30 Ideas For a Date Night at Home
Daniel and I always thought that we would be parents that would get a babysitter and go out all the time. We weren’t going to let having a baby change our lifestyle. Thirteen months after having our little one arrived reality has set in. Good, trustworthy babysitters are hard to find and they are expensive. Sure, our family could babysit and I do ask when it is needed but I don’t want to ask all the time. So we have become creative with our date nights at home after our daughter goes to bed.
I believe date nights are incredibly important for healthy marriages. They build trust and encourage a break from the routine to just stop, relax, and enjoy one another. On the date you should not talk about the kids, work, or bills. Save those conversations for another time. Also, don’t think about the household chores that need to be done. If you are the type that can’t relax if there is a dish in the sink, then do all the dishes before your date and get take out that you can throw away. The point is to relax.
You need to schedule your date and guard that time. We generally have a date (at home) on a weekend night. Yes things come up, but we don’t go long without a date. Sometimes I tell Daniel “I need a date” and he knows what I mean. I crave that time together and I miss it when we haven’t had one in a while. Don’t be afraid to ask or put in on the family calendar.
Here are 30 date night ideas that you can do at home after the little ones are tucked into bed and SOUND ASLEEP.
1. Have dinner in the backyard, patio, or your front lawn.
2. Re-watch the first movie you watched together.
3. Don’t cook and get your favorite take out.
4. Have a theme night. You must dress, eat dinner, and watch a movie with the same theme. Think ‘Western’ and dress like a cowgirl, eat bar-b-que, and watch Tombstone. Think ‘French’ and put on a black and white top, make French onion soup, and watch Amelie. It could be anything!
5. Put a blanket down and picnic in front of the TV.
6. Make a special dessert to indulge in. Bake chocolate chip cookies and right when you get them out of the oven put vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce on top. Even making brownies from a box can warm up any night.
7. Take a shower and get dressed up to go out, but stay in. One night I even put on my dress from my prom. I would never wear it out now, but I still love it and wore it on a night in.
8. Snuggle on the couch and watch a movie. I (heart) my Netflix queue!
9. Try to beat your all time record. (This was my husband’s suggestion for the list.)
10. Wear your old bikini that you would never wear in public again, because your stretch marks glisten too brightly in the sunlight! Ha. Your husband won’t care and will love you in it.
11. Break out the board games. Play it so that the loser has to do the dishes or even a fun strip version.
12. Wear your favorite lingerie under your normal clothes. Better yet wear none underneath.
13. Sit outside and read together.
14. Have a candlelit dinner in the dining room you rarely use.
15. Make a mix CD or playlist to enjoy throughout the evening.
16. Dance! Make room for our own private dance floor and have fun. Don’t worry, no one is watching you dance like Elaine Benes.
17. Write out an invitation card to your date requesting their presence at the VIP Lounge of your private nightclub.
18. Splurge on delicious cheeses and add fruit, crackers, and wine.
19. Make out during the DVD menu music.
20. Give each other a back rub.
21. Share your favorite dating memory with each other over dinner.
22. Set out candles around the room. (I know this is an old idea, but it is really nice to do once in a while.)
23. Dress as a character from a movie and you pick the character for each other (think Tom Cruise in Risky Business).
24. Work out together. Set up a circuit in the garage or in the back yard with a jump rope, dumbbells, push-up, and sit-up stations.
25. Cook together and try a new recipe for dinner or for a cocktail.
26. Go to bed early together.
27. Play video games together.
28. Watch a sports game and eat stadium food like nachos and hot dogs.
29. Set up a pair of chairs and stick your feet in the kiddie pool.
30. Make breakfast in bed for dinner and watch TV.
Do you have date nights at home? What do you do? Does it get harder to have a date night at home when the kids get older?
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OK, wait: is #9 dirty? Or, it is just late here and am I tripping from lack of sleep?
Either way: great list! I love the board games…this used to be our favorite thing to do, but we don’t play as much anymore. Maybe time to re-visit that idea.
These are great!
I love #30 especially and might just do it next weekend!
Thanks.
