Weekend Kindness
Reaching Others Through Kindness

Having trouble trying to figure out what do you with your sweetheart next week?  Let Weekend Kindness help you with some ideas:

Creative Dating

1. Let’s Make a Deal: Hide different date ideas behind doors, give them a choice of the doors, and then ask if they want to trade.
2. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire: Have a set of different questions, and the more questions they get right the more fancy the date.
3. Deal or No Deal:  Like the Let’s Make a deal, place different dates in different boxes, have them choose one, show the different things they could win, and then be willing to trade them something in the middle after each pick.
4. Photo Fun:  Find a photo booth and tell a story with the frames.
5. Food on the Go:  Plot with some friends to have food in a strange locale– anyone say McDonalds served on a beach?
6. Celebrate Summer in Winter: Get a bucket of sand in the winter and turn up the thermostat,
7. Christmas in July:  Bundle up in parkas in an air conditioned room in the summer.
8. Game Board Dining:  Create a game board with all the local restaurants that you like, and roll dice to figure out where you’ll be eating.
9. You Look Like What You’ll Eat:  Spend some time dressing in the ethnicity of the food you will be eating– I can just see the sombreros and ponchos now.
10. The Best ????? In Town:  Having trouble agreeing on a place to eat, decide that you will try out different places every time, and that you’ll be rating them as if you were a critic.

Cheap Dates

1. Imaginary Shopping Spree:  Go to a store or mall with an imaginary $1000 to spend– act like you have the money, get sales associates to help you, and/or make a list of things that you would buy with the money.
2. The Best Thing You Can Buy:  Go to the mall with only a small amount of money (say $20) and have a game of trying to find something that your date will like for that money– have it become a competition to see who can do better than the other.
3. One Red Paperclip:  Taking off on the idea of the man that traded a paperclip to a house, go to the mall or some place where there are lots of people and only take with you something trivial.  See if you can trade it up, and what you can get for it.  Make it a competition to see which of you can get the biggest thing.
4. Card Looking:  Go into your local drug store or Hallmark store and search for the perfect card.  Then, swap cards with each other– Don’t buy them!  Don’t sign them!  Just swap them.
5. Find Seashells:  Have a sea shore near by?  Take your date to the shore and look for sea shells or nice rocks.  Bring a bag lunch.  Plan to use the rocks– paint them, mount them on magnents, etc., to remember it.
6. Snowfriend: During the winter (if you have snow) sneak over to a friend’s house when they’re not home and make a snowman that looks like them (plan before to sneak some of their clothes!).
7. Guess the Occupation:  Take people watching to a new level.  Try to guess what the person that you see does for a living, or even give them names!
8. Coloring Books:  When you were a child you didn’t stay in the lines, you didn’t match the right colors, but now you really know how to color.  So, spend some time creating a work of art.
9. Puzzle Time: Have one of those thousand piece puzzles that you’ve never have had a chance to put together?  Time to dig out some hot chocolate and get it done.
10. Tunnel of Love:  Tell your date you’re going to a tunnel of love.  Then take them to a car wash!  You’ll get privacy, a waterfall, and a clean car all at the same time!
11. Rainy Day Golf: Instead of the perfect day, choose to go to miniature golfing on a rainy day– you may get in for free!
12. The Drive In:  Get or borrow a projector, go outside and shine a movie (home movies or any kind of movies will work) right on the side of the garage.  Plan for intermission.
13. Play a game for two:  There are a lot of board games that are for two people (my wife’s really good at Othello), but up the steaks.  Come up with unique penalties for the loser or prizes for the winner.  Use your imagination.
14. A Walk on the Beach: Roll up the pant legs, and plan to get wet and sandy.  Walk down a sandy beach as the sun sets– beautiful.
15. A Poem For You: Take a trip to the local library and search through the stacks for a perfect poem.  Write it down to share after you’ve gone home.

photo by simmbarb

The Picnic

1. The Big Chill: Bundle up and eat out on a frozen lake.  Make sure to bring a lot of warm and toasty goodies.
2. Scavenger Hunt: Hide your picnic items along a trail, or place a basket an blanket at the end of several clues.
3. Out in the Country:  Find a place on the country side, where there are no powerlines, etc., and lay out a blanket to enjoy nature.
4. In the City: Have a picnic right in the busiest park.  Extra points if no one usually picnics there and you bring a picnic blanket.
5. Yogi Bear: You and your date talk like Yogi bear for an entire picnic– did you bring the pick-a-nick baskets, Boo Boo?

