The date idea has been sitting innocently in our date ideas generator for years now. I see it every now and then and resolve to go along. When the Y date idea in our alphabet dates arrived, I couldn’t resist any longer.

I didn’t tell Den about it ahead of time – I find that if he has a preconceived notion of a date, he’ll bag it right away. It’s part of him hating to leave his comfort zone. I’ve made the mistake before of telling him where we were going when I knew he wouldn’t like it – it doesn’t bode well for a fun date. He gets all negative about it before he’s even had a go (Ten Pin Bowling and Strawberry Picking leap to mind). Usually, once we’re there and in the midst of it, he loves it.

We rolled up to Federation Square, Melbourne CBD. The middle of the city on a Sunday morning. Lots of people around to witness the ridiculousness (and yes, it is purposely ridiculous) of our little Laughter Yoga group.

The concept is simple: Laugh for no reason. The laughter leader takes you through a series of exercises incorporating breathing, rhythm and fake laughter. Pretty soon, the laughter stops being fake and turns to real laughter. You move around the group during your exercise, making eye contact with other members in order to contagiously spread the mirth.

I always laughed hardest when I caught Den’s eye – him too. Mostly because we were, I’ll admit, slightly mortified at what we were doing acting like lunatics on a Sunday morning in the middle of the city. It was hilarious. I caught Den wiping away tears of laughter at one point.

The practice goes for about half an hour, then you regroup and decompress – an important part of the process.

Straight afterwards, I felt light and happy and great. Then I crashed a bit – a common side effect if you don’t “ground” yourself enough following the session. I felt wiped out, frustrated, angry and sad all at once. There were a few tears. I wasn’t myself the rest of the day. I’m an emotional person at the best of times, and this had clearly stirred something up. Looking online, I found it was normal to clear away some bad emotions. I’m sure with more frequent practice, you can get to the feeling good bit.

Regardless of that, it was still a fun date. It met all the requirements we need – under $30 (free, in fact!), something we’ve never done before and something that pushed our comfort circles.

We made a little video for you to see. Find a laughing club near you and try it out!

Pack a Picnic
A classic! Take a fully-stocked picnic basket to a patch of green near you and while away a beautiful afternoon together in the grass. Soft cheeses, fresh fruits, maybe the weekend papers. It’s a beautiful way to spend the day together and get back to nature all at once. Not to mention, it’s relaxing – which is a nice change from a week full of deadlines and emails, no?

Play Pool in a Pub
Find a seedy pub with a good pool table and cold beer. Take a pocketful of change and spend the night challenging each other to a few rounds on the felt. To make it really interesting, place some stakes on game outcomes. Loser stacks the dishwasher for a week, for example.

Public Event
No doubt your city puts on stacks of public events throughout the year! Find out what’s coming up and head along – there’ll be street stalls, great food, things to do, things to learn about, a parade to watch… best of it, it’s free entry!

Playground
Find a playground and go play! Be big kids again. Chase each other around, throw water bombs, swing on the swings and get nauseous on the round-a-bouts. Anything that reminds you of childhood games is good. Wrap this date up with an ice cream.

Pampering
Spend a night pampering each other at your very own at-home day spa. You could give your partner a facial, a manicure, a foot rub, a massage…. The possibilities are endless. Pop on some relaxing music, light a few candles and some incense and get to it. Google is great if you want instructions on how to perform any treatments. Popping to the drugstore beforehand for supplies like body scrubs or bath bombs is a good idea.

This P date was a great one. My darling husband bought me a much longed-for DSLR camera a year or so ago and I rarely get to use it for arty shots. Mostly because it’s hard to find the time.

So I found this great Australian company, Photography Night Walks. They run tours in Melbourne, mostly, but have also been spotted around the likes of Sydney and Fremantle… I’m sure they’ll pop up somewhere near you soon enough!

