Creative Quarantine Date Night Ideas

If you are currently quarantining with your significant other during the COVID-19 pandemic, it can be hard to think of creative ideas to make date nights as special and exciting as they once were. If you’re anything like me, I love going all out to make something special, so coming up with some creative date night ideas in quarantine is right up my alley. These ideas aren’t JUST for couples! They can easily be enjoyed with roommates, family, or by yourself!

Each week I will be adding another idea to this page to help inspire some creativity while we social distance. I hope you enjoy!

Wine & Paint Night

Adam and I had a wine & paint night a few weeks ago using watercolor paint. Looking at the same photo of our dogs, we spent the evening creating masterpieces that we plan on hanging up in our house! Replicate our night with this watercolor set that you can buy online.

Mold Each other Out of Clay

You heard me. We got our hands on some air-drying molding clay and spent the evening trying to mold a portrait of the other person to the best of our ability. Which was… uh… extremely hard but a lot of fun haha. I bought the terracotta-colored clay, but they also have white and grey online. This was the clay I used, and these were the tools we used with them! Such an easy and affordable creative date night.

Enjoy a Fancy Restaurant at Home

I printed up some menus for the “Quarantine Grill”, set up a table cloth with a candle, and treated adam to a three-course dinner, complete with a cocktail menu and wine selection. We sipped on a Sparkling Lime Poloma before ordering the nicest wine on the menu! We had the best time pretending we were at a restaurant and spending some quality time together. We even ended the evening with a movie night.

We did have a bit of a hiccup during the main course. Poor Adam was carefully trying to place the full wine glasses back onto the table, so I could take a picture of the final product for this blog post. He accidentally knocked the entire wine glass onto his plate, shattering the glass and pouring the wine all over his meal and the white tablecloth. Luckily, I was able to save his meal, which probably had a strong hint of wine to it, but oh well — he still seemed to enjoy it. We had an extra tablecloth, so we quickly cleaned up, swapped it out, and then got back to enjoying our evening.

I used Canva (free app and website) to create the menus from one of their pre-made templates.

Build Your Own Terrarium

For Valentine’s Day this year, Adam bought us two terrariums for a fun date night sometime in the future. Well, we finally put them to use for a fun filled quarantine date night. As someone who is a little more immune-compromised than others, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t have to step foot inside a store. I was able to order all of the necessary items online, including the live succulents!

To make our little ecosystem, we used a glass geometric terrarium, river pebbles, horticulture organic charcoal, potting soil, assorted succulents, and sheet moss.

How to Make Your Terrarium:

1. Add about a 1-1 1/2 inch layer of river pebbles to the bottom of the terrarium.
2. Pour in a thin layer of horticulture charcoal over the river stones.
3. Add a few inches of potting soil.
4. Remove the plastic pot from your succulents, remove excess soil, and arrange them in the potting soil.
5. Add a thin layer of sheet moss around the succulents and place any additional pebbles or accessories (our terrariums came with little owl figurines).
6. Enjoy! Be sure to water every 3-4 weeks.

In-Home Brewery tour

This past weekend we pretended to venture down to San Diego to experience a few of our favorite breweries. I grabbed a few different types of beer from Stone Brewing, Saint Archer, and Modern Times via our local liquor store, printed up a few menus, thought of some games, and hosted a fun in-home brewery tour for Adam and me.

First Stop: Stone Brewing – located in the loft

Next Stop: Saint Archer – located in the office

Final Stop: Modern Times – located in the backyard

Make YOUR OWN SUSHI NIGHT

Since we can’t enjoy a date night to our favorite sushi restaurant, we decided to make it ourselves at home. Our menu consisted of tempura shrimp, smoked salmon, and seared ahi tuna. It turned out to be much easier than expected and so much fun! We even paired it with some Junmai sake from our local liquor store.

We used this sushi-making set that comes with two bamboo sushi rolling mats, a paddle, a spreader, and five pairs of chopsticks for our date night.

Here’s how we made it:

1. First, decide on your protein (or just keep it vegetarian if you want). We made tempura shrimp with the Kikkoman Tempura Batter mix. It was really easy to use and turned out amazing. We also bought smoked salmon from the store (since I didn’t have the chance to find sushi-grade fish nearby), and made some Ahi Tuna, that we received in our seafood box from Thrive Market.
2. Chop your veggies. We thinly sliced carrots, cucumbers, and avocado to use in our rolls. We forgot to buy jalapeno, but that would have also been a great addition.
3. Make your sushi rice. I followed this easy recipe from Allrecipes.com.
4. Lay out one sheet of seaweed paper (make sure to buy the kind specifically for sushi making — it should say on the packaging) onto your sushi mat. Paddle a thin layer of rice onto the sheet.
5. Start adding your ingredients in a thin line on one side of your seaweed sheet.
6. Carefully roll your mat until the edge of the seaweed sheet completely covers your sushi ingredients. Continue rolling the sushi into a tight cylinder. Remove the sushi mat from around the roll, slice into pieces with a sharp knife.
7. Grab your chopsticks & enjoy!

RECREATE YOUR FAVORITE DATE

This week we decided to recreate one of our favorite dates from the past few years together. We both agreed that spending a day on the boat in Positano, Italy a few years ago was one of the best dates we’ve ever had. Since I couldn’t exactly bring a boat to our house, we instead decided to replicate our meals by sipping prosecco and making ravioli from scratch.

We followed this recipe to make the ravioli, which was a lot easier than expected. However, I used almond flour to cut down on the carbohydrates and it ended up giving it a weird texture. I recommend just using regular flour if possible.

We filled our ravioli with a combo of sautéed mushrooms, kale, and goat cheese, or roasted red peppers and parmesan cheese. I topped them with an easy tomato cream sauce (combine 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream, 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese, and 3 tablespoons of tomato paste over medium heat) and some freshly seared scallops.

Bon Appetit!

DECORATE A CAKE tOGETHER

We made a geode cake!

This weekend we spent some time with one of Cak The Bakery’s DIY Decorating kits for our weekly date night. The kits come with pre-baked cake layers, two types of frosting, and all the bells and whistles to decorate a delicious layer cake. This month, Cak The Bakery featured a Geode Cake, complete with sugar crystal details and metallic edible paint!

If you’re interested in your own Cak The Bakery DIY kit, use code CUPOFOJ at checkout for $5 off and 10% donated to T1International! This code is valid on the DIY Geode Kit, the DIY Drip Cake, and any designs coming out next month.

Be sure to tag me on Instagram if you recreate any of these ideas and stay tuned for another idea coming next week!