t.
25 Creative Dates You Need to Know
Tired of dinner then the movie? Movie then the make-out? Lifeteen.com Intern Andrea Prisby cooks up 25 creative dates for adventurous spirits and the romantically inclined. (Plus, they won't drain your funds.)
- Deserted Island Picnic
Pack a picnic lunch or dinner in a basket, complete with blanket to sit on. Find an “island” in the center of the road and enjoy your picnic as cars pass by. Or, you could order pizza from your deserted island and have it delivered to you. It would be wise to look for just the right “island”. Look for islands that are very wide (at least 10 feet across); grass and trees would be nice.- Hike with pets/National Park:
Take your date on your favorite hiking trail for the afternoon. Make sure it isn’t too strenuous that you have to carry him/her back to the car. Maybe even bring your pets along to make it a little more interesting! If you live near a National Park, spend the day exploring the outdoors.If you get bored easily, play hide and seek with walkie-talkies around the zoo.- Go shopping at a thrift store and play dress up, don’t forget your camera!
Thrift stores are always interesting places to shop because of the variety of clothes and gadgets. Grab your date and travel back in time with the 60s and 70s gear. Have a contest of who can find the wackiest outfit.- Stargazing in the country or the desert. Or during the day, go cloud watching.
Take a drive into the country or the desert and spend the evening laying on the hood of your car staring at the constellations. Maybe even bring a star chart to help you out a bit, in case you get stuck. If you can’t make it out during the evening hours, try taking some time during the day to stop by a nearby park or any open field to check out the clouds and their formations. Who knows, maybe you will even find your favorite animal in one of them! It’s interesting the different conversations that may arise. Realize how amazing God is and his creativity!- Theme date: Disco Bowling- dress up in 70s clothes wi
th things around the house and bowl!
It’s nice to spice things up once and a while. So why don’t you try a themed date where you and your date dress up before hand in the craziest outfit you can manage, even scrounge through your parent’s closets to find old clothes. After you find a creative outfit, head to the nearest bowling alley for Rock N’ Bowl or Disco Bowling and enjoy the night. Maybe afterwards grab a quick bite to eat or chill at a coffee house.- Go to a park playground and play on the swings: feed ducks
Get outside and exercise. Take a walk to the nearest park and rediscover the kid in you and play on the play structures. Maybe even bring a couple water guns to play with if it’s a hot and sunny day. As teens and young adults, we aren’t allowed to act like kids much at home. Now is your chance! Remember… "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. -Matthew 18:3- Catch the sunset, from mountaintop or the beach:
Enjoy the setting sun and painted sky in which God gives us each evening on top of a mountain or on the shore. This is a great time to embrace God’s beauty and spend the time with your date contemplating the blessings you have in your life or praying or even getting to know each other. But once He turns off the lights, its time to head out!- Serve together: homeless shelter or children’s hospital
We are called to serve others as Jesus did. So why not spend time together with your date and serve others at the same time. You will realize a lot about each other seeing the way that you serve. Try serving food at your local homeless shelter or volunteer at the nearest children’s hospital. Serving together brings you closer because it takes the focus off of yourself.- Go out for ice cream/frozen custard:
Unless your date is lactose intolerant, this one is usually a hit. The time spent slobbering over this delicious (and cheap) treat will both put your nerves at ease and maybe even allow you to let your guard down. This way you will both be able to relax and not feel pressured to hold a long conversation over dinner. Tip: Share a banana split and have a contest as to who can eat their half the fastest!- Take your younger siblings to the drive in and buy them popcorn:
Sometimes our younger siblings can get on our nerves, but by taking them out, they may respect us even more. Find a flick you can all attend and buy them goodies and show them a good time. Family relationships are important and to see your date interact with his/her sibling could show you a lot about their character. And it will probably teach you patience at most!- Clean or do chores together: wash car, or yard work
Spend the Saturday at either of your parents/neighbors house doing yardwork together or washing cars. Your date will be productive and it will make working a lot more fun when you are with someone you enjoy. I am sure Mary made Jesus clean his room once and a while! Again, know this: “He who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men." -Romans 14:18- Can’t decide what to do:
A fun thing to do when you pick up your date is let them choose what you are going to do that night with a guessing game. This takes preparation in advance. You will go and take pictures of different places for picnics, walks, eating, or theaters, games to play or sports events before the date. Get the pictures developed and place them in individually sealed envelopes. When you pick your date up let them choose an envelope. Whatever the picture is, you go and do together. You can let your date open additional envelopes through out the evening that will tell you what you are going to do next.- Put a puzzle together on a rainy evening:
Whether its rain or shine, piecing together a puzzle together by putting your heads together will bring great brain-stimulation. What can be better than that? Its great to just sit and talk to your date, but putting a challenging puzzle together will help you grow closer by problem-solving as well. And you can also stumble across a great conversation as well! It’s great when everything fits perfectly together and you can fight over who gets the honor of putting the last piece in. Try the 3-D puzzles for a cool creation!- Go to the airport to people watch:
