Dinner at Eight: Picnic Edition

11. That was the start time of our at home date on Friday night. Matty had trouble falling asleep and hubs and I dozed while trying to put him down. I woke fully expecting it to be 2 a.m. and ready to give the middle finger to my afternoon efforts of preparing our picnic dinner, but it was only 10:30 so I jumped up, left hubs snooze, and began to create our pretty picnic setting. I planned to have an indoor picnic because temps were over 100 with like a million percent humidity on Friday, so at least the late start didn't ruin any romantic notion of an outdoor picnic {though a picnic under the stars would have been amazing!}

I quickly threw a checkered table cloth over the cocktail ottoman in our living room, lit some candles, and

set out our meal: Mexican black bean quinoa salad, caprese salad, heart shaped chicken salad sandwiches {I swear the "salad" theme is purely coincidental}, sweet and spicy jalapeno chips, watermelon, brownies and blood orange European soda. 

Hubs came down just as I finished setting everything out. We snacked and watched Daniel Tosh do stand up.

 

Then I cleaned up while he fell asleep on the couch.

Romantic? Not really. But still nice to have put aside some "us" time. Many times we plan to watch a movie or play a board game after Matty goes to bed, but by the time the evening chores are complete, we are pooped and just call it a night. I was proud that on Friday night we stuck to our schedule {schedule sounds so unromantic, but really, most times, if married with children couples don't consciously carve out time for each other, it never happens and that is the purpose of Dinner at Eight. I love that it holds us accountable for our date nights...it would be so easy to be lazy and not have our dates if it weren't for this project. Our first Dinner at Eight was imperfectly perfect and I can't wait to see what August's theme will be. Also looking forward to our "outside of the house" date night this Friday night: we're seeing Lisa Loeb in concert :)