The best part is, the Melbourne tour we went on only cost $15 per person. A whole group of people turn up with their cameras… Lots of SLRs, some with little instant cameras, some just have their iPhone and nothing more, but they produce amazing results!

And on our tour we were lucky enough to have, in addition to our fantastic guide, a real pro with all the lenses, tripods and advice you could want. It was casual, with the group meandering around slowly taking pictures, stealing inspiration from each other and sharing advice about shutter speeds.

Some of the walks end back at Loop Bar in the Melbourne CBD where they run a slideshow of everyone’s images for the night over a drink or two. Fantastic way to end the night!

We had a great night. We just used our one camera between us and we took a tripod as well. When one of us was with the DSLR, the other went nuts with the iPhone. I particularly love the Hipstamatic App for moody, grainy pics that showed up wonderfully (as per these two on the right).

Our guide was great at giving us tips and had lots to tell us about ISO and depth of field and whatnot.

I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves now, because I think we did a pretty damn good job for a pair of amateurs that don’t know how to use their fancy camera properly!

If the Photography Night Walk crew aren’t in your area yet, then take yourselves out on an even cheaper date and devote a night or an afternoon to walking around your city and taking some great pics that you can frame and pop on the wall to remind you of a great date night. You might even get dressed up yourselves and have a model shoot for the day!

Happy Snapping, Daters!

What do you think of this date idea? Any photography tips for us? Done anything like this before?

Well, I knew it involved co-ordinates and maps and things like that… and I have vague memories of a compass and a girl guide uniform in my childhood… But we did do some orienteering of our own this week for our O date idea and we had a blast – Geocaching is the specific name of the company who has engineered something to the effect of a worldwide treasure hunt!

More about Geocaching Date Night here.

Outdoor Cinemas
A summer’s night, a picnic basket, a bottle of wine and a great movie on the big screen with a pin-pricked backdrop of a starry sky… well, it just positively smacks of romance, doesn’t it?

Many outdoor cinemas are free, but even if you do have to fork out for tickets, it’s totally worth it. Pick a romantic or a scary movie for an excuse to snuggle closer.

Op-shopping
You can make your op-shop date night as fun or as serious as you want to. Assuming you’re the serious type, it’s simply a matter of finding some of your city’s best vintage stores and hunting for bargains. You’ll score a whole new outfit – each – for your $30 budget.

If you’re not the vintage-fashion type, then this date becomes a matter of public humiliation.

Go op-shopping together and pick out the most ghastly (probably 80s) outfits you can for each other, then plan to go for lunch or coffee afterwards… wearing the outfits chosen for you by your partner.

Take lots of pictures… and send them to us, we want to see them! What a hoot.

If you’ve never tried your hand at Vintage shopping before but have always wanted to, see if anyone enterprising in your community is running Op-Shop tours.

We can highly recommend Melbourne Op-Shop Tours, who are an on-foot-and-public-transport tour which is casual and relaxed (as opposed to shuffling you on and off huge buses all day) and while you shop they’ll give you great pointers on bagging great vintage finds. (NB: If you’re going on one of these tours, it’s going to cost more than $30 for the date night… but every now and then it’s good to splurge!)

Open Plains Zoo
It’s like a mini-African safari right in your own stomping ground and a great way to see animals out of their (normal) cages, roaming around larger open spaces. Enjoy a day there together taking lots of happy snaps.

Opera
I’m willing to bet most people haven’t seen a proper Opera before. And that’s great because at a minimum, the point of date night is to do something new. Grab you and your date tickets for a brand new experience. Same-day ticket agencies are your key to keeping this date night cheap.

Musical Date
Assuming your sweetie is musical, have them teach you a song on the guitar, piano, harpiscord or whatever it is that they play. If you’re really unco, abandon that idea and sing along as they serenade you at home over a bottle of wine. Lovely.

