Date Night for the Indecisives

My fiancé and I have a really bad habit. Because we are long distance, we have fallen into this habit where we feel like its necessary to go on some super expensive dinner date every time we see each other, which turns out to be just about every other week. Not only has this gotten really expensive, it also has started to feel like a bit of a rut.  We aren't adventuring as much as we used to, and we're spending a lot of money that we need to be saving for stuff like weddings, honeymoons, and our future life together.. You know, just trivial things. Not.
SO, I got the idea from various blogs to come up with 75 dates in varying degrees of cheapness (some are a bit more expensive) to help us continue our dates while sprucing them up a little.  And to help with the fact that Jake and I both are extremely indecisive, I put them in a mason jar to pick out at random.  It was a fun little afternoon of crafting and I wanted to share it with you!!

You'll need:
A list of dates (can be found on various blogs/probably pinned to one of your boards)
A jar
Ribbon
2-3 colors of spray paint
Popsicle sticks
Sharpie

First, you'll need to divide your list into 3 sections: easy free/extremely cheap dates, medium range cost dates, and more expensive dates that require a bit more planning.
Then figure out how many of each category you have and set aside however many popsicle sticks for each and decide which color should represent each.  I left the cheapest category plain, the next cheapest were blue and the expensive ones gold.
Then spray paint your sticks, front and back.
While you let them dry, decorate your jar.  I hot glued ribbon around it. (It's all the same roll, but I flipped one over.)
Once the sticks dry, write a different date on each one in the corresponding color, and voilé!
Our first date from the date jar was ice cream sundaes. We got all the supplies and made banana splits at home and snuggled (after meeting our wedding planner for the first time!).  It was lovely!

Cake Balls

For Valentine's Day, I wanted to make something sweet.  I chose to try out some cake balls.  They're super easy and really fun to decorate :)

What you'll need:
a box of chocolate cake mix (and whatever it says you need to make the cake)
a tub of chocolate frosting
a LOT of dark chocolate chips (probably two bags)
icing in a the color of your choice

Bake your cake according to the box instructions.
Once it's cooled, crumble it into fine crumbs.  Add the entire tub of frosting. (Yeah, that's right, the whole thing...)  Mix it together as best you can with a fork (or your hands...).

Roll into little balls.
Heat up your chocolate to 120 degrees in the microwave, and then let it cool to about 95 degrees. (This is called "tempering;" it makes the chocolate harden a little more cleanly.)
Dip the balls in the chocolate and then set them on wax paper to cool and harden.
Once dry, decorate!