Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Project 52: The Monkey Date

Here are the second and third installments of Project 52 from the past two weeks:
Date Night #2: Games
I kept it simple because we already had a few events lined up for the weekend.  We watched the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics, played games, and dove into Billy's Valentine's Day stash:
Ah, the perks of being married to a teacher.
Date Night #3: Monkeys
I wanted to do something a little more creative this time and what's more fun than monkeys?  The truth is, I had a couple ideas for this date percolating in my mind but nothing certain until I went to Target.  I scoped out basically the entire store looking for inspiration and didn't find it.  So then I wandered over to the food area and stumbled upon a Monkey Bread mix.  The proverbial light bulb flashed on (I really don't see much of it these days...) and Monkey Date Night was born.  Now that I had a focus it was pretty simple to throw the rest of the date together.
Here's the breakdown of the date:
1. We made Caramel Monkey Bread together. Scrumptious!
2. While the bread was baking, we wrote acrostic poems for each other using the word "MONKEY".  I know, acrostics are supposed to describe the word being used but I didn't think writing poems about monkeys was that romantic. Maybe for some people, but not me. I think this was Billy's favorite part of the date.  He just brims with creativity - both in writing and drawing so this was right up his alley.  We also decorated the poems with monkey stickers.
3. We played Barrel of Monkeys. Billy won. He's a monkey-linking-fool!
This was probably my favorite date yet.  The cost was around $12 which isn't bad considering the first two dates were free and now we have a Barrel of Monkeys game for our family to enjoy for years to come!(Special thanks to Target for their plethora of inspiring monkey products.) Also, having a few activities to do together prevented one of us from falling asleep prematurely, which may or may not have happened on our first date . . .

13 comments:

Carri said...

I had to laugh at all the candy on the table...I totally remember those days of teaching. Creative theme!

Secret Mom Thoughts said...

Love the monkey theme. That bread looks delicious.

stephanie said...

haha. this is so cute! kuddos to you!

Ginny Clark said...

what a fun idea. the theme is priceless, and I love the barrel of monkeys :)

Brandy said...

I love the ideas of your Monkey date. It sounds like it would be so much fun. We love monkey bread at our house so we might have to plan this for one of our dates.

http://spottedsmiles.blogspot.com

Marian said...

What a fun themed date! What goes into the monkey bread?

Whitney Baldwin said...

kudos to you for the creativity!! any way you could share that monkey bread recipe? it looks delicious!

Anna said...

Well...I wish I could say the monkey bread was from scratch, but it was actually a boxed mix so no recipe to share! ;)

overtiredmum said...

Wow - how do you have time to get so creative. Great ideas, lovely blog xo

PS I like that the bread is called bread even though it looks like cake to me - much healthier that way!

Rachelle said...

WoW! You are so creative. I love the poems. We went to a movie on our anniversary and I nearly fell asleep. Thought of you.

Sherrie said...

What a creative date! :)

Anonymous said...

that is nice being married to a teacher because they get gifts throughout the year! and the monkey date sounded fabulous! i'm putting that down on my list of ideas. thanks for sharing and see you next week!
tiffany {Simply Modern Mom}

Nichole said...

That is a crazycute idea. I love it!