Date at Home

As long as you are intentional about it, then you can get all the same benefits associated with dating without ever leaving your home. Listed below are at home date ideas with a short description, follow the link to the blog post for more detail. Further down you'll find ideas that might sound fun! Be intentional, and have fun!

At home dates On the Blog:

Love Letters: Spend the evening sharing your feelings for each other in written form. 

Cupcake Wars: Decorate themed cupcakes after your kids are in bed!

Budgeting Made Simple: Improve budgeting skills with your spouse with help from an online class.

Dress Up and Dine In: Put a little extra effort forth to mix up a regular meal together. 

A Night of Questions and Answers: Answer a series of questions designed by your spouse to see what you know and what you still can learn about your spouse!

Project DIY: Pick a project around your house and do it together. 

Game Night Competition: Hold a little tournament with a couple games and your spouse.

“Chopped” Dinner Competition: Loosely based on the show “Chopped” you’ll compete with your spouse to make the best meal using only the available ingredients. 

The Joy of Dating: Plan ahead to purchase materials and instructional dvd’s and then learn how to paint with your spouse from your own living room.

Chocolate Taste Testing: Ahead of time purchase several kinds of Chocolate and spend the evening tasting and rating them. 

Takeout and Paint: Exactly as it sounds, get takeout, and try out painting together. 

A Skill You Won’t Regret Learning: Watch a tutorial, and then practice massaging each other. 

Enjoy the Stars: Watch the stars, or enjoy a meteor shower. (This post includes a link to find current meteor events).

Below are some other stay at home date ideas.  Feel free to add additional ideas in the comments section!

