The Date Night Passport: A Bucket List for You & Your Sweetheart

The last date night I had with my husband was the day after Thanksgiving. He won tickets to Muriel Anderson’s annual hometown concert. So the two of us went.

It was an evening of fantastic harp guitar music with accompaniment by artists Paul Wertico (from the Pat Metheny Group) and Jeff Coffin of Dave Matthews Band. During intermission we munched on homemade cookies and drank hot apple cider. And we chatted, just the two of us, without interruption from kids.

Here it is, less than a week until Valentine’s and we haven’t been out together since. Our kids are old enough (11, 13 and 15) that we don’t have the excuse of finding a babysitter to blame our dating lameness on. Just inertia and lack of ideas.

Before last fall we most often met for lunch dates during the week. With my husband working on the other side of our city it was easy enough to catch an hour together. But then one of our daughters became ill at Halloween and has been home at lunchtime ever since. That and doctor’s appointments and the holiday season made it tricky to manage a lunch date.

But we’re well past the holidays now. We’re due for a date. And as my eldest points out, we deserve a night out together now and then too – not just lunch dates.

So we inked it on the calendar. Tuesday for lunch – our Valentine’s date. We’re not much for crowds, so we have rarely gone out on February 14th. The 10th is close enough. But we also have a new source for inspiration: a Date Night Passport.

I had seen this idea on Pinterest – a booklet of date night ideas that you mark off as you complete them. And it immediately resonated with me. We could create our own date night bucket list. In fact, I had already been lamenting the fact that we live in a small city known for its top-rate restaurants, but we’ve never taken advantage of this. I knew we needed to get intentional about trying new date spots (besides which, our favorite gyros shop closed down).

So I created our very own passport. It has the names of 46 restaurants in our city that I want to be sure we try out. I included addresses, phone numbers, and price ranges for all of them to make it that much easier for us to decide (and make reservations if we need to). Italian, BBQ, steakhouse, French, Japanese, Irish pub, even pizza await us.

Tomorrow we’ll try Cajun at Heaven on Seven. I can’t wait.

If you’d like to create your own “Passport to a Great Date Night,” you can download the printable booklet here. It contains categories for 46 different date nights (mostly restaurant-themed, but you can interpret the prompts as you wish. Italian could mean going to a bocce court instead of pasta). Pair it with a gift card for your first destination and you’re all set for Valentine’s Day!

Do you live in the Western Suburbs of Chicago and want to use the same local version I created for my husband and I? Email me (lkrupicka[at]word-crafter[dot]com) and I’ll send you the PDF.