Airports are always fun places to visit because people are always headed somewhere or returning from somewhere. And to be able to see the long-awaited hellos and the dreaded good-byes is in itself a real life drama series. So what better a place to “people-watch” than your airport? You can even play the Celebrity Look-a-like game where you and your date name the first celebrity that comes to your head when you see a person walking by. And its fun to visit the over-priced shops and restaurants while you are there or to watch the planes take-off. It wouldn’t hurt to pray for people as they walk by you either.- Look at old pictures/yearbooks:
Sometimes the past can haunt us, so they say. But don’t let it! Spend your date swapping embarrassing stories from when you were younger and looking through mom’s old photo albums. You will really discover a lot about your date by doing so and don’t feel ashamed, just have fun with it. After all, they will have to like all of you in order to be with you! And if you are daring enough, you can even put in the home movies and view those.- Gradual Dinner and Dancing:
For the real romantics, take your date to several different restaurants for dinner. What I mean is, to start at one restaurant and just eat appetizers, then visit another restaurant for the salad, then another for the main dish and another for dessert. This can get expensive, but not when you visit fast food places! After dinner, stop by the coolest park with a gazebo (one in which you visited earlier and set up with white lights and a stereo) and show off your smooth moves on the dance floor!- Ride bus or subway around the city and evangelize:
What can be better than spreading the gospel across town? And especially if you are both “people” persons, getting to know other people is great and talking to them about Jesus will help you to grow in your faith as well. This may seem scary and out of your comfort zone at first, but what are the odds that you will ever see that person again? Plus while conversing with others, you will also get to see the cities various sites as well! The key to evangelization, just like other things, is L-O-V-E.- Tie-dye shirts together:
Grab some old t-shirts and tie-dye with your date. You can make t-shirts for your friends as well and deliver them to their houses. That way you can also visit with them during the evening. And there is nothing better than designing shirts for each other and mixing colors to see who can make the ugliest shirt.- Take a canoe or boat ride:
There is always something soothing about the water. Contact a friend who has a boat at a nearby lake or maybe even rent one. The best part is, if neither of you knows what you are doing, you can figure it out on your own. Especially with a canoe, you will need to use your team-working skills to get anywhere on the water. “But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” - John 4:14- Babysit for a couple so they can have a night out:
If one of you friends or relatives needs a night away from their kids, offer to babysit, maybe even for free and hang out with the little ones for the night. Play games, make ice cream sundaes and just chill. You will be able to see another side of your date, and yourself, and sometimes someone else’s children are easier to handle than your own siblings. This will be a good test to see if your date will be able to handle chaos! And plus, you are helping out a friend.- Go to the library or bookstore and read to each other:
Reading can be quite exclusive, but when you are aloud, you help the other person to experience the world of imagination as well. Check out the children’s book section, those stories can be the most fun and there is always a “moral” in each story. And you can never lose out by reading the Bible aloud, maybe even a little louder than normal so that others can hear! Visit the coffee shop in the bookstore or neighborhood afterwards and share your own stories.- Church/Mass and Adoration/Confession:
Visit the most beautiful church you can find in your area and spend some time there. Maybe even catch daily mass and celebrate the beauty of our Catholic faith with the sacraments by attending Confession together or visit the adoration chapel. You should really bring Jesus on every date, but consecrating the whole date to Him is even better. And the blessings will be abundant. This will show your date what is important to you and to remember to keep Christ the center of your relationship.- Play hide and seek at the zoo:
Take a trip to the local zoo and spend the afternoon visiting the animals and “monkey-ing” around with them. If you get bored easily, play hide and seek with walkie-talkies around the zoo. Give each other clues as to where you are and see who takes the longest to find. Maybe even get some kids involved! Sometimes we play hide and seek with God, but He always knows where to find us, even if we are amongst the animals, hence Adam and Eve.- Listen to music/classical and spend the evening painting/coloring
Find the best classical music collection you can and get some fun paints and coloring books and have an “Artist Night,” at your house. Painting and coloring can be very relaxing which will help you and your date open up your creativity side (everyone has one!) and try something new, like painting a portrait of each other. When you are finished, maybe even stop by your local art museum to check out the other artists and compare your works! We all know who the Real Artist is and we can appreciate His talent most of all, in each other.- Visit your grandparents and interview them about their lives
All your grandparents would want from you is your time. Surely, they would be thrilled to spend time with you and your date one Sunday afternoon. Ask them some great questions: how they met or what they used to do for fun when they were teenagers. Maybe even grab your video camera to bring along so you can record this moment on tape. You will probably discover a lot that you never knew you had in common!
No comments:
Post a Comment