Go on an appreciation dinner date. Before you take each bite of food or each sip from your drink, tell your spouse something you appreciate about him or her or something you appreciate that he or she has done recently or in the past. Go on a virtual tour of museums online. Click on the name of each museum to start your tour Louvre, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, National Gallery of Art Make decorations for upcoming holidays. Make your favorite desserts. Chose a music CD and pretend you are going to a concert. You can buy An Evening with John Denver from Amazon.com by clicking here Adding a romantic twist to the board game Twister can be a lot of fun to play in the privacy of your own home. Make a music video. Recreate scenes from your favorite movies. Read a thought provoking book like Tuesday's with Morrie together. You can buy it from Amazon.com by clicking here Draw portraits of each other with crayons. Make a video documentary of your home. Sign up for a free long distance learning class together at the Barnes and Noble online university. Pick a room in your house and describe your favorite memories that have occurred in that room. Teach your spouse about your favorite hobby. Work on a scrapbook project together. Play board games and throw in creative rules to spice them up and make them romantic. Do some family history research together. A good place to start is Ancestry.com Play video or computer games together. Finger-paint a masterpiece on your spouses stomach with pudding and whip cream. Make a video documentary about your spouse. Write a children's story together and illustrate it. Plant an indoor herb garden. Play board games together. Settlers of Qatan is a fun strategy board game you can buy from Amazon.com by clicking here. Watch old home videos. Come up with romantic variations of your favorite card games. Write thank you letters to the parents of your spouse. Play indoor tag. When you catch each other think of something fun you can do like kiss for 30 seconds, etc. Play miniature golf with common household items. Decorate your home for an upcoming holiday. Read scriptures together. Make a fort together and think of creative romantic things you can do in the fort when you are finished. Watch a concert on video or DVD. You can buy James Taylor Live at the Beacon Theater from Amazon.com by clicking here Order a meal from your favorite restaurant to be delivered and have a candlelight dinner somewhere in your house where you wouldn't normally eat. Refinish a piece of furniture together. You can buy a book from Amazon.com that will teach you how by clicking here If you are pregnant read each week from a book about your baby's growth. You can buy The Mayo Clinic Complete Book of Pregnancy & Baby's First Year from Amazon.com by clicking here. Make cookies for your neighbors. Run through the sprinklers. Create a new kind of cookie. Have a shower or bathtub date together. Pretend you are a fashion photographer and do a photo shoot of your spouse. Create a different ending to a tv show or movie that you just watched. Brush your wife's hair and learn how to do different braids in her hair. Choose one room in your house and do a clean sweep by organizing it. Visit the Clean Sweep TV website for some helpful hints by clicking here Interview your spouse and write a biography about him or her. Play hide and go seek. Think of romantic rewards that you can give to your spouse when he or she finds you. Buy a ceramic item at a crafts store and paint it together at home. Do a service project for your neighbor. Go on a massage date. Take photos of common objects in your house and make a collage. Redecorate a room together. Create a family website together. Create a virtual garage sale by choosing items in your home you no longer need and putting them on eBay. Watch a sunset together. Go on a scavenger hunt in your own home. Make hot chocolate and watch the rain or snow together. Call friends and relatives and interview them together about their lives. Have a romantic pillow fight. Play a game of indoor basketball horse but use a small ball instead of the regular size one. Come up with creative and romantic things you can do each time you miss a shot and get a letter. Create a collage of pictures of the two of you. Find an online service project you can do together. Make a blanket or quilt together. Write a letter to the editor together. Make a big ice-cream sundae and eat it together. Feed each other a meal. Create a water slip and slide with a long piece of plastic. Give each other foot massages. Make an evacuation plan, practice it and put together a 72 hour kit. Visit the Red Cross website for more details. Paint each others toe nails. Research where your ancestors came from and make a common meal from that country. Play a game from that country. Write thank you notes to your kids. Make a romantic post it note treasure hunt. Earthquake proof your house. The Institute for Business & Home Safety has prepared a list on how to earthquake proof your home. Click here to visit their webpage. Brainstorm creative dates you could go on with out leaving your bed. Create original milk shake or smoothie flavors. Make a lot of paper airplanes and have a paper airplane war. Divide a room in two and see who can fly the most airplanes onto the other person's side in a 1 minute time period. Think of a romantic reward for whoever wins. Have a water fight. Spend some time together brainstorming a simpler way for the government to collect taxes. A good place to start for some ideas is the fair tax website. Play TV bingo or guess the commercial game. Draw a bingo board and write the names of various products on it. The first one to get bingo wins. The commercial game is played by seeing who can guess first the name of the product being advertised. Pretend you had Bill Gates problem of having Billions of dollars you needed to give away. Do some research on the Internet to decide which organizations you would give the money to. Write down a list of family history questions and send them to your oldest living relatives. Plan your dream vacation together. Create a daily exercise plan and do it together. Go on a dinner cooking date by cooking dinners for the next week and then freezing them. Work on a scrapbook of dating memories together. Buy potted flower pots and deliver them to older neighbors. Decide on a political issue to write your elected representatives about and do it. Bake your favorite cookies and give them to your neighbors. Go to the White House website and rewrite the budget together. Go on a meditation date. Put on some relaxing music and slip into a deep meditative state. Wash your car together. Plan a weekend getaway together. Then plan your dream weekend getaway. Have a water balloon fight. Buy Molding clay and create funny works of art.  Buy a “fix me up” piece of furniture and learn how to antique it at home.  