SD Momma — Is it “dirty” if you’re married?? Just curious…
Great suggestions Amanda; baby-sitting is not really common here b/c everyone has family that can watch the kids, except for us. We do have a friend who watches our son and daughter occasionally, but she’s in Scotland for the summer! We’ll definitely take you up on your suggestions.
I think this starts to get hard once your oldest kid hits the “tween” and “teen” years, b/c they do tend to stay up later. But while the kids are young and bedtime is before 8, it works great!
We just recently had the same realization that date nights were really hard and decided to start having date nights at home too! Our favorites are finding a new recipe and cooking together, Mario Kart on the Wii, and sitting on the couch eating ice cream. Thanks for all the new ideas! We will DEFINITELY be referencing this!
This is great! Love it.
@SD Momma – I with Sharon, is it “dirty” if you are married? I thought it was such a MAN suggestion that I had to add it in the list.
@Vered – I am glad you liked the ideas. Enjoy your breakfast!
@Sharon – I love reading insight into your culture there. That would make sense about the tween and teen years. Hopefully, by then the oldest kid will be able to babysit and you can afford to leave the house!
@Breanna – I can see you guys trying new recipes and eating ice cream. I think you should do number 16. Really, no one is watching.
@Natalie – Thank you.
We have picnics in bed all the time and just last week I did brownies out of a box. They weren’t ready to eat till after 10 but it was a lot of fun!
Dave and I like to watch movies together a lot so I guess you could say we have in-house dates on a regular basis.
By the time your kids are tweens or teens they are old enough to stay at a friend’s house overnight. You can swap nights on the weekend with a friend and each couple can hang with the tweens/teens for the sleep over while the child free couple has a date.
Our best date nights at home are when the tv is off and we play games together.
This list is amazing! I can’t wait to try these out, we have been hard up for some alone time for quite a while!
My favorite idea is the movie theme nights. But I’d never get Dave to watch Amelie with me.
What food do you eat with Indiana Jones, Star Trek, or Die Hard? Ha ha ha.
I’m printing these out and putting them on the fridge – what a great list ideas. My wallet thanks you!
what a great list amanda (laughing at 9). my problem with date night at home is that by the time my son is in bed, we’re whipped. but my son doesn’t know how to tell time yet. so after reading your list, i’m trying to figure out why we haven’t just told him it was 9:00 at 7:00.
“Think ‘French’ and put on a black and white top, make French onion soup, and watch Amelie.”
I LOVE it! First of all, great movie choice! Second, my husband would love nothing more than having me get dressed up in a black and white top and cook him soup.
But I completely agree with Myra…by the time the kids are in bed…we are exhausted. We’ll have to plan something fun like this soon, though. It would be worth it.
Mommy Sophia
http://www.3mommies.com
@ Dawn – yeah, we have made brownies a few times. It is Daniel’s favorite dessert. For only two bucks a box, you can’t go wrong. Here are my food suggestions for the movies asked about.
Indiana Jones – Monkey brains, of course! In one of the movies he crashes in India, so some Indian food? Something with curry.
Star Trek – Picard drinks Earl Grey Tea. Work a meal around the tea. Instead of Shephard’s Pie make it “Klingon’s Tasty Pie”
Die Hard – Isn’t John McLane from New York City? How about some NY style pizza.
@Amelia – I am looking forward to when Ace is old enough to sleep at her grandparents. I know they are looking forward to it too. That is very true about sleepovers!
@Brittany – It is hard to make alone time. Enjoy your time together!
@Amy – To your wallet, Your welcome!
@Myra – Why not try a little trickery to go to bed early? After 9:00 can be a little late. That is when you watch a movie that won’t put you to sleep. “Once” always puts us to sleep.
@Mommy Sophia – It IS worth it! I LOVE Amelie. The traveling gnome is priceless.
I so want to put my prom dress on now!! Tee hee!! These are all great suggestions!
Okay, Amanda, great job on that movie food challenge. I was joking, btw.
I haven’t seen any of those flicks. But that Star Trek suggestion is seriously going down as a possibility for a present in the future. Dave will be shocked with the research I will have done. Ha!
Great ideas! I can’t wait to show hubby this list and give some of these a try!!
HA HA! Monkey brains, I love it.
