Here are five ideas to help make the movies a bit more interesting. A lot of these are Melbourne-based (write what you know!) but I’m sure the concepts are universal and you can find similar in your own city or hometown, wherever in the world you are!

1. The Outdoor Cinemas – The Ford Fiesta Moonlight Cinema runs every summer right around Australia and shows a great variety of new, cult classic and old favourite movies. Pack a picnic and a rug and snuggle under the stars while you watch. Favourites upcoming in the lineup include: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Pulp Fiction, Australia and The Dark Knight.
2. The Drive-ins – When was the last time you fooled around in the backseat of your car? The Coburg Drive-in is the perfect excuse to do just that! Get your own snacks from the supermarket first and steam up the windows during the previews and the boring bits.
3. Rooftop Cinema – Above Cookie Bar in the Melbourne CBD, The Rooftop Cinema allows you to chill out in your deck chair with a beer or wine and enjoy the city skyline while you watch. Admittedly, this date will cost you a little more than $30 but for the novelty of the experience, it’s worth it.
4. Half Pipe Cinemas – Cinemas with bean bags instead of chairs are popping up everywhere! Huddle together in an oversize beanbag, rather than negotiating the armrest while balancing the drinks and the popcorn! See Hoyts in Australia.
   
5. The Classic Theatre – Find a movie theatre that plays the classics and the cult movies – usually you’ll get a double bill for the price of one! The Astor Theatre’s line ups include Stanley Kubrick double bills, It’s a Wonderful Life coupled with The Shop Around the Corner and Casino Royale back to back with Quantum of Solace.

Ok, so the chicks out there are probably thinking, lame… could have done better than that for date night. And yeah, you’re right. But hey, every now it can be a boy’s night.

I added a little flavour to the date night and cooked for Em’s… for a change. I like cooking, I just don’t do it often – mango was the theme for last night. YUM! Grilled fish with mango marinade… and a mango / yoghurt dip, which I thought would go down great but was a little disappointed with. The fish was surprisingly good. Here’s the recipe for the marinade:

4 medium fish fillets, (flathead or snapper are good choices)
2 tablespoons mango chutney
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh coriander
chilli powder, to taste
Marinade for at least 20 mins.

Quantum of Solace goes for a short 106 minutes… so we decided to watch Casino Royale at home before we went out. As they say Quantum of Solace begins literally 1 hour from where Casino Royale left off from.

Out of the two movies, the opening scene from Casino Royale made my jaw drop the most.

Last Wednesday, Melbourne had put on a particularly hot, dry summer day. 33 degrees of sweltering sun. It was the perfect weather for a Fish and Chip picnic. I jumped on the internet to search for user reviews of the best Fish & Chips to be found in Melbourne. Luckily, there was a great one just a 15 minute walk from our apartment (Kiwi Fish & Chips East Melbourne… yum!) that has gorgeous gardens nearby for the picnic. We picked up our takeaway and a couple bottles of beer and headed to a little gazebo in the park to relax nearby and kick off our shoes. Just as the last chip was being devoured, the weather turned nasty, cold and windy.

We watched the rain come in across over the city and for a few moments thought it had missed us. Unfortunately, seconds later we were drenched. Bucketing down. And we were ages away from home. At first, I thought “great – two dates in one!”… someone has recently posted the idea of dancing in the rain on the $30 Date Night site… it sounds romantic in theory, and all I could think of was that kiss from the Notebook (I’m full of silly idealistic notions like that) so rather than complaining about my hair or being cold, I giggled like a schoolgirl and grabbed Den’s hand. Unfortunately, being the practical man that he is, he was having none of it and whinged like a banshee the entire way back across the park. Kind of killed any romantic vibe that might have been going on. He was cold and wet and didn’t think twice about complaining about HIS hair.

So instead of embracing the moment we dashed for cover and hailed a taxi, got home and jumped into the spa downstairs to warm up. Which was rather nice in itself anyway… and definitely a hell of a lot warmer…

So it got me thinking I can’t be the only one suffering at the hands of practicality, can I? Any other romantics out there with a way-too-practical-partner? The kind of partner that don’t like to buy flowers because “they just die after two days” or the kind that doesn’t like to spend a morning lying in bed for hours because “there’s a whole day out there – we should GO OUT AND GRAB IT WITH BOTH HANDS!” (woo… just try and stop me.) The last time I had the house set up with candles and romantic music, waiting for Den’s arrival, he walked in the door and asked “why is it so dark in here?”, flipped on all the lights and switched on the telly…

I’m picturing sheep, cows, goats… farmers in overalls and straw hats sitting on bales of hay. Where you bought egg’s that still had poo on them and the milk still came in glass bottles with foil tops… this is exactly what a girl likes (minus the poo and milking of cows etc… but pony’s… IF there is a pony, my brownie points will go through the roof!)