Tie a quilt for charity Find and whittle a walking stick for hiking. (Learn how to make a walking stick here ) Create an alphabet book together and give it a creative theme like the sporting alphabet, the sci-fi alphabet or the star-wars alphabet. Print and bind it for your kids or future kids.  Play word games like Scrabble or Boggle. Do crossword puzzles together. Create a jigsaw puzzle about yourselves—one person gets the across questions, the other gets the down questions.  Try indoor, homemade bowling with plastic bottles and a ball. You can find out more here Design your dream home together. You can design it online here Make different foods and feed them to each other blindfolded. Try to guess what they are.  Watch a cooking show on TV and try to make the meal together.  Play Jenga with a twist. Write a question or some type of action on each Jenga piece. The person who pulls the piece has to answer the question or do the action.  Buy copies of scriptures, write your feelings in them and give it to each other.  Make a list of your favorite books or ones you’d like to read. Compare notes and see how similar your taste is.  Find a website that has a list of classic books then pick one you both are interested in. Read it and talk about it when you’re finished.  Find a book of easy science projects and do one together.  Look at things through a microscope. Lay under the stars and talk about what’s out there.  Look at the stars through a telescope.  Go indoor camping. Put up a tent or just a blanket over chairs in your living room. Make it the full camping experience by only using candles or flashlights, make Smore's (Here's how to make Smore's indoors), tell or read each other stories, and turn off your electronics.  Play twister….naked.  Learn a new card game by researching online and then play it.  Play the alphabet story game. One of you picks a letter of the alphabet. The other one thinks of a word that begins with that letter. Then the first person (who picked the letter) has to tell a story of something that’s happened to them related to that word.   Buy a chocolate fondue and experiment dipping various foods.  Create a Shutterfly book or calendar together of the previous year. Include pictures of major events, fun things you did together, and favorite moments. http://www.shutterfly.com/  Get comfortable in your favorite PJ’s and sit in front of the warm fireplace with hot chocolate or spiced apple cider and read each other short stories. Buy a box of mixed chocolates. Feed each other chocolates blindfolded and try to guess their flavors. Determine which ones are your favorite/ least favorite.  Write down three characteristics you love about your spouse and why. Share them with each other. Do a yoga DVD together and practice meditation.  Try to juggle. Have a competition to see who can juggle the longest.  Look through old photo albums of your family and remind each other of the stories behind the pictures.  Sing “Off Key Karaoke.” Find a favorite song, put headphones in and sing along. (You won’t be able to hear yourself). Film each other with a Smart Phone or Camera and watch it. Laugh at the results. Practice your sharpie art together and spice up your kitchenware. Decorate plates, mugs, bowls, pitchers and other dishes with a Sharpie. After baking in the oven, it becomes permanent. Learn how to do it here. Create a memory box where you can put items that remind you of special moments in your relationship. (Items might include love notes, birthday cards, tickets to favorite concerts or movies, and pictures.) Plan a vacation online. Research a hotel, flights, activities to do while there, restaurants to eat at, and places to visit. It can be a real or pretend vacation.  Remember your first date, wedding day or honeymoon. Share your version of the event. Think only of the positive moments and not the negative. Include the first thing that attracted you to your spouse.  Create your own Pictionary game by taking turns drawing pictures of memories in your relationship history such as your first date, first kiss, the proposal/ engagement, a fun vacation, etc. Remember that the person drawing can’t speak or give hints- only draw. Make it more exciting by give the person guessing only a minute or two to figure it out.  Write acronyms of each other’s names by listing a positive quality your spouse has for each other letters in their name- first, middle, and last. Enjoy a favorite dessert while you share your acronyms with each other.  Have a game night. Stay up late playing tons of board games, card games, video games, computer games, etc. Watch the sunset together on a blanket in the yard. Wake up before the sun and make breakfast in bed for your spouse. Eat together.  Time capsule date- Both of you walk around the house and grab 10 items that remind you of something in your relationship history. Get together and tell stories about these items and the memories you have.  Create a romantic escape in your own bedroom. Buy whatever you need to make it look like a private suite!  Take a bubble bath together and talk about what you want to do when you retire.  Watch funny videos on Youtube. Start with this one: Weird Things All Couples Do. Watch the rest of the "Weird Things Couples..." video series. Write words on pieces of paper and take turns drawing one from a hat. Say the first thing that comes to mind when you read the word.  Do a puzzle together.  Take the dog on a walk or to a dog park. Or ask to dog sit for a friend. Play Frisbee golf in your yard with baskets or boxes as the holes.  Get sushi take out and watch Kung Fu Panda or South Pacific   Paint together on canvas. Half way through, finish each other’s work. Or paint on one canvas at the same time.  Buy various kinds of specialty cheeses and crackers. Pretend you are taste testers and rate each kind on a scale from 1-5. (1= Favorite and 5= Least Favorite.) Compare your results. Don’t forget the wine or sparkling cider to wash the taste out in between each type of cheese.   Write a bucket list together of things you want to do together before you die.  Buy a canvas and painting supplies. Make a work of art together. If you  need help, watch some YouTube tutorials or just practice abstract painting.  Play in the rain.  Write your own love song.  Play the good ‘ole game of truth or dare. Use this website if you’re having a hard time thinking of your own questions and challenges.  Learn how to knit or crochet together as you watch online tutorials. Have a marathon movie night watching a movie series like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, etc.  Play in the snow. Build a snowman or igloo. Make snow angels. Grab a sled (or trashcan topper) and find a hill Have a snowball fight. Catch snowflakes on your tongue. When you get back inside, make paper snowflakes to decorate your house with. Look up tutorials online if you want to make them really detailed.   Write and send letters or care packages to soldiers overseas. Go here or here to find a soldier who needs you.