Choose Your Own Adventure Valentine Date

A few months ago I saw someone post a shot of a Choose Your Own Date that their significant other had made for them. I had never heard of or thought of the idea, but thought it was so cool!

Remember these books?

This was the inspiration for it. I started doing some research...if Pinterest counts as research and only found one blog post that linked to a few others that spun off of this one original. Most of them were group dates where the ladies planned it for the men with the effort to do really silly things at each stop for laughing and fun embarrassment purposes. But, I wanted a date night for just me and Stephen. 

I wanted it to be all for Stephen so I made lists of some of his favorite things to do and places to go with inspiration from my "research". My favorite things would begin to creep in and I'd have to switch gears to ensure I was including his favorites and not my favorites that he happens to enjoy also.

So, I started planning it in four parts...

Pre-dinner

•     Appetizers
•     At home competition...play HORSE on our basketball court
•     Walk around the mall until we're hungry
•     Go out for some fun competition...Play games at the arcade

Dinner

•     Chinese
•     Mexican
•     Burgers
•     Chicken & Waffles
•     Pizza

Post dinner

•     Surprise for both of us...go to Target, split up, buy each other a gift for $10 or less, meet back at the front in 20 minutes
•     Relax...go to Wal-Mart, buy a movie from the $5 bin, go home, snuggle on the couch and watch the movie
•     Fun competition...go to Frankie's and ride go-karts 

Dessert

•     Candy Apples from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory
•     Wendy's Frosty
•     McDonald's Hot Fudge Sundae
•     Ben & Jerry's Core Sensation

(Stephen LOVES ice cream so it was only appropriate to include a lot of ice cream options)

Once I had my list, I started designing the book...

After a long, crappy day at school, I took my flash drive to Staples and spent an hour or more getting the book printed and bound. I cut all the pages down to the size I wanted, only messed up a few, and then had the lady put a spiral bind on it. It's amazing how relaxing and calming doing something tedious like using a paper cutter over and over again to make something creative is.

I was SO excited! I told Stephen I had an awesome date idea and that I was taking care of Valentine's Day this year. I kept bragging about this awesome surprise idea that he wouldn't be able to guess. In my mind, I said this because this isn't a typical date idea and I was proud of the unique idea. He took me saying that as a challenge that he couldn't figure it out. 

We won't talk about how he snooped in my email (the few hours I left it in my email so I could print it at Staples just in case the flash drive didn't work) and found it... 

Nevertheless, we had a great night and have a book that has the potential of 480 different date combinations! Planning out some of Stephen's favorite things to do was a lot of fun. The evening was fun too because even though I knew what the options were, the choosing was all up to him!

 Making his first pick of the evening...

 Arcade games it was!

Making his second pick of the evening...

 Mexican! 

 After dinner, he picked the "surprise for each of us" choice and we headed to Target. We split up, each bought each other a gift, and met back at the front to exchange gifts. I got him Valentine's Day boxers (a long standing tradition) and he got me the newest Taylor Swift CD.

 We ended the evening with hot fudge sundaes from McDonalds!

Happy Valentine's Day!!