26 - Heart to Heart

Date: Saturday, February 11, 2012
Type: Theme, At-Home
Cost: $
Planned By: Adam

Happy Valentine's Day! This is our first Valentine's day while married, but our fifth Valentine's day together. The past few years we were busy with college, and didn't celebrate too much. This year Adam got to plan a date! He chose to do a heart themed at-home date night.

We started by making home-made heart shaped pizzas. Not just one heart shaped pizza, but a bunch of mini ones. We used a cookie cutter to make the dough in to a heart. They were super easy to make and super tasty.

While waiting for the pizzas to bake we made Cinnamon Heart-Tini's and played a game of Hearts. Hearts is not nearly as fun to play with only two people so we only played once. Adam won. The heart-tini recipe is: 1 shot vodka, 1/2 shot cinnamon schnapps, a splash of grenadine, fill with sprite, garnish with a cinnamon stick.
Next, we made sugar cookies. Of course we made heart shaped cookies. We got the recipe from pinterest. While they were baking we played a fun game with conversation hearts. We had to use what the heart said in a sentence to each other. It was a little silly, but still a cute idea. When the cookies were done baking we had to decorate them before we could eat them. We had white frosting, red frosting, and white sprinkles. Adam's cookie decorating skills are much better than mine. I don't really have much patience for frosting. Finally, we got to eat the cookies! They were a little hard, but still yummy.


For the last part of the date we made a couple more Heart-Tinis and settled on the couch to watch One Day and The Change Up. One Day was not what I had expected. I was actually quite disappointed and depressed at the end. The Change Up was hilarious.

We didn't exchange gifts during the date, but I will tell you about them anyway. Adam got me tickets to a play downtown for when we move there, flowers, starbursts, a box of chocolates and a box of york peppermint patties. I gave him a bunch of random stuff throughout the week. The main things were heart Reeses, a new tie, and new pajama pants. I hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating Valentine's Day like we did!

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Date 25 - What a Super Bowl!

Date: Sunday, 2/6/2012
Type: Sports, Competitive
Cost: $ 
Planned By: Dani

If you live under a rock then I'm here to tell you last Sunday was the Super Bowl. I decided to plan a super Super Bowl date. Because it was a Sunday we didn't want to go downtown or have a party since we had to work the next day so we had our own little super bowl party. I chose a pretty standard football meal and found some fun football games to play. Just so everyone knows we are Browns fans, so we didn't care too much about who won.
We had our very own kiss cam, too.
I printed up a sheet for each of us to fill in during the night. The sheet consisted of the guessing game questions about the game, a spot to write down our top 5 favorite commercials, and a place to write who won the two pre-game games we were going to play.Whoever finished the night with the most points wins breakfast in bed made by the other person.
We started by playing peg football. This is a silly game I found for $1 at Target. You roll the dice and the game board says what the amount means. For example, if I rolled a three that means Adam's team intercepted it, seven was a 20 yard run, and twelve or two was a touchdown! There was a rule for every combination. We played until someone made 10 touchdowns, and yours truly won! 1 point for me!
Next, we played paper football. We are sure if we played this totally right, but it was fun regardless. We made a paper football and used our coffee table as the field. You slide the football across the table and if it lands with a piece of the football hanging off the table its considered a touch down. If you get a touchdown you can try for an extra point by flicking it over the other person's "field goal", as in their hands shaped like a field goal. The game started out slow because we couldn't' get the hang of it. After awhile we started scoring touchdowns. Adam got the one and only successful extra point of the night, but I won! Another point for me! 2-0!!

After our pre-game games were over we had to start making all the food. Our menu contained baked boneless chicken wings, Chili's chili con queso dip, pepperoni crescent rolls, football oreo-like cookies, and drunk gummy bears. To make this part of the date we made everything together. Everything was really easy to make and we had a great time cooking together. We finished preparing the food at 5:55pm just in time for the pre-game show. We put all the food on the coffee table, filled in our guesses about the game and settled on the couch for the rest of the night to eat and watch.

I bet you are all wondering who won breakfast in bed. I'm sure the anxiety is killing you. Well, I was really hoping to win this prize. Adam was also hoping to win this prize after he read the top of the paper half way through the game. OK fine I will tell you. We tied 8 to 8. Somehow we actually tied. Isn't that horrible. Ugh. I guess we'll just have to make breakfast together and eat it in bed together sometime. Annoying. I should have planned a tie breaker, but I didn't. So it is what it is. The other part of our sheet was about commercials. We were supposed to write down our 5 favorites, but the commercials weren't very good this year. We agreed that the Bud Light We Go dog was the best commercial of the night.

I wasn't sure how much fun I would have on this date night. I'm not really a big football fan (I prefer baseball)... especially when my team isn't playing. Not that I normally stay tuned to a full Browns game, but because I was competing for breakfast in bed I made sure to pay attention, and ultimately had a lot of fun on this date! We had a great time, and now you all know how to have a wonderful super bowl date! :)

By the way... the Giants won.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Date 24: Work Hard, Play Hard.

Date: Saturday, 1/28/12
Type: Formal Gathering
Cost: $
Planned By: Adam
Adam invited me to go to his work's annual IT Event this past weekend. It is a semi-formal gathering held at the beginning of each year. The event consisted of a gourmet buffet, casino games, dancing, and a big raffle at the end.
The event didn't start until 7PM so when we got there we went straight to the buffet line for dinner. We had roast beef, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables. They also had a Chinese buffet so I made sure to get a fortune cookie! Even though the company booked the entire floor of a hotel for this event we had a very difficult time finding somewhere to sit to eat.
 
After we ate we got our $100 casino chip and looked around for a good casino game to play. We chose The Wheel! You pick a number 1-9 and if the wheel lands on your number you win. The lady in charge of the wheel was hilarious. Because it wasn't real money being gambled she liked giving away some chips, and rigging the wheel to help us all win. Even without her help I was doing pretty well! For every $50 in casino chips we had at the end of the night we could put one ticket in the raffle. Adam and I ended up with over $6,000 combined so we got a lot of tickets. The bad thing though was that we had to write our name and phone number on all of them. It took us awhile, but we finished it in time.
After we got all our tickets in we went to the dessert buffet and got some delicious brownies. We went to the ballroom to wait for the raffle drawing. We danced a little while we waited, but we didn't want to embarrass ourselves in front of Adam's coworkers so we kept it to a minimum. First, they did the raffle for a ton of gift cards. We didn't win any. Then they put up a list of people who one the big prizes (TVs, Xbox, Vegas Vacation, etc). We didn't win any of those either. :( We were a little bummed out, but we had a lot of fun so we didn't let it get to us. We decided to run for the coat check and head on out after the raffles were done to beat the other 500 people to the parking garage.
Overall, it was a very nice night out. We got to dress up and go downtown together, I got to meet some people that Adam works with and It was great socializing with people and not having to spend very much money.