It’s no big secret that relationships can go through slumps, and that tends to be even more true when you have children. It can sometimes be hard to switch ‘parent mode’ off and just relax with your other half. However, what I’ve seen a lot of recently is ‘date nights’. Now ‘date nights’ aren’t a new thing, I suspect they’ve been round a lot longer than we realise without having an official title, but now they are becoming a ‘thing’ and I’m about to take full advantage of that.
Plan Our Date
Plan Our Date are a monthly subscription box that offer creative ideas for you to spend at least one night a month away from the TV, away from blogging, away from work and all the other hards of every day life and instead spend it with your partner.
Every month Plan Our Date will send you one planned, creative date box per month. Everything you need for your date night is included, and they even come with instructions, but if you’re feeling really adventurous just make what you can out of the box!
Now, I absolutely adore this concept. With Jamie and I sometimes working on our own thing every night and sometimes not talking at all because we’re so into the telly and just resting our brains, we could really do with one night a month where we put our hands up and say ‘enough – let’s have some time for us!’. These boxes allow us to have a date without leaving the house, without having to arrange babysitters, and without spending a fortune. We’ve all done it haven’t we? Gone out for a meal, not had much to say because you’re so tired, come home £80 short and flopped into bed without so much as a kiss goodnight. It’s parenting, it does things to you!
What’s In The Box?
The contents of every box will vary each month, but we’ve been lucky enough to road test their first ever Plan Our Date box – very exciting! In the first ever box is…
- 2 x canvases with 10 acrylic paints, two paintbrushes each and a pencil each
- Skinny popcorn
- 2 x Yorkshire teabags
- Everything you need for pancakes (minus eggs, milk and butter)
- A ‘Who Knows Who?” game with winners tokens
- An instruction manual
- A mini packet of Lovehearts (which I wouldn’t usually share..)
- 25% off our next box and 25% off for our friends – amazing!
The Instructions
We couldn’t find the Plan Our Date playlist, so the Olympics were on in the background, which is good enough for us!
“Who Knows Who?” is a really fun game. It does test your knowledge of each other, and low and behold Jamie won, which we always does on these types of games. He’s much more observant than I am, although it did push both of our memory skills. I ended up with the “one free massage” card though – woohoo!
The pancakes. Oh, the pancakes were delicious. All the ingredients are already weighed out, you literally just need to add your milk, eggs and butter from home. This is just one of those really simple things to do together, it’s not fancy. It’s raw, real and relevant and we love pancakes too (we may have added a sneaky bit of protein powder). I also love that I got to have Golden Syrup because that’s my favourite and I’m not usually allowed it in my porridge or anything so it was super lovely to have a little treat!
Messy painting. I’m really gutted that we haven’t gotten round to doing this yet, but the night had run away with us and we were totally shattered. We’ve put these away for another night – hey, two date nights out of one box can’t be bad right? In fact, it might even be nice to split up the activity over the month; have a date night every two weeks, or once a week, use the box to your advantage. I wouldn’t rush through it.
We opted instead to sit down with a nice cup of tea and the bag of popcorn while cuddled up. We didn’t go for a movie though, we again opted to watch the Olympics – they only happen once every 4 years!
What Do I Really Think?
I love the concept, I love the contents, I love the thought that goes into these boxes, I love Plan Our Date. There isn’t anything that I’d change to be honest, apart from perhaps being able to find the Spotify playlist. It’s certainly a kick up the bum to get back to date nights, especially with the wedding coming up. Everything can feel so stressful, and to just feel like we have a night where we don’t think about work, the wedding, or blogging for me then that’s amazing. After the wedding, I think we’re going subscribe for three months to see how this goes. You can guarantee the one night we set aside, the kids will play up!
Where Can I Get It?
You can head over to Plan Our Date to look at all the subscription options available. If you do choose to give them a whirl (which you totally know you want to do) then I have some super amazing codes for you!
- For 50% OFF your first box use code JADE50
- If you choose a three month subscription, you get your first month free when using code FIRSTMONTH
- If you want to just trial Plan Our Date, then you can get a condensed version of their box for just £2.99!
Or, if you’re feeling really lucky, Plan Our Date have teamed up with me to offer one lucky winner a three month subscription to their date night boxes. How amazing is that? All you have to do is enter below;
Terms and Conditions
- This competition will open on 11th August and will close on 26th August 2016 at 11.59pm
- One winner will be selected at random
- One winners will receive a three month subscription to Plan Our Date
- UK entrants only
- No cash alternative will be offered
- The winners will be announced on Raising the Rings social media outlets, not the blog
- The winners will have 28 days to respond to their winner’s email
*I was sent this product in return for a review. All views and opinions are my own.
That looks like lots of fun!! I Would definitely win the game though as Jono is rubbish at things like that haha xx