fun date ideas - Stuff Parents Need

Thanks to Bonefish Grill for providing gift cards for our meal. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always.

Going on more regular date nights has been one of our key resolutions for 2015. While we haven’t achieved the quantity of date nights I was hoping for, but we have certainly upped our game when it comes to the quality of our date nights. And that’s an improvement I have REALLY been enjoying!

Tim and I are now quite careful with which restaurants we choose to dine at during our precious time together and our time away from the kids. We want food that we can’t make at home, and we want an atmosphere that is classy and beautiful (so…the opposite of our house). bonefish grill chattanooga 3

Last night we dined at Chattanooga’s Bonefish Grill for the first time since moving here 5 years ago, and we were absolutely thrilled by the place, which has just been renovated. While I’m going to be highlighting aspects of this particular restaurant for the rest of the post, if you aren’t in Chattanooga, keep reading! I’ve got some helpful tips about planning an amazing date night that everyone could use!

Tip #1: Choose your restaurant wisely

Bonefish Grill was a fantastic choice for us because the specialty is seafood, which is something I can’t replicate at home. I suppose I could pick up some pre-frozen salmon at my local grocery store, but it simply wouldn’t be the same, not by a long-shot. Bonefish Grill was also a great choice because the ambiance was so gorgeous.

This was our “wall.” So pretty! And this was right next to it, just next to where my seat was located:

We had a beautiful location (though there’s not a bad table in the restaurant, in my opinion). When you select your restaurant for your date night, go through the trouble of making a reservation, even if you go out on a weeknight and likely won’t need one. When you make a reservation, you can make a special request for an especially good table! :-)

Tip #2: Restaurant hopping is totally ok

One idea that we’ve tried before and LOVED was starting at one restaurant with a great bar for drinks, and heading elsewhere for our food, and then to a third location for dessert. Bonefish Grill has an absolutely outstanding bar with top shelf offerings (I should know…I tried the watermelon martini and it might be my new favorite thing ever).

I also noticed that the section of the restaurant closest to the bar had a lot of more open seating. I saw quite a few couples enjoying drinks there, as well as small groups of people (perhaps co-workers enjoying happy hour together).

Tip #4: Eat and drink amazing things

I like to choose restaurants that are high quality and that have excellent servers, because I feel that I can trust the recommendations of those servers. That takes the pressure off me to worry too much over the menu, and instead, I can trust that the food is going to be excellent! At our dinner last night, we trusted our server’s recommendations and had some really exceptional food, such as the Bang Bang shrimp appetizer (which was actually enough shrimp for an entree!) and a scallop dish that pretty much blew my mind. And that berry shortcake was every bit as good as it looked!

Our date night was a success. We laughed a lot and had quality time together that we really needed. We enjoyed delicious food. And we soaked in a beautiful atmosphere. Chattanooga’s Bonefish Grill is now on our list of places to go when we want to have a great date night!

Where do you love to go on your date nights? Do you have a Bonefish Grill within striking distance? Any favorite menu items?

Tim and I have been lamenting about the fact that we never took the advice that was given to use REPEATEDLY by moms and dads who came before us: hire a babysitter AT LEAST once a month. We were told again and gain, “You can’t afford not to.”

So true. And yet, we couldn’t seem to come up with the money to pay a babysitter AND pay for dinner and/or a movie. So even though we couldn’t afford NOT to, we still couldn’t seem to afford TO do it!

But we knew something had to give this past February when we realized that our last date had been in early November, when my mom was visiting us…and we had no prospects for another date until the end of March, when my mother-in-law would be coming to visit. It makes NO sense for us to only have dates when our parents come to town!

Then, we decided to think a bit more creatively about the time we DID have. You see, twice each week, Darah is away from home from 9-2 at a parent’s day out program. Tim is still able to come home for lunch on those days. In the past, we have spent that time vacuuming and mopping the floors, taking out the trash, and cleaning the kitchen. And that was a very good thing to do. But we realized that an even BETTER thing to do would be to have a lunch date twice each month on one of those days. The childcare is already covered, and the menu prices are typically lower at lunch.

The only down side is that the dates are brief, but since we were used to having NO time together, this has been a huge improvement! We are getting to try out some fabulous restaurants in Chattanooga and just have some quality time together. We are also committed to finding a babysitter in the near future so that we can go on a date longer than 50 minutes in the near future. But I’m glad we’ve made this small change, as it is making all the difference!

Now I’d really like to hear from you. Have there been any “little switches” you have made so that you can have more quality time with your partner? Any tips and tricks for other readers, to help them find the time where none seems to exist, at first glance? We still have a lot to learn, so I, for one, am all ears!

“I wrote this blog post while participating in the SocialMoms and Cottonelle blogging program, for a gift card worth $25. For more information on how you can participate, click here.”

Making the Most of Date Night: Enjoying Chattanooga’s Renovated Bonefish Grill

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