September 2011 Date

This month for our date we decided to do a back to school date. It was perfect timing as well, because our semester had just started up at BYU- Idaho. I must say though that the majority of this date idea did come from the blog: thedatingdivas.com. This is a blog about dating ideas for married people. I took the idea from their blog and then adapted it to single students at BYU-Idaho.

When asking our dates out, we sent out cute little notes, just like the ones you would send out on the playground to the boys you had crushes on in the first grade. We wrote a cute roses are red poem that described the details of the date. There was also a game of MASH on the bottom that reveled more details about the date. I got much of this note from the dating divas website as well but did change the poem and mash game to something more fitting for singles. We wrote the note in lots of different colors and then folded it into cute little shapes. I folded mine into a Strawberry. When we sent out the notes, we were very discrete about it, we slid the note into one of their school books so that they could read it as a surprise for later. I was so tempted to add one of those "if you like me check the box yes or no" messages, but at last resisted. I didn't want to creep out my date too much! Here are some pictures of what we did.

The night of the date, we packed our backpacks with sack lunches, a kick ball, and duct tape and then headed to our dates apartments to pick them up for the time of their lives. When picking them up we originally wanted to get tandum bikes, but renting them was a little bit beyond our budget.

After we met up with our dates, we headed off to the park. Once there we found a nice grassy area and unpacked our sack lunches, and ate. Our lunches consisted of a sub sandwich--which we made ourselves, a pizza lunchable, string cheese, a jello cup, fruit chews, and kool-aide.

During our meal, the child within us came out. We started playing with our food, and the best part was, unlike in school, there was no parent or evil teacher to tell us to stop! We started throwing fruit chews into each others mouths seeing who would be able to catch it. We even got into a grass fight, pulling the grass up from the ground and throwing it all over each other. It was so much fun!

Once we were done eating and engaging in other unplanned activities, it was time for recess. One of my all time favorite games in grade school was kick ball so I thought I would be fun to play that again, however, this time with a little bit of a twist. We were going to play three legged kick ball!!! This is where the duct tape from our backpacks came in. We used the duck tape to tape our legs together and then we engaged in a nice game of kick ball, which turned out to be tackle kick ball much to our surprise. This is such a great way to get to know your date a little better since you guys are stuck to each other. It really forces conversation! I personally love this version of kick ball, it forces you to find solutions with someone else and it is a great way to see how you and your date work together.

A few bumps and bruises later from our kickball game, we decided to settle things down with a friendly game of four square.

After four square we went and got ice cream at Kiwi Loco!! It was so great and the perfect end to such a fun date. The boys even paid for the ice cream even though we asked them out!!! Man, what gentlemen!!! After the ice cream we were going to head back to our apartment and watch the Sandlot, but by that time we were all exhausted and were ready to call it a night.

I hope you guys find this date as fun as we did!!! Thanks for reading!

- The Courting Capers

Harry Potter Date Night

In honor of the new Harry Potter movie that was coming out, a group of my friends decided to have a Harry Potter theme date. This date turned out to be a lot of fun and took a lot of creativity. Unfortunately I was not able to obtain any pictures from our date, but I will do better next time.

To start off this date, we decided to make formal invitations. We made these invitations to look just like the acceptance letter to Hogwarts that Harry Potter received in the first movie. I wish that I still had the document to attach to this but it was on my other computer that recently died. We just searched Harry Potter acceptance letter through google images to give us the idea.

To make the invitations look like parchment, we simply crumpled up a blank piece of white printer paper, soaked it in Dr. Pepper, uncrumpled it, and let it sit out to dry. If you get to impatient you can use a hair dryer to dry it. (by soaking it in Dr. Pepper, it gave the paper a nice vanilla scent to it as well.) then you just stick the paper into your printer and print the invitation out on your parchment.

We then folded the invitations to look like an envelope and taped the invitations onto our lucky dates door and ran away.

As part of the invitation. Each couple was assigned a certain color to wear. There were four couples, so each couple received the colors of the different houses. For example, my date and I were in the house of gryffindor so we were assigned to wear red and yellow.

We wanted to keep the date as much Harry Potter themed as possible, so to start out the evening, since we were already assigned to our houses, we had a feast. We had potato soup that was served out of a cauldron.



After our feast we headed out on a scavenger hunt were we had to find the 7 horcruxes. (Tom Riddles diary, The Ring, The Locket, The Hufflepuff cup, Ravenclaw’s crown, naggini [the snake], and Harry potter).








We were able to find all of these objects at a dollar store. For Harry Potter we took one of those little army men and drew a scar on his forehead.
(But you could use anything, even just a wand)





Within our scavenger hunt, we had little stops along the way.

We stopped to play “quidditch”, which ended up being a game of tag out on the football field.

We stopped at “the three broomsticks” (the cocoa bean) for some hot chocolate

We even encountered a battle were we had to fend for our lives, against death eaters, where we engaged in a marshmallow fight with our marshmallow shooters(our wands).

Once we had found all 7 of the horcruxes and destroyed them, we then settled down to watch the last Harry Potter movie.

While watching the movie we also indulged in some Harry Potter movie snacks.

We had Licorice wands, rock cakes, butter beer, acid pops, Bertie Botts every flavor of beans, etc.







For the Licorice wands we just had plain licorice

For the rock cakes we used hostess ding dongs

For the butter beer, we used cream soda

For the acid pops, we took blow pops wet them down and rolled them in pop rocks

For the Bertie Botts beans, we used regular jelly beans


We all had such a great time on this date!! It really made for a remember-able experience as well because we all got to take home the horcruxes as souvenirs!!!

If you wanted to you could even destroy the horcruxes with your date, however we ran out of time.

Have fun dating!

- The Courting Capers

How it all Started

It has once been said that in order to have fun you must create it for yourself. I have always heard this principle but did not find it to be true until a couple of months ago.

I attend BYU-Idaho and although it is probably the best school that you can ever attend, sometimes it can get boring having very limited things to do in a very small town, especially in the winter. One weekend being tired of doing nothing but watching movies on the weekends, my friends and I decided to start up an epic marshmallow fight. We made our own marshmallow guns and invited everyone that we knew. It ended up being a huge success, and everyone agreed that it was probably the most fun that they had had all semester and I must say that I had to agree. As I reminisced on this great evening, it then occurred to me, why can’t you apply this same concept to other aspects of your life? So that is exactly what I am trying to do.

BYU- Idaho has an overpopulation of girls to very few boys, so as you can imagine the dating life can become frustrating. After many weekends of waiting for dates that never came, I decided that it was my turn to act. That is why I am creating this blog. To me it seems like the dating life has kind of dried out. Now it seems like the only thing that girls and guys want to do is hang out. We have heard the prophets talk about this problem many times, encouraging the young men to go out on dates, but yet so many young men still refuse to change. I have always listened to these conference talks taking a back seat on the issue. I believed that this was something that was just for the men, a chastisement just for them. As I have reflected more upon this problem though I have found that the prophets were not just talking to the single young men, they were talking to the single young women as well. We are all human beings created with intelligence, and we all have the power to act. Therefore, when the young men are not asking girls out on dates, the responsibility gets shifted into our hands. The question is, are we going to act, or are we going to wait to be acted upon?

I have decided that I am done waiting, I am going to act. So I have made a goal for myself that I am going to ask a boy out on a date once a month and blog about my fun date ideas and my experience through it all. I hope that this blog will give others the courage to act as well, and give them fun date ideas to do as they venture off into the dating world.