Hey All, Happy New Year! My wedding anniversary is approaching soon. Usually, we hire a babysitter and check out a new restaurant and bar or take a family weekend/day trip if we can fit it with the teaching schedule. We don't usually buy extravagant presents. But this year is unusual. We can't do any of the things we like to do. We have thought about going for a day hike but that's our normal weekend, nothing special. We also talked about making special dinner (try something new) but that's also sort of normal pandemic stay-at-home thing we have been doing. Any ideas for making the day special? What do you all do to celebrate your special day? Thanks in advance for the suggestions!
Can you rent a movie theatre for a private viewing in your area? We can do it here. You get the entire theatre for yourself and up to 10 family members. Vineyards are now doing online wine tasting tours. I haven’t saved any but read about it while browsing for Christmas gifts. If you are ok with staying in a hotel, maybe rent a room for the night in a good one around you. I believe there are dating kits you can order online for an in home date night. Do let us know what you end up doing. I’m looking for Valentine’s Day ideas myself!
I love pranks, amusement, paradoxes, a dash of creativity and subtlety of wit in any form of romantic gift. Doesn't matter whether it's a carved pencil or a napkin, but he should know that much fun & thought went into it because it's HIM, karke! Custom ordered dinner mats, pillow cases, t-shirts on the maths and cosmology memes. Obscure yet the partner recognizes the metaphor because it happens to be a standing joke in the conversations. Design the print and order from novelty shops. Create my own relationship meme with Toroflux or Banach–Tarski paradox, or the science setter of the year in a romantic spin, something he vaguely mentioned in a conversation not expecting that I pursued that casual reference, something folklorish or something he was amused in archaeology news, anything classic like the Leakey's Angels in a funny cover-story and bounce off that imagination. The thing is, something passingly insightful he mentioned during a conversation, and has no recollection of it. But you made a gift of it! I'd design comic characters using online software from age#2 to age#n on how both grew up each side of a cosmic wormhole and finally met years later. Silly Asimov and Stepford Wives kinda wonked up fiction memes. Something he would laugh out loud. Just captions and cloud-thoughts of the characters dreaming funny about the other through the ages. Dubious romance quotes of famous scientists, further, misleadingly attributing to an Egyptian scribe on the t-shirt picture. But he should sense that compounded fake news! I'd observe some book he's been reading for ages. Design a cartoon depicting my leaving him for a three-toed assiduous sloth who's finished the book. Print off on a blank greeting card. Modest on the purse, but lavish in imagination! That would be my style. That'd better be his style, too.
Tooth brush holder and shoe bag (used in travel packing) are great accessories for personalized thought. The mundane of the things to be gifted in an imaginative way. A lot of comic imprint could be handled by those items. The key is to personalize in creativity depending on the couple's chemistry and goof factor. Something he mentioned so waywardly, his childhood favourite comic character from Ukraine or Turkmenistan, doubting if I had even heard him to be turned around in unexpectation that I managed to reproduce that as a tooth brush holder. I love such capers with each other. The element of thoughtfulness in an unforeseen style in the most humdrum of the everyday objects. Wickedly playful to each other. Just answering ...what you all do, not necessarily you must also do.
One more ...woolly socks! Not any branded. But ordinary socks personalized in comic romance with custom print. Tooth brush holder, shoe bag, socks would be my choice of items to the man. Most ridiculous and mundane things redesigned in intimate flair of his observed tastes.
Thank you @Novalis! I loved reading your replies. I love the little thoughtful gifts that show how much attention you pay to your partner's interests and silly little everyday conversations. We do these kinds of things throughout the year. We both have become minimalist over the years (kids stuff rules the house) and instead of buying a new silly tee or other material stuff, we write/draw notes to each other. We do sometimes send cute little things to the office address (It stays in the office and doesn't clutter the home). It's a fun way to keep the spark going in the relationship. With both of us being scientists, a lot of our "gifts" are fun biology-based stuff. I absolutely love the book "Good Night Lab" based on the children's book 'Good night Moon' that my husband picked up a few years ago during his conference trip. Or a hand towel saying "who has time to clean when there are books to read" (absolutely sums up my motto). One of my husband's most favorite gifts is a mug handmade by my friend with a cartoon of my husband and son (my son running and giving him a hug...saying CRASH as he used to do as a toddler). I asked my friend to make this for Father's day. Oh, the little things! Now back to thinking about the nice way to spend our anniversary. 12 years of togetherness deserves to be celebrated well!
Thank you @Laks09! I knew you will have wonderful ideas. We don't have any family where we live and my son absolutely hates going to a movie theater (I know... weird) so that has to wait until kids either grow out of this theater hating or can stay home on their own. I thought about wine tasting but my quick search of wine country suggested that Napa/Sonoma vineyards are open for pick up and taste at home only. I am okay with staying at the hotels (have done it twice for fieldwork last semester) but my husband is not too thrilled. I was planning to book a treehouse in Idaho and enjoy nature without being close to a lot of people but DH didn't find it exciting right now. I found some online cooking classes (a chef helps make the cuisine you pick, 2.5 h of the chef's time). That might be fun without leaving the house. Since cooking is my husband's way of relaxing that might be something he would enjoy and I would enjoy the product. I still have to run it through him. One of our friends owns a winery, I am planning to ask him to send a bottle or two to pair with whatever food we decide on. We have done a few of these in-person classes where you make food together with the chef. Always fun to learn the techniques. I am thinking to buy him a personalized cutting board and an apron (How romantic) and matching aprons for kids because they are always ready to help dad cook. Please do let me know if you come up with more ideas!
@Novalis Socks are my favorite gift! I get custom made socks for my friends, kids, myself, husband- everyone for Christmas! My friends started picking up socks for em whenever they see something cute and know I'd love it. I don't own any boring black trouser socks, all my socks have a story to tell.