[...] 30 Ideas for a Date Night at Home [...]
[...] hope everyone had a great weekend! We did a theme night Saturday night and stuffed our faces with Indian food and watched ‘The [...]
Thanks for the great ideas, we have 2 boys 14 and 13 and cannot consider leaving them home without supervision yet. My wife and I have always had a Christmas date ans it usually means we stay over at a hotel somewhere, but this year we had a hard time finding sleep over friends for them and Grandparents could not help so we had planned to stay home and try to deal with what we had. Your ideas help a lot and will make much more interesting. Thanks again.
This is my first time here …. I was on the search on how to spice up my marriage with my husband after two small children and not one night out of the house alone in 4 years…
I love love love this list!!! Thank you so much!
tonite we’re putting kidsbed and heading down to the movie room to play some card games and have some beverages with a movie we’ve seen a 100 times. I’m going to wear a little something naughty(w/a robe loosely on incase of kids) we love doing this once in while-makes us feel young again!
I love this list. I have been looking for ways for my husband and I to have a date night with no sitter. Our son is only 15 months old and my husband is in the military. Not only will this list help with the date night problem but it will help us reconnect when he comes back from Korea after having been gone for a year. Thanks for the suggestions.
Hey! I’ve been waiting for a website like this for all us families. I’m a single mom so I don’t really feel comfortable bringing men to my house but lately, I’ve been seeing one as a friend and had him over when my daughter was sleeping. Is this wrong of me? I mean, I never date because my daughter comes first but I like this guy and we’ve been seeing eachother now for about a month. Its not serious yet, just great friends. But I’ll try your suggestions with him tonight. I don’t think he’s into anything serious but I hope one day. I am just liking hanging around him; he is the only guy who has made me smile in ages.
I loved this list! My husband and I have decided to go through the entire list one at a time and write about it on our blog. Last night we did #22, lit candles and watched Hell’s Kitchen!!
http://loveactually-blog-ideas.blogspot.com/2010/03/date-nights.html
This is also another blog that has really cool themed at home date nights. they are amazing ideas, very creative and very cheap and fun! By the way love your ideas. We love having underwear dance parties so #16 is my favorite
Love the list, thanks for sharing. I will be sharing with my wife for sure.
love this
such fun ideas. recently we decided we wanted to learn spanish, so after getting rosetta stone one of my fav date night activities has become doing the lessons together. it’s hysterical listening to my hubby try to get the words down…accent and all! Learning a new language together=fun!!! 
If you have teens and tweens….we have always had ours go to their room at 7:30…they have to give us our evenings on the weekends friday-sunday nights and they can continue to stay up as late as they want if they remain upstairs in bedrooms or playroom after 7:30. If they come down and interrupt the date they have to go straight to bed. It has always worked great and they respect our date nights.
We made a pot roast together and made a night of it with appetizers, wine, music, and a little dancing in the kitchen
#9–”Dirty” is always dirty..even when you are married! In my opinion, dirty is GOOD when you are married!
@ Tabitha… Knowing teens, they like that rule better than you parents! To be left alone and get to stay up as late as they want, sounds like Teen Heaven!
On the other hand, I’m thinking I might not feel like I’m getting enough time with my teen every day if I did this. If they get home at 4:00 and are in their rooms at 7:30, that doesn’t sound like much time. It’ll be a long time before mine are teens, so I guess I have lots of time to ruminate on this and see what works for me! Thanks for sharing this with us. I’m definitely going to use it in some form or fashion!
@Jennifer – I think she said they only do that on Fri and Sat. Two nights of quiet will be desperately needed when they’re teens – I need it already, and mine are only 3 & 5!
This list is great – a good reminder that there’s more to life after the kids go to bed than just zoning out in front of the tube or laptop!
My husband and I did this last year for valentines and liked it so much we’re doing it again this year! It made for a late dinner cause we fed the kids first and spent some time with them before putting them to bed and focusing on our date, but it was a lot of fun! I wishe we could do it more often but I’m usually studying after we put the kids to bed since I’m a full-time student!
I love these ideas.
