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Adventures in Playful Family Living

A Year of Dates

” Kids spell love T-I-M-E.” (John Crudele}

My husband and I have been wanting to plan regular one-on-one dates with the girls for a while now. We love doing things as a family, but having some “just me and you” time is really special, too.

With that in mind, we decided to give the girls a Year of Dates for Christmas this year – an envelope for each month, with a special surprise date inside.

Parent & child date coupons

We brainstormed date ideas and came up with a variety of fun activities. Some are outings, while some are doing projects at home. We also tried to keep them fairly inexpensive.

My dates with the girls will be:

  • Shop for and cook a recipe of your choice.
  • Choose a craft or sewing project for us to do together.
  • Go to the bookstore for a new book and a treat.
  • Go out to dinner at a restaurant of your choice.
  • Go shopping for a new outfit.
  • Kid’s choice!

The dates with Dad will be:

  • Do a woodworking project together.
  • Go on a nature hike.
  • Go out to breakfast at a restaurant of your choice.
  • Have a movie night – at home or at the theater.
  • Go bowling or miniature golfing.
  • Kid’s choice!

We made two sets of coupons and divided them up into envelopes for each month. The girls will get to open their envelope at the beginning of the month to find out their surprise date! They will alternate having one-on-one dates with mom or dad.

date coupons for parents and kids

I’m pretty happy to be giving the girls the gift of our time and attention – this is definitely one of those gifts that keeps on giving.

We can’t wait to give them their coupons – I hope they are as excited as we are! I’m thinking we should make a little scrapbook of our dates for the whole year – wouldn’t that be fun?

Update: Download and print our Parent & Child Date Coupons! I added 2 pages of blank coupons to the download so you can create your own dates, too. Enjoy!

Are you giving any experience-type gifts this year? Do you think your kids would enjoy a Year of Dates?

Comments

  1. I love this idea so much. We have 2 girls too and they are always wanting special time with me and hubby. I hope you don’t mind me asking but is there any chance you can share these coupons as a download. That will be really awesome. Thanks.

  5. Okay, friends – you can now download and print our coupons! :) There’s a link at the end of the post.

    Hope you and your kids have a great time with your own year of dates!

  10. Absolutely!!! Thanks for sharing! We have a child that is particularly hard to buy for and all she ever wants is one on one time with us. I will be printing these for sure and giving them to her for Christmas. Thanks soooo much!!

  12. What a FABULOUS idea, I have just printed these and will DEF be giving them to my daughter as a Christmas gift!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for sharing such a wonderful idea w/ us!!

  14. I just love this idea!!! My 6yo boy will love cashing theses in :-) What an extra special way to refocus on what’s really important each month next year

  15. Thank you so much for the wonderful idea and the download- my kids will LOVE this !! Merry Christmas :)

  16. Thank you so much for sharing your hard work and allowing us to download them! Merry Christmas!

  17. Just saw this via Ladybug Limited on Pinterest – it’s utterly fabulous. I’m now trying to figure out how I can make time to make these so we can make time together!

  18. Thanks, everyone, for your kind words! It makes my heart so happy to know that you will be joining our family in a Year of Dates and enjoying some very special one-on-one time with your kids.

    By the way, if you don’t have time to make these for Christmas, they would be a great New Year’s or birthday gift, too.

    Happy Holidays!

  19. Thank you for making it easy for me to get this done this year! Awesome ideas and great cards.

    Merry Christmas!!

  20. I love this! We’ve been trying to have more “dates” with our girls, and this will make it even more fun and special. Thanks for providing the printables!

  23. We have been giving coupon gifts for years now and our kids love them. We have 3 kids and they get 10 each. We cover our Christmas tree with them and they enjoy finding their own cards on the branches. Our coupons are not just for time with us, but some are also for adventures they will enjoy. Our daughter is taking a cooking class in a baking school and we promised them each swimming lessons and a fun family vacation. The rest are dates with us, family outings, and projects we can do together. It is a great tradition.

    • This sounds like an amazing tradition, Stacey! I love the idea of including special “adventures” that each child would love. So fun!

  26. I love this!!! I have a 5 and 4 year old little girl and 8 month old baby brother. With the addition of little brother it has been hard to have one on one time with the kids. I think this will definitely help!! Thank you for including the download.

  27. Thank you for sharing! You are a talented gal that is for sure! We are excited to try these ideas!!1

  29. Oh my!! I just saw this on Pinterest!! I’m soooo excited to start this! Being Valentine’s Day is only a few days away this is going to be my gift to my little one!! Eeeek what a fabo idea love it :)

  30. A friend shared this with me (she used the certificates as Valentine’s gifts for her kids) and I have printed them for our family! Thank you so much for sharing!!

  31. LOVE this idea (including the scrapbook)! I have twin 3.5 year olds and really need to make it a priority to spend one on one time with each one of them. Great post!

  32. I’m the oldest of 2 and am recently married, so my mom is having some serious withdrawals. This year for mother’s day I decided to put together a “coupon book” of events we can do together whenever she chooses :)

  35. I love this idea! My son will finally lose his only-child status after nine years: only a week after his birthday. This will be the perfect birthday gift for him!! I’ve been looking for something I can give/do for him to ease that transition from only child to big brother.

    Thanks for sharing!

  36. Just came across your blog and love this idea. Will be printing out sets of cards for our 3 boys and think they will love getting to spend some time with each of us alone. It’s one thing we struggle to do (now there are 3) is get to spend some one on one time, with 2 we kind of tag teamed but with 3 it’s more of a juggle! Thank you for sharing this. :) How about doing a set for mum & dad date nights too?

  37. Making these for both our kiddos this year… so excited!

    Also, writing an article on dating our kids for our church newsletter and including a link to this post.

  38. Thank you for this wonderful idea! We are going to give them to our two boys for Christmas and we know they will be thrilled!!

  39. Thanks for this! I’m going to adapt the idea for my little sister. We don’t spend enough time together and I never know what to get her!

  40. Thank you for posting this! We hav trouble trying to do individual times with our triplet 6 year old boys. I’m so excited to find this with some real down to earth ideas and give the gift of time to our kids :)

  43. I just found these today and am going to make them for our daughter for Valentine’s Day! Thanks for sharing the printables!

    Kendra

  46. Hey! I understand this is kind of off-topic however I needed to
    ask. Does operating a well-established blog like yours take a large amount of work?
    I am completely new to blogging however I do write in my diary on a daily basis.
    I’d like to start a blog so I can easily share my personal experience and feelings online. Please let me know if you have any kind of ideas or tips for new aspiring bloggers. Thankyou!

  47. Love this idea! This is really manageable for a 2-child family. Could you give me a suggestion for how to make this work with our 5 children? I look forward to your creative idea!

    • Hi Susanna – Individual dates for 5 kiddos will definitely take a little more creativity! I would recommend alternating months – one month, 2 kids get individual dates, and the other three get a group activity. Next month, 3 kids get individuals and the other 2 have a combined activity. During busy months, we do a lot of at-home dates, too – so maybe that would be an option for your family. My girls love having a late bedtime once in a while to do something special with me or Dad. Hope that gives you some ideas to get started – I hope you’ll come back and share how it’s working! :)