Number One: Do a puzzle together.
My husband and I really like to do puzzles together. This is a great activity because it helps you with your partner to be able to work towards a common goal. It facilitates opportunity for conversation as well. Making sure that you’re taking time to ask questions and engage your partner in conversation can be super important, but sometimes you just want to relax because you both maybe have had a long day. Another thing that my husband and I like to do is sometimes when we’re doing our puzzle, we’ll have a TV show, (We like The Andy Griffith Show, but you can watch whatever show you want!) playing in the background. Something that’s  minimal engagement tbat’s just kind of background noise so that we can watch the show if we want to kind of just relax and not really have a nice conversation but we’re still like doing something together and we’re spending quality time together.

Number Two: Enjoy a drink on your patio.
Outdoors in your backyard if you have one, or even in your living room if you don’t have a space of your own outside. The intentionality behind it enjoying a drink together sometimes it doesn’t even have to be a drink – you could eat ice cream together! But the idea behind this date is to be intentional about the time you’re spending together, and the time you’re spending in quality conversation. The big thing with this one is to make sure that your cell phones are put away so put them in another room, your TV is off for you have no other distractions. It’s just you and your spouse, and your drink or your ice cream or whatever else you might want to enjoy together, being intentional either out on your deck or in your living room talking together on a couch, but making sure that you’re intentional about putting away all of the other distractions for the duration of the time you will be spending together.

Number three: Going for a drive together.
My husband and I like to take a lot of drives together. You don’t have to go very far – you can just drive around your town, but it definitely allows for facilitation of more conversation. We found that driving around and spending time that way, allows for quality time allows for good conversation, and it doesn’t cost as much, only costs gas for your car. And it is a super great way to be able to spend time together. Even if you don’t have a destination just being able to drive around, and for 20 minutes or 30 minutes or however long you want to be driving for to talk about it, we’ll talk about your life and talking about things with each other.

Number four: Play games or cards together.
My husband and I really like cribbage, but there are also a variety of other games that you can play, there are other two handed card games out there you can play with just a standard deck of cards. You can also play board games such as chess or Stratego. You can play yatzee, if you want to play something a little bit more mindless. Boggle or Scrabble or good ones if you really like word games. There’s a variety of games out there that you can play together that don’t necessarily require a whole lot of skill you could still talk while you’re doing them. But just spending time together and growing together by playing a game can be fun, engaging and super helpful in being able to build a deeper intimacy with your partner.

Number five: Have a wine and cheese night.
We like to have either wine tasting nights where you taste a wine and cheese. If you don’t like wine, you could do a beer tasting night, or a chocolate tasting night. if you prefer beer, you can try different kinds of beer or chocolate, chocolate is always a fun one too. And while you’re doing that you can watch a movie, and you can be more intentional about it and have conversation when you’re doing it you can play a game while you’re doing it, but it just adds a little bit to your date night because then you can talk about which one is your favorite and try new things as well together.

Number six: Play a video game together.
My husband and I really enjoy video games. There’s a lot of two player games out there that are collaboration games.  This can be a fun, engaging activity together, even if you’re bad at video games. I’m not super great at a lot of video games but we still enjoy the quality time together. You still get to work towards common goals or even compete against each other, depending on the game you’re playing. We like to spend time together doing this. It’s super exciting and super fun to be able to engage in something, especially if neither of you have played the game before. This can be super helpful and super exciting in your marriage as well if that is something that you enjoy.

Number seven: Read a book out loud together.
Pick an easy book to read together. Something like the Chronicles of Narnia can enjoyable to read outload.. If you like more refined literature, you can read  Pride and Prejudice or something of that sort together. It just kind of depends on what your taste. Pick out a book together that you can take turns reading out loud to each other. It can be super fun and a super good way to enjoy time together!

Number eight: Have a pizza night together.
My husband and I love to make pizza together. Pizza can be intimidating especially if you’re making it from scratch. But I have an easy recipe for you that I will leave at the end of this post! It’s really fun to be able to make a pizza together so my husband and I do this a lot. I will make a pizza and then we have our pizza night show that will only watch it while we’re eating it. The show kind of varies from whatever we’re watching at the time so we’ve watched several different shows, but we’ll just make the pizza and then we will enjoy it together while watching our show, and it’s can be a super great way to spend some quality time together.

Number nine that this one we’ve been doing a lot since the beginning of this year is to listen to a podcast together and then discuss it
We’ve been listening a lot to father Mike Schmitz is the Bible into your podcast together. This can be super engaging if you’re not doing this already together, to listen to it together to talk about what struck you. It can be super helpful, and even if it’s not father Mike Schmitz this podcast, you can also do it with any other podcast. So, pick up podcasts listen to it together you can do something else while you’re listening to the podcast.

Number Ten: Have a morning date.
This can consist of that, getting brunch together so preparing brunch and enjoying it together, having doughnuts together in the morning, or just simply getting up early and drinking a cup of coffee together before you start your day. Even if you need a cup of coffee to get going. can be super helpful so drink your cup of coffee that you need and then spend some time together. This helps break up the same routine that you might fall into after awhile!

Pizza Recipe:

Mix 1 package yeast, a teaspoon sugar, 1 cup bread flour, garlic powder and Italian seasoning in a bowl.

Add 3/4 cup water warmed to bath temperature and a tablespoon of oil and mix.

Keep adding flour a little at a time while mixing until the dough is smooth and not super

 

sticky. (About 2 more cups) You can use a kitchen aid with dough hook or use your hands. 🙂

Place dough in bowl and let rise for 30 minutes.

Spread your pizza crust out on your pizza paddle (if you are using a stone) or your baking sheet and poke holes into it all over (Thi

s helps crisp up the crust!)  Place on your toppings and bake as directed below!

If you are using a pizza stone preheat the pizza stone with the oven to 500.  Place the pizza on the stone and bake for 10 minutes.

Without a pizza stone you can use a cookie sheet, and bake at 375 pre baking the crust for 5-10ish minutes before putting on toppings and then another  7ish minutes to cook the toppings