Let’s go googling… ahh google, the eternal knowledge base – where were you when I was a teenager? Google gave me the answer within seconds – Abbotsford, 2 suburbs away from the CBD… easy! Now the hard part… get the girl out of bed!!! (its 10am on Sat by the way… and disturbing her sleep at this point is regarded as a cardinal sin!)

The Market… well, it definitely looked like a farmers market, but posh version to what I had in my mind. There were chickens, and sheep, and you could even milk a cow, either at 10am or 4pm (we arrived there by 11.30 and

were gone by 1pm.) But there were no straw hats and the eggs were clean.

It was a children’s farmers market which was a lot of fun to see… kids chasing small animals and feeding them. I even saw one little cutie, she would have been not much older than 2 years old, she crawled under one of the farmer’s stall, sat herself down under the table and started to steal the stock that the farmer had placed there… her keen nose soon found CHOCOLATE!!! YUM!

Posh… what I mean is that the farmers have got creative with their labelling, things are definitely polished and refined as opposed to a piece of cardboard with “$2 per/kg apples” written with a thick sharpie.

Rhubarb and Cream tart… believe it or not, I’ve never had this before… ever! It’s something that I associated American TV with, something like the Beverly Hill Billies, bless those crazy hillbillies. Anyhoo, I’m proud to say that less than 3 days ago I was a virgin to the rhubarb and now a big fan of the tart.

My overall opinion about the Farmer’s Market – a definite date do!

Take your thirty bucks and go try some of the foods on offer, like buffalo sausages (don’t think Australia’s got any buffalo’s but hey why not try it?). Take some extra cash if you want to stock up for some groceries but your $30 should be on the experience. Go on kids, get out there and start Date Night! Or day… whatever… just get out there and have some fun!

How about this? Just one night a week, once you’ve put the kids to bed, turn off the phones and the laptop and spend some time with each other doing something novel and fun. There has never been a more important time for the two of you to cultivate your relationship and spend some one-on-one adult time together reconnecting. Try not to talk about them for a bit (as much as you love them, you will be better parents for having had a break from the whole thing!) and spend some quality time together.

Below are just A FEW of the ideas we have on our generator that can be done at home. If you’re working on a fortnightly date night (a lot of couples with kids just can’t manage once a week) then this is six months worth of dates for you! Right here!

Also, find another likeminded couple with children and trade off weekly so that you get a date night OUT every once in a while! You take their kids one week, they take yours the next…

1. Get arty one night and sketch each other. Go to an art supply store and get professional graphite pencils, a big artist pad and maybe a “learn to draw” book (or jump online to find out for free). You’ll be surprised at how easy it can be! You may even convince your partner to pose for life drawings…
2. Italian Night: Make mini pizzas, open a bottle of chianti, get some Tiramisu and pick up an Italian themed movie – Life is Beautiful, The Italian Job or Roman Holiday are all excellent choices.
3. Spanish/Mexican Night: Think Tacos or Paella, Sangria and Y Tu Mama Tambien, Like Water for Hot Chocolate, The Motorcycle Diaries or The Mexican…
4. Japanese Night: Make sushi together and rent out Lost in Translation.
5. Strip Chess: A twist on regular chess, for every piece you lose that isn’t a pawn, you take off an item of your clothing.
6. Have a picnic on the floor or in the backyard together. Sit on a rug, open a bottle of Champagne…
7. Love Conversation Starters from Kikki.K
8. Plan a 3 course menu and cook something special. Get extra brownie points with a homemade dessert! Light the candles, put on some romantic music and enjoy… all the little things will make this one special… a clean house, parsley garnish on the food, wiping the spots off the plates once you’ve served it up…
9. Ladies, dig out your overalls and head to the driveway. Ask your man to give you a lesson on how to service your car… changing tires, checking water, oil and transmission. Be grease monkeys together!
10. Girls, give your man some pampering. Perhaps a facial or a foot rub. Go out and pick up some handmade cosmetics made just for men and treat him.
11. Take a bath together
12. Assuming your date is musical, get them to teach you how to play something on the guitar, piano, etc.
13. Bake a cake together from scratch and decorate it! Get messy and get creative, see what amazing creation you can come up with.
14. Get cheeky and spoil your partner with a striptease!
See www.thirtydollardatenight.com for plenty more ideas that can be achieved, sans kidlets!