Quick Dates

1. 30-Minute Hot Tub: Use your hot tub, borrow a friends, or use your tub.  Just spend some time relaxing.
2. Video War: Go to the nearest arcade and try to beat each other in one game that neither of you have played before.
3. Goose Grease: Find some ducks or geese and bring plenty of bread products.  Oh, and you may want to bring human food too.
4. Together Workout: Get up early or stay up late and do some working out together– you’ll be spending time and you’ll be losing weight.
5. Formal Fast Food:  Dress up to the nines and go out to eat– only do it to a fast food restaurant.  See if you get better service in a tux.  Watch out for the ketchup.
6. Floating Bubbles:  Get some bubbles and go to the top of your roof, and blow some bubbles.  See how far they go, and how well they float.
7. Ride Elevators: Go to a building that has multiple elevators and see who can get to the top floor first.  The loser buys the winner a treat on the way home.
8. 15 Minutes South: See how far you can get in your car, on your bike, or jogging in 15 minutes.  Mark it on your map.  Take different routes for each adventure.
9. Playground Fun: Go to your local playground and see who can swing higher on the swing.
10. Massage: Give each other a neck massage.  One person each date, that way the person can relax without thinking that their turn is next.

photo by npiggy2

Big Time Date$

1. Fancy Transportation: Make getting there more important than where you’re going.  Go in style– hire a limo or a horse drawn carriage.
2. Go on Safari: Go on an African Safari and make sure to get plenty of pictures of Elephants.
3. Go on Broadway:  Get tickets to a Broadway show, make sure to get fancy clothes, and have a dinner that you can’t afford.
4. Catch the Orient Express: Lots of history surrounds this railroad, add some history of your own.
5. State or Country Capitals: Explore a region of the world by visiting all of it’s country, county or state capitals, and make sure to get photos of yourself at the places.
6. Heliodate: Hire a helicopter pilot to cruise around your city.
7. Interstate Lunch:  Have a meal in a different state.  Bonus points if you have to fly to get there and back.
8. Full of Hot Air:  Rent a hot air balloon.
9. Professional Photographer:  Get all dressed up, your best outfits, and go spend a session being photographed together with a highly paid professional photographer.  Have the results framed.
10. Say it with Jewelry:  Go to your favorite jewelry store and pick out a setting that declares your love.

Surprises

1. Ransomed Teddy: Steal an item of sentimental value from your lover and create a not out of magazines.  Make her meet you in order to get it back.
2. A Change in Menu: Before going out to a restaurant, get a copy of the menu and change some of the items or put in special messages.  Make sure you get it switched before time.
3. Breakfast in Bed: We talk about this one, but do we actually do it?  Do it right with flowers, etc.
4. Weekend Surprise: Pack their bags, get someone to watch the kids, and reserve the hotel– and then get out of Dodge.
5. Breakfast Kidnap: Get up earlier than your spouse and take them (forcibly if necessary) out for breakfast pjs and all.  Or have it catered.
6. Terrorist Kidnap: Make sure you clear this with Homeland Security.  Get friends to dress up in black, use squirt guns, and have them escort your date to a place and time that’s been arranged.  Make sure neighbors or coworkers know what’s going on, and that your date knows that it’s in fun.
7. 30 Days of Surprises: Save up your money for this one– make sure they get a surprise a day.  Send it via mail where appropriate.  The surprises could be things of monetary value or even backrubs.
8. Up on the Roof: Get permission to go on top of the roof, and bring a basket of food, music, and dance the night away under the stars.
9. Do -It-Yerself Dinner: If you don’t normally do dinner, then this is definitely for you.  Get some time off, look through the cookbook, and make them meal before she does.
10. Clean-Car Thief: Take the car that they drive and clean and wash it when they’re not looking.
11. Do What’s Not You: Take your date to something that you dread, but you know that they would love.

