His Favorite Day of the Month

My husband has a new favorite day of the month.

What day is that?

The first day of every month!!

On the first day of every month, I set a reminder in our Cozi calendar to set time aside for our monthly date night planning.

13_Mar_march date night_001_edit

This month’s date involved a mystery gift shopping challenge! But when Kevin read the instructions and saw that we would be going to the mall, I could see panic start to kick in. So rather than insist that we stick to the ‘rules’, we changed the rules a bit and decided to shop together for this one. Our March calendar was filling up, so rather than a date night, we headed out for an afternoon together after church one Sunday. We ended up going to Target and did a little clothes shopping for each other.

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Before heading home, we stopped for a treat which gave us a chance to spend even more time together, just the two of us.

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And here we are with our shopping choices for each other!

I know Kevin is probably counting the days until our next date night planning!

What fun thing have you done with your spouse this month?

Capture Your 365

Here are this past week’s photos on my Capture Your 365 adventure!

13_Feb_essential equipment_001_edit

ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.0, 1/60 sec

Day 58 – Essential Equipment: today I wanted to make some muffins, so I pulled out all the ingredients to make some pumpkin muffins. Yum!

13_Feb_up close and personal_001_edit

ISO 100, 50mm, f/2,8, 1/5 sec

Day 59 – Up Close and Personal: today’s prompt encouraged you to fill the frame. This little camera was the first camera I ever took pictures with a long time ago at outdoor ed. I found it at my parent’s house on a visit up there and brought it home. I like keeping it up on a shelf with some old books I have been collecting.

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ISO 100, 24mm, f/4.0, 1/800 sec

Day 60 – Sweet Rest: in the busyness of this life, we tend to neglect taking time to just rest. Last week we were blessed with a beautiful afternoon, so Kelsey and I had iced coffees out in the backyard. It was a nice time to enjoy the warmth of the sun and some sweet time with my daughter.

13_Mar_whimsical_001_edit

ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.8, 1/250 sec

Day 61 – Whimsical: last spring, Kelsey and I put these together from an idea I found on Pinterest. They are a great way to add some spring color to our home.

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ISO 100, 32mm, f/25, 1/8 sec

Day 62 – Upside Down: Now I know this photo is not upside down. But what I loved was how filled the sky was with clouds. I was waiting for the sun to move past the clouds, but not quite behind the hills. Kevin and I were on our way home from a date afternoon and I had him stop quite a few times until I got the ‘perfect’ shot. It is all the interpretation of the prompt, right? (insert big smile here!)

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ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec

Day 63 – Two: So I have to admit, I actually took this photo on Day 62. Kevin and I went out on a date afternoon (which I will blog about soon), and we stopped for a treat. One Mocha Frappuccino and one Chai Tea Latte. Two Starbucks drink, but one fun afternoon!

Are you Capturing Your 365? Let me know if you are! I would love to see what you are capturing!

Our Bucket List Date Night

Last weekend, my husband and I were able to go out for our monthly date night. Since I put the idea for each month in an envelope before Christmas, I am having a hard time remembering what is inside each envelope, which makes it a bit of surprise for me to!

13_Feb_February Date Night_001_edit

On my Facebook page, I asked my friends to chime in with the favorite local restaurant. I was looking for something new and different. My friends did not disappoint us! We received some wonderful suggestions and decided to try a small family-owned Italian restaurant. So off we went with our paper and my camera to give this place a try.

We were greeted with a hug at the door! They made us feel like family!

Once we placed our order, Kev opened the envelope to see what our date task would be…create bucket lists! Time to dream! With our red pieces of paper and sharpies, we started writing down some dreams:

• trip to Europe
• drive down Highway One in a convertible Porsche
• own a BMW M3
• take a class at the Culinary Institute

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As each course of our dinner came, we would eat and continue to write down some dream items on our lists.

• work for Disney
• go on a Compassion trip
• race a car in a vintage autocross race
• have all the camera equipment I would ever need

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Each course was so amazing and delicious. We continued to eat our dinner and write down our dreams.

• bobsledding
• own and fly my own airplane
• own Apple stock
• have a work from home job with Compassion

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We decided early on that we will be visiting this restaurant again soon!

• own original artwork from a Disney artist
• spend a couple of nights at the Ahwahnee in Yosemite

At one point during our dinner, our gracious hostess invited us back to the kitchen.

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We began to wonder if they thought we were food/restaurant critics since we had been taking notes and taking pictures :)

• visit the Louvre
• have a vacation home by the beach

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I know this is not the best picture of the two of us. The picture is a little out of focus and I only had the 50mm lens with me which is a manual focus lens. But we had a really nice time talking and dreaming and enjoying some amazing food that night.

What is on your bucket list?

Year of Monthly Dates

When my daughter suggested that we all make our Christmas gifts for each other this past Christmas, I was really glad that Pinterest announced the

secret boards.

I had fun pinning items to the secret board I created with all my Christmas ideas for my family.

For my husband, I put together a

Year of Monthly Dates

.

On our

Cozi

calendar, I set up an 'appointment' for us to meet on the 1st day of each month to open the envelope for that month and set aside a time/date for our monthly date. Included in each envelope is a prayer prompt for each of us, as well as a prayer bookmark where we can record prayer requests we have for that month. There is another envelope inside the manila envelope with the details for the date for that month.

For our January date, we were to create a

hint box

for each other. After being married for a while, sometimes you need a little help from your spouse on what would be an encouragement to them. These can be simple things like, making sunny side up eggs for breakfast or picking up a 3 Musketeers bar on the way home. Our job now is to fill out the little slips of paper and decorate our boxes for each other.

The pictures are a little out of order on this post because we did go out for breakfast first at a nearby place that a lot of the locals just love and we had never been there! We just might have to go on a few more breakfast dates in the future... :o)

Since we were heading to Hobby Lobby anyway...I was wanting to look for some items to rearrange the

mantel

, especially since I have this new pallet art work that my husband made for me for Christmas! Isn't it beautiful! I found just about everything I was looking for, just need to figure out what will go in the shadow box (and I did trim the flowers so they fit in the vase better).

Want to know what we are doing for our date next month? Be sure to check back next month! :o)