Each of us set off to find our favourite books that had impacted our lives in some way. We agreed to meet in the cafe where we would sit and tell each other, one by one, why we loved the book, what it meant to us, what was going on in our lives at the time. We settled in over coffee and cheesecake and began.

It was always going to be an interesting exercise. I laughed as I realised most of my books were childhood fairytales, while Den had a stack of nothing but business motivation books. That alone says so much about who we are, and it may not seem like an ideal match. But fortunately I believe that opposites attract – both of us bring such a different view and approach to almost everything we do. It makes sure we’re never bored, at least! The key to opposites is that your core values and morals are aligned. Everything else is just semantics.

So we sat and whiled away the time over conversations of The Faraway Tree and Anne of Green Gables meets Losing My Virginity and Think and Grow Rich. What were you doing at that time? Where do you remember reading the book? What did you think about it? Did it inspire you? Did it make you believe in great things? (In my case: fairies. In Den’s: triumph).

It was a lovely conversation, and a great date night for new and long term couples alike. A completely different way to spark a conversation and find out things you would never usually talk about. Reminded me of the Kikki-K date we did for Valentine’s Day last year!

What are other ways you know of to spark off conversations – either with new dates or long-time loves?

Just got back in from date night at Maha Bar… great little spot that we have featured on the Melbourne City Guide dates! Now, you can get away with a fantastic bar snack for $30… the lamb, lemon and chilli Turkish pizza comes highly recommended and the chicken and almond bastille is great, tucked into filo pastry and all dusted with cinnamon and sugar… yum!

Be warned, it’s easy to blow the budget if you get carried away… an Australian microbrew beer and a NZ Sauvignon Blanc plus the irresitable Turkish delight donut dessert and you’ve done a double-date night (as in, over $60 worth!) but sometimes you just have to be a bit naughty and indulge together…

Den and I have been doing our weekly date nights for about a year now. It did take awhile to get into the swing of things, but once we hit our stride, we didn’t look back. A week without date night feels strange… we are disconnected, we get snippy at each other, we don’t get to have a proper conversation in between work and friends and family (and TV/Couch) commitments… and we both notice it. 

The thing is, we love date night so much that we instantly thought others would too! But the truth is, our friends haven’t really jumped on the date night train… we hear a lot of excuses. So here are the top five reasons NOT to do date night. Sound familiar?

1. We have no time, we’re too tired, we’re too busy.

Whoa, what? You are too busy to dedicate a few measly hours a week to your relationship? Riiiiight. So, you’ll spend 50-odd hours (PLUS) at work, then get home and bring your freakin’ Blackberry, iPhone or laptop with you to cram in a few more hours of work and Facebooking between eating and sleeping… you’ll probably catch up with friends, together or separately, you’ll probably sit on your butt and watch television for hours on end together but you won’t take a night off once a week to spend with the one person you love most in the world? Priorities, people. You need to put SOME sort of effort in. Relationships are not all automatically Happily Ever After. They require work.

1. My relationship is fine. I don’t need your stupid date night strategy.

Why do we all think we should wait until our relationship has fallen to pieces before implementing something that will fix it? It shouldn’t have to get to that. This is your insurance policy, guys. This is a way to help from getting to rock-bottom at all… and why settle for “fine” when you can have AMAZING?

1. Dude, you keep using the words STRATEGY and IMPLEMENT. This isn’t a business plan.

Maybe it should be. Maybe setting goals in your relationship is not such a bad thing. A small, little weekly goal to spend some time together that you can achieve and feel like you did something worthwhile with each other! Maybe is we paid as much attention to our relationships as we do to our careers then the world would be a happier, more loved up place.

1. Right, this is all well and good for you young people, but we have children. You have no rebuttal for children. Date night is impossible when you have children.

Harder? Yes. Impossible? That’s a dirty word and you know it. First of all, if you must, then make date night a fortnightly thing. Secondly, there are PLENTY of good date ideas in our generator that can be done at home, once the kids are in bed. Yes, you might be exhausted by that time but I can’t stress enough how much the two of you still need to interact as a couple without the influence of the children. Make the effort, and you will feel more energetic and inspired for it. Get out of the house once a month on a date night together if you can manage it, and the rest of the time, do things together at home…. I’ll do a post soon of all the things that can be done at home for date night. You’ll love it.