The other day my hubby surprised me with a fire out on the patio & some sparkling grape juice. We sat out by the fire & looked at the stars & tried to find the different constilations. Another idea might be to make smores by the fire or “camp” in the backyard for a bit. After completing date #9, head back inside!
Seriously. I just don’t understand #9? All time record for what?? I don’t think San Diego Mom meant sex is dirty, she just didn’t know what you were talking about either. Longest time? Most in a night? What are we talking about????
Get over #9. If you don’t get it, perhaps you just don’t. If you do, have some fun with it. After 12 years of marriage and 4 kids-it might just spice things up a bit for us! Fun list. Sometimes in the hustle and bustle of life it’s easy to forget to have fun and make memories with your spouse. So important! Pick something you do like-Why are there always negative nellies?
Duh! #9 is how many times you can climax/have sex in one night! Great one!
Just printed these out to make a date night jar to pick out random for our home dates. THANKS!
My husband and I take baths together and i read to him while we soak. We also do red box nights. Your list is great.
These are adorable ideas! We’ll soon run out of family babysitter options, so this will be incredibly helpful to create a nice night in!
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[...] * The Mom Crowd – 30 ideas for a date night at home [...]
Thanks for the list! Here’s another suggestion, do a dessert fondue. Even better combined with some of your ideas, perhaps outside or with candles lit.
Love these inspiring ideas! Always need a little reminder after a long day with two cutest but toughest bosses. Nothing’s wrong w reminders. From one mama blogger to another awesome
[...] 30 Date Ideas for a Date Night at Home [...]
Found this on pinterest. Love the list. Thanks for the ideas!!
With four kids, from 10 to just turned one, three sports teams etc., time alone feels near impossible! We lay in bed, doing either find-a-word (I know, goofy!) on his tablet, to see who has the best “time’, or, have one of us read a crossword puzzle to the other – great way to snuggle up, be together, give the old noggin a workout……just before #9.
While my kids are grown up now and my husband and I can “date night” in or out anytime we please, I do remember when things were different! When my girls were young I met a young woman that went to the nearby university. She hated laundromats and we wanted to be able to go out once a week. She babysat and did her laundry one night a week and my husband and I went out. Once we were REALLY broke, and all we did for our date was make sandwiches, park in the parking lot at a nearby park and eat them and made out! Date night is a frame of mind more than an activity
I’m glad I’m not the only one who just scratched my head when I read number nine!! Haha.
I think I’m on the right track now…
My husband and I set up a tent in the living room, ordered pizza, got movie theater popcorn, watched a movie. All in the tent. Then. We slept in the tent. It’s something my sisters and I did when we were younger and it was great to share that memory with my husband. It was cheap, simple, and something different. Will do again!
My hubby and I grab a couple bottles of wine and make our favorite meal. Then we spend time talking and laughing the night away. I love these nights and have learned that they mean more then all those nights that we would go out to expensive resturaunts.
You could also find another couple who has kids that want to go out on dates as well and barter babysitting. This would also be fun for the kids if they are friends, they may even start asking you when your next date night will be. You watch their kids so they can go out one night, and in exchange they watch your little one so you and your hubby can go out.
turn off everything and snuggle
my favorite thing
this list is great! my husband and i have 5 children so you can imagine the babysitter bill if we did ever get one. there’s no family near by so the free sitters not an option for us either. Plus ive got to admit im kinda one of those moms that really doesn’t trust too well when it comes to my kids.
these ideas are great! and yes… even the “dirty” ones!! we will definetly be doing these!
this list is great! my husband and i have 5 children so you can imagine the babysitter bill if we did ever get one. there’s no family near by so the free sitters not an option for us either. Plus ive got to admit im kinda one of those moms that really doesn’t trust too well when it comes to my kids.
these ideas are great! and yes… even the “dirty” ones!! we will definetly be doing these!
We do a date night at home , everyother friday we order subs and watch netflix in our bedroom as we have 6 children. As a comprpmise with the kids they camp out in the living room with munchies and soda…its a win win b/c they sleep in and we had a date night
At home date nights are awesome! Wii Power Bowling challenge is one of our favorites.
