The Ultimate Bookstore Date

retrieved off google, from modernlywed.com

 My preface to this post is to emphasize the importance of DATING within your marriage.  If all you have time for is dinner, then that is better than nothing.  You can even discuss some of my fun questions over dinner, to make conversation a little more interesting. ;) But whatever you do, make it a goal to make sure you and your spouse are using the time to CONNECT with each other!

 

My husband and I went to dinner one night and then had some time to kill.  It was a cold wintery night, so anything outside was completely out of the picture.
 

Me: "bowling?" Him: "eh"

Him: "movie?" Me : "a little boring?"

To my surprise...

Him: "Let's go to a book store. I wonder if there is some kind of scavenger hunt ideas online"

Me : "ok! let me look something up!" (really thinking, "who IS this man sitting next to me?")

 

So I googled bookstore treasure hunt date and got inspiration from here and here.  

We were in the car and unable to print anything out from these websites, so I got out a pen and tore a piece of paper into strips and on each strip I wrote down something to search for. Then we would draw one out of a cup and gave ourselves 5 minutes to find the item and then return to our meeting spot. 

 

It was a pretty good date for being on the spur of the moment, but I made it my goal to revise our game a little, fix the things that didn't work so well, find some new ideas to add to it and then try it again sometime. 

 

 One of the sites we used, only had you searching for certain words in a book like Poke, Nibble, Snatch (which was hard and tedious by the way) and even antidisestablishmentarianism. As soon as I saw that word I freaked out because I remembered it from a little sesame street movie we own called "What's The Name of That Song" (which even I enjoyed watching. Would highly recommend this. haha) But my husband didn't believe me, so I had to find the clip the next day and text it to him. We thought it was pretty funny.

Ok, sorry, let's get back on track....

 

As I searched for more ideas, I was surprised to find so many other couples out there also having fun on a Bookstore Date! I found more inspiration from The Dating Divas, Love Actually,  and I found this guy blogger that had some really interesting points about a bookstore date HERE.

 

SO, by combining everything I've learned and experienced, I've created THE ULTIMATE BOOKSTORE DATE!

 

Below, you will find the search items.  Right click on it and save it to your computer, then you should be able to print it out and cut it into strips.  Fold in half and put in a ziplock bag that you can put in your purse and take with you.

 

  

There are different levels that you can play this game:

SUPER EASY GOING: choose a search item from your bag and look for it together while holding hands. 

 

NOT TOO INTENSE : choose a search item from your bag and try to bring it back to your meeting place within 15 minutes.  This is good if you like to browse and take your time. You will not get through all of the search items, but you can save them for another day

 

SEMI - COMPETITIVE : choose a search item from your bag and give yourself 8 minutes to find it, but the first person back to the meeting spot wins that round. The person who wins the most rounds gets to choose where to go for dessert!  

 

VERY COMPETITIVE:  be prepared with an extra sheet of paper to keep POINTS! choose a search item from your bag and start your phone timers at the same time for 5 minutes and then GO! Split up and find the item as fast as you can.

*1 point for actually finding a book (you'd be surprise how hard it can be to find a certain book in 5 minutes)

*1 point for the person who returned first (with a book in hand)

*1 point for whoever did better with their book selection...try to be fair ;)

The person with the most points gets to pick where to go for dessert!

 

EXTRA TIPS TO MAKE THIS DATE SUCCESSFUL:

*if you pass your date while searching for the book you can exchange a kiss, a tickle or a bum-grab

*be sure to spend a few minutes talking about the books you found

*take pictures of the books you found so you can remember what it is you or your spouse wanted to 'learn more about' or the 'recipe to cook for a future date' or your 'all-time favorite book', etc.  Just so you can remember and maybe purchase the book in the future

*go home and look up the 'places you want to visit' and make a plan to visit one of them within the next 3 years

*REALLY use the recipe you found and cook it TOGETHER on a future date

*purchase the book that could help you in the bedroom and put it into practice right away

 

If you are interested in a more LITERARY scavenger hunt, I found some good questions HERE.