1. My husband would never do it. He doesn’t know how to be romantic. (Sorry guys, I know this sounds sexist but I do hear this one a lot. Feel free to crack the stereotype for me.)  

Admit it, you love being right about him being bad at the whole romance thing. First of all, give him a chance before you write it off altogether. Secondly, a retarded monkey could use the date generator, it’s really not that hard. Set out the parameters. Tell him that every week is date night. Tell him that every other week is HIS turn to organise it. Then give him the URL to www.thirtydollardatenight.com and tell him to get to it.

THE FOUR WEEK CHALLENGE

So, here’s what I propose. I’m sick of the excuses. I know you love date night. Everyone loves hearing about my date nights! Do it for one month. Just do it. Commit for FOUR WEEKS to do a weekly date night and take it in turns to use the bleeding generator to organise something. It is cheap (there are even FREE ideas in there for those that are in no position to spend $30) and it is easy and we know you’re going to love it.

FOUR WEEKS. That’s all I ask. Then come tell us about it. If you do love it, if you do notice a difference in your relationship, then pay it forward. Convince TWO other couples that they will love date night and send them on the same four week challenge. Just two.

There are so many services out there for single people, dating services, matchmaking… everyone is working to get people together. We’re working to KEEP people together. We need your help to do that.

Last night showcased 6 comedians with big names like Fox K, Gabriel Rossie and Doug Chapel… Fox K was definitely the funniest, great stage presence and performance too – although we did manage to get fingered by Doug Chapel… a little uncomfortable at first but soon we got to see the funny side of it. For those Melbournites that have seen Dougs show, you’ll understand what I’m talking about, those who haven’t… go see it!

The cool thing with the Comics lounge is that last night they brought out one of those spin the wheel things, it manage to land on a number 6! Which meant that you could purchase future tickets to the Comics lounge for $6, and see any show (even the weekend ones that show case well known Australian comedians – usual price is $25), so not a bad deal if you ask me… but as we say, you cannot do the same date night twice within 12 months. Doesn’t mean you can’t go see comedy, just means that you don’t go see comedy for date night.

Emma pulled her claws out a little when I announced that we were going for comedy for date night… “haven’t you already taken me to comedy for date night before?” I’m like, “yeah, but that was before we had http://thirtydollardatenight.com up and running so it doesn’t count!” But when we finally got to the comics lounge we had worked out that it has been over a year since we’ve gone out to see comedy!

Rock on! Emma I am right, you are wrong!!! Hehe…

Guys, if you haven’t done comedy for date night, then go on… get out there and grab yourselves a laugh!

Comics Lounge:

North Melbourne – Australia.

http://www.thecomicslounge.com.au/

Maybe after all these years Tina Turner has found the answer for us? “Does love actually have anything to do with it?” If she could kindly post a comment that would be appreciated…

What I do know is that a relationship needs to be worked on, by both parties. I feel fortunate that I happen to run a site called $30 date night that forces me to actively work on my relationship with Emma. And it makes her do the same.

What’s different about this relationship to my previous ones is that we consciously make an effort to spend time with each other. Our designated nights (Wednesday nights = Den and Em’s night, and we alternate the dating duties each week).

When Wednesday comes around there is something different in the air – it’s hard to explain it – it just is! There’s excitement and anticipation even though my expectations are low… I’m not expecting fireworks each time Emma takes me out, I know that she is pulling the idea from a site that only gives you date ideas that are $30 or less, so I cannot blame her if it’s a flop… I mean it’s only $30 – what can I truly expect from my partner with a budget of only $30?

On the flip side, when it’s my turn to date Emma, I don’t feel any pressure that I need to impress. I can blame the site if it all goes rubbish. To be honest, these days I go for the cheesy date ideas because they are the ones that get the bigger laughs – we’re actually expecting the night to be tragic.

So who’s got the remedy… that magic bullet to produce and maintain the perfect relationship? I shudder when I read magazine headlines of the perfect date, the perfect relationship or sexual position. Are these people the experts? Does the editor have the answer? I mean, what is the status of their relationship???

Maybe my parents are the experts, soon to celebrate their 34th anniversary! Congrats to them… Surely after such a long time of being together they are the perfect candidates to guide us with the truths of what love actually is, but I, like most children have seen the difficult times our parents have gone through… the pain, the arguments and the almost break-ups. So is love actually the rocky road that we travel?

I don’t have the answer for you… the secret to the perfect relationship! But I do know that there is an element of my relationship with the gorgeous Emma that keeps me waiting for the next Wednesday to come around…

What’s your answer?

Tina… Are you there???