Confessions of a Control Freak: Scrabble & Breakfast for Dinner

Every Friday night my husband and I have a date night. At home. And we spend very little money. See, we don't live close to babysitters and we have absolutely no budget for going out. So here's what we do.

We have a jar. It is not fancy. It is full of little strips of paper that have specific ideas for date nights.

Every Wednesday we draw a paper from the jar and that is our date for Friday. Sometimes it requires a little planning (that's why we draw on Wednesday), and other times it's simple as can be. The beauty of it is that you've come up with the ideas so it's totally customized for you. Guess what our very first date night was? Coming up with ideas for our jar! We looked at websites together and picked a few ideas that we both liked, and then - armed with ideas - we each took a few slips of paper and wrote our own surprise dates.

Last Friday's date was Breakfast for Dinner and Scrabble. I hate cooking breakfast. I'm just not a big fan of breakfast food, but Aaron LOVES it. I think the man could eat pancakes and bacon every day for the rest of his life and never get bored. So the beauty of this date is that Aaron cooked dinner. That, my friends, is fantastic. He made bacon, eggs, and orange pancakes, and even this non-breakfast eater admits it was pretty darn tasty.

After dinner it was time to get down to business and play some Scrabble. There's one thing you have to understand about my husband. He is the slowest Scrabble player in the history of mankind. I am not kidding. It will take him 15-20 minutes to play a word. I can leave the table, go clean the house or walk a mile on the treadmill or compose a symphony, and when I come back he'll STILL BE STARING AT HIS LETTERS. I am not a patient person. Therefore, we don't play Scrabble very often. But it was on the paper, so I was stuck with playing Scrabble. Luckily, my husband knows his tendencies and understands that a date night ending in me chewing my arm off while he stared blankly at little wooden tiles is not exactly a success, so we came up with an idea. We started a timer. Each person got 3 minutes to find a word and lay down their tiles. The clock started as soon as the other person's score was written down on the score sheet. If, after 3 minutes, we had not laid down at least one tile to start spelling a word the other person got 1 minute to make a word using their opponent's tiles and they got the points for that word. It made it interesting. It made it nerve wracking. It was fun! And I won. Which was also fun. But I didn't gloat. I really didn't. Well, maybe a teeny tiny bit. But he expected that, so all was well.

Do you do date nights at home? If not and you're interested in starting it up here are some websites to get the creative juices flowing.

Simply Modern Mom (Project 52: Date Nights)

We Are That Family (200+ Date Night Ideas)

The Dating Divas (This entire site is wonderful!)

Have fun!