Markets Date
You got your Flea, your Farmer’s, your Designer, your Trash n’ Treasure… your Fresh Food, your Organics and your Art… whatever sort of market you find yourselves at, it’s a wonderful way to spend a weekend morning, browsing for steals and indulging in great coffee, yummy treats and time together. If you have money left in your budget, buy each other a small present. Because presents are always nice.

Movies Date
Sure, sure… it’s not all that creative. Unless you make it creative! One of our first ever posts on this blog is 5 Creative Ways to do the Movies, the $30 Date Night Way. Check it out and see what twist you can put on your next movie date.

Massage Date
Give your sweetie a fantastic massage. Pick up some sweet almond oil or a massage bar, spread out a towel and light some candles. It just so happens our own Denis Merkas has been a massage therapist for 10 years now, and he teaches couples all the time how to massage each other at our monthly Melbourne classes. Here’s his top massage tips for beginners.

Kikki-k’s Love Conversation Starters

Live Music
Find a cosy little jazz club, or nab tickets to a concert you know you’ll both love. Nothing like bopping the night away to great live tunes. Have a dance (if appropriate!)

Laksa
Coconut-y, delicious dish that deserves to be a date night all of it’s own. Find a great Laksa place near you and take your sweetie there for dinner.

Lattes
Find a fantastic coffee shop and spend a cold afternoon indoors with the weekend papers, a couple of good magazines and each others’ company. $30 should cover a few coffees as well as lunch or afternoon tea.

Lesson
Something you’ve always wanted to learn how to do? Sign yourselves up and go along… perhaps a cooking lesson, a surfing lesson, a wine tasting lesson… If you’re both Francophiles or perhaps planning a trip to Europe, sign yourselves up to a whole course of lessons and make that your weekly date night for a few months.

You know how in every household there’s a huge jar of spare change just lying around? We keep one on the bookshelf near our keys, and we dump any change we have into it so we don’t have to deal with it. Sometimes, I’ll fossick through it to get change if I’m heading out for a latte or something, but really I’m just after the gold coins and the silver all sits there.

So, you take that jar of change and you find your nearest bank with a change sorting machine.

It’s just like the pokies! You don’t have to do any counting, stacking, sorting or anything. You simply pour it in to the machine and it counts your money for you. At the end, it spits out a slip of paper which you take to the cashier and they give you proper money instead of 3 kilos of silver.

Whatever you reap from this little exercise is your budget for date night!

Our change was sitting in one of those little round plastic takeaway containers. Tiny and overflowing. Dumped it all into a sack, and then I commenced a search of the entire apartment. We found more change in the bottom of handbags, in the car, in drawers and on desks… We guesstimated we had around $65-$70 all up in our little kitty. Bonus! That’s more than double our normal date night budget.

We hauled it to the bank and nearly broke the machine with a rogue New Zealand coin and a paperclip (note to self: remove foreign objects) and then watched as the numbers ticked over.

Our jackpot in the end was $91.60! Add that to our normal $30 budget that we set aside for date night and you got $121.60.

So we headed for one of our favourite Melbourne restaurants: Yu-U. This is Japanese food at it’s finest, tucked away in a basement down a Melbourne alleyway. There is no signage out the front, there’s graffiti everywhere and you just open the door and slip inside to sublime Japanese minimalism and amazing sashimi. They are so reclusive we weren’t even allowed to take photos! I did manage a couple before I realised we were in trouble for doing it.

We had yellow fin tuna sashimi, melt-in-your-mouth Wagyu beef, Teriyaki salmon and eggplant with minced chicken… all delicious. We happily paid our $100 check and headed home for dessert and True Blood on the couch. An impromptu and lovely luxe date night for two.

I threw out the plastic takeaway container we were keeping our money in and have replaced it with a huge jar, at least 6 times the size. Can’t wait for it to fill up so we can go on an even more decadent date night next time!

What are you waiting for? Go find your spare change!

Big thanks to Little Miss Sorted for the idea!