Dates for Two or More

1. Senior Double Date: Go out with an older couple.  Find out what they would think is a fun date, and try it.
2. Night Croquet: Play croquet at night with flashlights.
3. The Group Drive-In: Get a bunch of friends in a pickup truck and go out to catch a movie together.
4. Dessert Party: The more the merrier– throw a party where the price of admission is some outrageous dessert.  Each dessert must feed at least six, and have a prize for the winner.
5. Bowling in Style: After a formal date, go bowing.  Bowling shoes look great with tuxes.
6. Noah’s Ark Party: Have every couple come dressed as animals that came two by two.
7. The Hearty Party: Bring large volumes of a single food for a huge feast– everyone helps prepare.
8. Couples Card Games: Either boys against girls or matched with your partner.  Make it a regular event.
9. Dutch Double Dating: Go out to eat and you pay for the other couple.  Be careful what you order!
10. Grilling it up:  Find a spot near some water and in nature and grill up some food outdoors.

Creative Gift Buying

1. Flowers: Buying a girl something that will die shortly may not make sense, but it is a winner!
2. Scents: Be careful– he may not want to smell like that guy you just smelled– and pick the one that she wears most often.
3. The File Card:  It would be wise to keep some kind of information on file (sizes, colors, stones, perfumes, places to shop, etc.)
4. Big Game Hunter: On the front, some animals, on the back, a long-needed or wanted item.  Get yourself a you gun or bow and arrow and when they hit it, go get it.
5. Treasure Chest: Put something you know that they will like in a treasure chest, but make them try to guess which key, or what combination, only once a week.

Get the Message

1. Postcard Puzzle:  Send a message to your date, but send it across multiple post cards, and send them out of order, so that they’ll have to wait to get all of them before they get the message.  Write sentences across post cards to add to the fun.
2. Make Your Own Card: She’s got the card stock, you have imagination.  However you can, make her something from the heart.
3. The Love Calendar: Get your own calendar, and write special dates (or why you love her) on different dates.  Wrap it up as a gift, and make sure to remember those dates.  Hide the dates with post-it-notes if you get creative.
4. Hidden notes: Nothing says adventure like hiding notes around the house.  They make heart-shaped post-it-notes specifically for this purpose.
5. At Work Notes: Write a note and send it to your date’s place of employment.  Make sure you take into account who might read it!
6. T.P. Love Notes: Unroll a fresh roll of toilet paper a distance and write a message asking them out.  Roll it back up and reinsert it on the dispenser.
7. The Jigsaw: Get a jigsaw puzzle, spray out the picture with white paint, and write your own message with felt pens (or use card stock).
8. Where You Least Expect it: Drop messages all over the place where they least expect it– in clothing, on the pot roast, etc.
9. Word-Puzzle Love Note: Create a love not using a hidden-word puzzle.  Send it in the mail, etc.
10. Taped Love Note: Ask your date to call you at a certain time and leave a juicy bit of love talk on your answering machine.
11. See You in the Comics: Get the Sunday comics, white out the dialog on a favorite strip (after you’ve copied it, of course) and leave them a message.
12. The Pididdle: Instead of counting in the air, every time you see a car with the headlight out, give your lover a kiss.
13. Nutty Mail:  See if the post office will deliver things like a coconut in the mail, and deliver a note that will drive them nuts.
14. A Card a Day: Send your date a card for 30 days.  On day 30 do something special.
15. You Steam Me Up: When your mate is in the shower, right a love message in the condensation on the mirror.

Communication Creators

1. Know it All:  Take something that they like and become an expert.  Get books from the library (or use the Internet) to find out about something they know, and surprise them with your new knowledge.
2. Oldies But Goodies: Dredge out old tapes or albums, get some good things to drink, and wax nostalgic.
3. Penalty Chess: Tape messages and notes to the bottom of chess pieces, and every time a piece is lost they have to read it.  A punishment for losing a piece could be something both people enjoy– like a long passionate kiss, or “you take the garbage out tonight.”
4. Conversation Cards: Create a communication game by writing down questions that you want to hear your lover talk about on three-by-five cards.
5. Read to Me:  Find a book that both of you would enjoy and read a chapter each evening to your spouse.  If it works for the kids, it should work for your spouse!
6. Sleepytime: Set a weeklong tradition of turning off the television a half hour before bedtime and talking over hot chocolate or caffeine-free tea.
7. Renew Your Vows: Every year you can renew your marriage commitment by reciting your original vows.
8. Remember When: Get out the albums, break out the pictures, and reminisce about how things were when you first met and married.
9. The Tea Party: Purchase a selection of teas, plenty of boiling water, and do a tea tasting.
10. Get out of the house: Make sure that you spend time together, away from the kids– for that will truly help bond you together.

(Ideas taken and adapted from Dating Your Mate with some of my own thrown in for good measure.)

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