Also, I recently created a Random Topics of Conversation jar. There are 120 individual questions and we will just pick one out at a time and see where the answer leads! Ex: Would you rather learn to fly a plane or ride a unicycle? Just a fun way to keep the conversation on us and not talk about all the household, financial or parenting topics that invade every other day. Great list! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for this list! We just had baby #2 and #1 isn’t quite 2 years old. This makes getting out of the house for a date child-care and financially almost impossible at the moment. I had a rough pregnancy so we have become a little desperate for some alone time where we can just remember that we’re also husband and wife, not just mommy and daddy. We have designated a date night each week and this list will be essential in making it possible. Thank you!
Love the suggestions! My husband and I build a fire outside and sit around it sipping on wine. Something about enjoying a fire on a cool fall evening.
Just a few from our list:
Romantic bubble bath
Foot massages
Take turns watching each other’s favorite movies or classic tv shows (“suffering” through Dirty Harry was worth it to see him get choked up during Steel Magnolias)
Play a modified version of The Newlywed Game – it gets tougher to try to stump each other the longer you’ve been together!
Plan an “if we ever win the lottery” vacation – then plan a dinner from that locale.
Could someone tell me how to forward this to email? I have a young moms group and I would like to forward this on to them.
Wrestling match. We usually have a battle while cleaning the kitchen. I use a pan as a shield and we dual it out with spoons and spatulas.
These are amazing! I am still in college and me and my boyfriend would love to go out and just cant afford it. So we end up sitting home most night just laying in bed watching tv. I am def going to be using some of these!
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I love the ideas. I can’t wait to try some out. Our first stay home date night is this Saturday, but I am getting a sitter so we have some real alone time. He says he has never played Monopoly before… so we will maybe give that a try
How about sitting in front of a fireplace? The list is nice except there is too much focus around a television.
Great list! With our first anniversary coming up in a month and our first baby a month old, date nights aren’t to hard yet, but we’re trying to get into the habit of keeping date nights before it gets hard (learned from watching my parents!). Staying home date sound great! So much easier on the tight budget! We also love Christmas lights! Put them up when it’s not Christmas and turn off all the other lights and just snuggle of eat ice cream! So nice! =)
These are all great ideas! I got a Date Night Dare card the other day from a stranger that had a challenge on it. I was supposed to complete the challenge and pass the card on. My challenge was to write and deliver a love letter. My husband and I both wrote each other love letters. He mailed his to me and I tucked his in his lunch box for work. Then we are supposed to write about it at http://www.datenightdare.com. I hadn’t gotten that far yet, but I just wanted to share what a great time we had. I found this interesting because I found it on Pinterest right after doing a Date Night Dare challenge. I am going to order the set so we can make this a habit. I will add these to my list too. We are SO overdue for date night, and it is nice to find things to do at home or that don’t cost a lot.
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I don’t have kids and Im not married, but me and my boyfriend don’t have much money to go out anyways. We like playing board games and video games and we always watch movies. I definitely want to try to dress up for a movie inside. Another idea would be to make a fort out of blankets inside or have a tent and have a “camp out.” Or I always enjoyed camping in the backyard and even have a bonfire. Or playing hide in seek. Having a massage night. Give each other some rubs.
Great ideas! To those who are exhausted…sometimes when my husband and I are too tired to go out after a long week, we take a nap, then have our date. With 3 married children and three more still at home, once we even woke up at 2:00 a.m. then, went out for breakfast at an all-night cafe. Good times.
This is my first time pay a quick visit at here and i am actually happy to read
all at alone place.
Totally have done #19 (or during end movie credits). It’s great and makes us feel like we’ve got an epic soundtrack to our lives. I love these ideas. Will definitely try them out, the ones I haven’t already.
thank you. my boyfriend is on house arrest so always looking for fun things to do together. two of my favs are coloring and making crafts.
This list is a good place to start, and I was surprised to find that my husband and I have already done most of it! We have four kids, but each night we try to spend two kid-free hours together (more on the weekends) in which we don’t pay bills, talk about the kids, and etc. At first it was hard because we were so tired in the evenings, but after a while we both realized that we looked forward to it so much, it wasn’t a chore at all, and it’s kept us very close. Thanks for the list!