Jump Yourself Silly
Ever seen one of those trampoline parks? They have indoor and outdoor ones, it’s basically Olympic-sized trampolines all set next to each other. You can bounce around while you play tiggy, dodgeball or kiss chasey.

Go for a Jog
Assuming you’re the active types (even better if you’re not) find nice afternoon for some light exercise and go for a jog together. Find a picturesque backdrop – a lake, a park – and get all sweaty together. A shower back at your place later is the perfect way to finish this one off.

Jazz Club
Live jazz has it’s own special brand of sexy. Find a cosy jazz club with great cocktails, dress up to the nines and enjoy a night together snuggled into a booth while listening to the twang of that double bass.

Japanese Night
There are two ways to have a Japanese night date – the first is to, obviously, head out to a Japanese restaurant.

The other is to try your hand at cooking traditional Japanese fare at home – if you’re really daring, try rolling your own sushi. Otherwise, stick to a chicken teriyaki or an udon noodle soup. Then settle in to watch a Japanese-themed movie together afterward – we love Lost in Translation.

Okay, what have I missed? Any other great J date ideas? Did you go on a date night this week?

Ice Hockey
Go see an ice hockey match! The sport has become more popular in recent years. Even our hometown of Melbourne has a league! And we’re a long way from Canada.

Ice Skating
If the violence of Ice Hockey isn’t your thing, try taking to the ice yourself at an ice skating rink. Glide along gracefully hand-in-hand… assuming you nor your partner is a barrier-grabbing nuffy like mine is. When we went, I skated around the rink by myself while Den staggered along on the outskirts being lapped by 6-year-olds. Too cute. Grab a hot chocolate afterwards to warm yourselves up.

Ice Cream
It’s a simple date, but a lovely one. Pick a warm day and get some ice cream scoops from your favourite place then take a long walk together.

Italian Food
What’s not to love about Italian food? Head to your town’s Italian district or find a great, cheap Italian restaurant with authentic food and pig out on pizza and pasta together. Spaghetti with meatballs always reminds me of that scene in Lady and the Tramp!

Indian Food
I love a great Indian curry with naan, pappada and a mango lassi. Indulge either out at a restaurant or with takeaway at home, followed by a Bollywood movie to top it all off.

Relationships are all about games. The Hard-to-get Game. The If-You-Don’t-Know-Why-I’m-Angry-I’m-Not-Going-To-Tell-You Game. The Hide-the… oh, nevermind. The point is, we’re hardly ever straight with each other, us lovebirds.

So the Games Night date seems a perfectly fitting night out for two, when you put it like that.

We found out that the Panama Dining Room in our hometown has boardgames all day Sunday. Glass of wine, plate of tapas, round of Monopoly. What a great G date! This bar-cum-restaurant is uber cool and very classy and we had a wonderfully relaxed night together there.

Wherever in the world you are, I’m sure there’s a bar or pub nearby that stocks the old favourite boardgames and maybe even a fireplace if you’re lucky!

Of course, Games Night can just as easily be done in the comfort of your lounge room. Which means that you can break out the really fun ones such as Twister! Or even, if you’re feeling racy, our personal favourite adult game… Nookii.

We opted for checkers, seeing as we were in public and all. We’re a big fan of the best out of three. Den won the first round, then I won the next two… and I have to say it… he’s a sore loser. Especially when it comes to losing to me. Which is why he has his sad face on here:

All in all a lovely and relaxing date to combat the winter chills… here’s the official rating.

Rate the Date
Romance Factor: 6/10 (bonus romance points if you do find a fireplace or candlelight)
Cheesiness Factor: 7/10 (dependant also on which games you play!)
Fun Factor: 7/10

Perfect night out for two no matter what your mood, great for a rainy afternoon and gives you a chance to chat as well as a nice distraction to focus on if you need it.

This was an encore G games night because we had to put off H for a week or so… planning something fun but it didn’t fall into place, timing-wise. Stay tuned though!