My husband and I love to travel, but this year he has been doing a residency and hasn’t been able to take any time off. We have missed seeing new places and making memories together. Since we haven’t been able to travel the world, we thought maybe for our date this week we would get to know our own area better. We have lived in this area for almost 5 years now, but there is still a lot we haven’t done or seen. For this date night, we selected a nearby city and spent time discovering more about the city!
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First off, this date took hardly any planning at all! With these already-designed-for-you printables created by the lovely Joanna from Cutify Creative, all we had to do was print and go!
I started our date by giving my spouse this brochure-inspired invitation. The brochure includes a semi-cheesy poem that explains the activity and a card with different tasks to complete on the date.
Once we got to the car we decided on a random nearby city that we were interested in visiting. We had been there before, but only briefly. It is a place we would consider moving to someday, so we decided to go check it out.
Side Note: Even if you have lived in the same place your whole life, I guarantee there are small, little places you have never discovered yet, so pull out a map and see what’s around you!
Then, while we drove to our chosen city, we pulled out these fun conversation starters with questions. I learned more about the town my husband grew up in and we had a long discussion about where we want to live in the future.
Now, for my favorite part! Once we got to the city we had fun discovering the town by attempting to complete as many tasks from this list as possible! This scavenger hunt-type card has a list of several generic locations you are likely to find in a town along with some sort of small task to complete.
One of our tasks was to take a selfie with a statue. It was surprisingly difficult to find a statue in this town, but when we finally did, we had a good laugh that it was a chicken of all things!
My favorite task was gathering brochures from the local motel (a close second was eating at a new restaurant!). We have both lived in this state for most of our lives, but looking at these brochures from a tourist’s eyes we found several activities that we thought would be fun to do. We now have more future date nights!
Our last task of the date was to find an overlook of the town. We drove to the highest point and had an amazing view! This would be a fun time to have a picnic or, ahem, park (when was the last time you did that?).
We didn’t even get to all of the tasks, but that was totally fine! The point of this date was to enjoy our time together and have fun discovering a new place together. Walking hand in hand down a new street, trying a new restaurant and just having fun together was what this date was all about!
This is one of those dates that are completely free and so simple to put together – we will totally be doing this date night again!
We are moving from Wisconsin, where we have been living for almost 8 years, back to Illinois where we both grew up. I was looking through posts on Pinterest & came across this one & thought how fun would that be since we are moving to a new town. It could be our way of exploring our new town, with or without the kids. Love it!
Good luck with your move! I think that this is a brilliant thing to do right after moving! Enjoy!
How do I get these printables? The site is no longer up and I’d love to do this with my husband.
Hello! You are going to love doing this with your husband! To get all of these free printables simply click on the pink bar at the bottom of the post marked: “Click to Download Our…” That should open up the printables in a new tab and you can download from there.
WOW this looks so fun! Great job with the printables and pictures Sarina 🙂
Read. (I love READING).
What a terrific idea! And even in a large city, there are so many out-of-the-way neighborhoods and hidden business districts to explore.
Just printed my map and made this – Thank you so much-Come on weekend 🙂
I’m so excited-I just made my map and rolled it up 🙂 Come on weekend.
you are adorable!! i enjoyed reading about your date.. my husband and I met when were 13 so from the git go our relationship was just childish and fun 24 / 7 now that we are 26 I still want to do fun things but the super duper mushy romantic stereotypical dates we just cannot take very seriously and are not “us”… but THIS is right up our alley.. so much thoughtfulness on your end.. which is how I am, mixed with lot’s of adventure <3 thank you for inspiring me !! our one year wedding anniversary is friday <3
I loved this! The pictures are priceless! This would be perfect for my hubby and me to try, I’d love to explore our area more and we love long drives!
Love it!!! Soooo doing this one. Thanks!
This sounds like so much fun–I love everything about it!
My husband and I had a Friday off and that's exactly what we did! Hit some junkin' stores, a small soda shop that we found out was the largest and oldest one left in the US… the day ended too soon for us! It's a blast isn't it!
So cute I love it Kristen!
You guys are awesome! I just ran into this blog, and I love it! 🙂 I am so not creative, but I'm always wanting to do something fun! Thanks so much for sharing these I'll be using some for sure! Keep it up!
What a GREAT date. girly!! We are TOTALLY gonna do this one….especially since we have NO CLUE what is around here!! I love that you found such a cute "mom & pop" place to eat
Hi-ar-i-ous! I am crying!