M is for Museum

M wasn’t a hard letter for me. There were quite a few options, but I decided to do something on the less expensive side because we weren’t experiencing a windfall! Lol! I decided a museum was the way to go. We have quite a few museums in Birmingham, but I really wanted to go to the Birmingham Museum of Art. First, we went to Momma Goldberg’s Deli for a yummy Sunday lunch—their nachos just rock my world. Then, on to the Museum of Art. There was a special exhibit on Japanese kimonos called Fashioning Kimonos—absolutely beautiful!! It was a really cool time; neither of us had ever been there before to see the exhibits, so it worked out wonderfully. We walked through all the Asian-inspired art, the Wedgewood Collection, and of course the special Kimono exhibit. We even looked through the museum shop for our very own kimonos—they were a little pricey, so we didn’t purchase one, but they sure were pretty!

L is for Loaf

Looking back, I’m realizing that a lot of our alphabet dates were centered around food. Oh well, at least we agree that life pretty much revolves around making food lots of fun! I had no idea what Ed had up his sleeve with L. When I was thinking about it myself, I was drawing a blank! He actually beat me home from work on L day, which was a total shocker. He had gone to specialty health food stores and bought all the things we needed to make 2 different kinds of flourless, yeastless bread. We made a flaxseed bread and an almond flour bread. They were both very different to me. Ed had made the flaxseed bread before, but not the almond flour one. I was pleasantly surprised with both. We made the mini loaves, and I had a couple slices of the flaxseed bread while we waited on the almond bread. Let me just tell you—that almond flour bread was dyn-O-miiiite! I had quite a few slices with some of our strawberry jam on top, and that’s what I had for dinner that night!! Ed had Leftovers, but I was completely content with the bread and jam! Sad, I know. I did love this date idea because I had never made any kind of bread before. Mostly because I need instant gratification and bread usually takes a day or 2 of waiting on things to happen. And, this showed me that I can make bread in less than an hour and it really is quite good. Overall, I was really impressed with it after having such low expectations about flourless bread!

K is for Kite

K wasn’t all that difficult a letter. I had a few really good ideas like kiln (ceramics) and kayaking. The ceramics place I wanted to go was closed permanently—ugh! And, I couldn’t get the kayaking trip booked in time. So, Ed’s sister helped me come up with Kite! It’s a mighty good idea, if I may say so myself, and a very cheap, fun date. First, I made a key lime pie to follow up the steak sandwiches I prepared for dinner. Key lime pie was the only food I could think of that started with a K—maybe I just wasn’t thinking outside the box, but that’s all I had! Lol! I got the kites at Target—way cheap! Since it was the end of summer, I got them for only 79 cents each! I mean, for that price, I went ahead and bought 2 so that we could see who was better at the kite-flying! I searched the web for various public parks near me that have large green spaces. I found a nice cozy park that also had a laKe and some ducKs. When we got there, we walked around the lake to the open green area. And, what do you know—even with a lake, there was no freakin wind! Can you believe that?!?!?! We roamed around the park a little while, let Sweetie chase at the ducks, took in the nice evening. And, what do you know—still no wind! Since wind is kind of vital to art of flying kites, we had to postpone K. Wind 1, Amy 0! We did end up going to another park on a mighty windy day and had a great time playing with the pups and flying kites!

J is for Jam

Oh my goodness—this was an awesome date! I’ll admit when Ed walked in with a pallet of strawberries and said “We’re making Jam!”, I had my doubts. I mean, my mamaw makes jelly, and though I’ve never watched her closely, it looks like a lot of work! Well, I’m here to tell you that jam is 1) easy to make, 2) really really good, 3)healthy, and 4) a real blast to make with someone! Ed brought home strawberries—6 pints, a case of small jars, and some Sure-jel (maybe I spelled that right). Our strawberry jam is healthy because we substituted Splenda for sugar. I was skeptical, but it was DELICIOUS! After we macerated the strawberries, we had to boil them for “exactly 1 minute” according to the directions. So, we whipped out the iphone timer and it was on. The tricky part was actually jarring the jam. We have to pour the jam in the jars while they’re sitting in boiling water, then we have to cap them with one tight turn. Oh, and that lid, it’s been sitting in boiling water too! We did it though, and apparently we did it right because all of our jars went “POP”. It was likely music to my ears!! The sound of success! Hahaha. The only problem I see with making jam is that you have to wait 24 hours for it to set up. I couldn’t wait the whole 24 hours so the next morning, I had some on my bagel and looooved it! Whether you’re alphabet dating or not, you need to make your own jam. I’m in love with the strawberry splenda jam, which is obvious by my eating it every morning! And, there are directions in the Surejel packages. Trust me, you don’t have to be Martha Stewart to pull this one off—it really is easy. And, now that we’ve done it once, we’re ready to make a lot more jars (since I go through it so quickly). We’re going to pick peaches ($4 for a big basketful) and make peach jam as well. This data was an A in my book, or should I say a J?!?!

I is for Ice Cream Sundaes

I was a little difficult—again with the vowels. I did come up with a good many options (Incahoots restaurant, ice skating), but discounted them all for one reason or another. When asking for suggestions, all I got was ice cream. And, well, that just seemed a little boring since we get ice cream once a week or so. One day it occurred to me that you can actually make your own ice cream, and that’s really cool. I lucked up—my grandparents have an ice cream freezer that I could borrow so that I wouldn’t have to buy one. It sat in the garage for almost 2 weeks, along with the ice cream salt, and Ed never noticed it. I felt really sly! I got the recipe for simple vanilla ice cream—eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, and of course ice and salt. It did take us a few minutes to figure out how to work the thing, but we got it going! While it was making the ice cream, we had Italian food out on the patio. I had decorated the table with a red and white tablecloth and put candles out—a little Tuscany in Alabama! About an hour or so later, we had some really good soft serve ice cream. We doctored it up with caramel and chocolate syrup, berries, and pecans. The ice cream alone was delicious. And, we both did something new—neither of us had ever made ice cream before!

H is for Bargain Hunting

This is probably the most creative alphabet date we’ve had yet. All of them have been a blast, but this one is definitely the most creative with the letter. And, it was a real adventure. Ed came home with $20—we each got $10. This is all the money we could take, and we were going to go places like thrift stores, second hand shops, pawn shops, etc. We started at an Unclaimed Storage place near home. I pass it every day going to work, but had never been in there. There were some real finds in there! I found a book by my favorite author for only $1 and Ed got a salad bowl set for $8 (we’re going to refinish it). From there, we visited 2 thrift stores and a pawn shop or two. Our treasures included 2 books, a lego piece (for my cousin who loves legos!), and a salad bowl set. With our remaining $8, we went to a dollar movie and then to Krispy Kreme for Hot Now Doughnuts!! It was a great date, and we went to places that we’ve never been.

G is for Go Karts and Mini Golf

I’ll start by saying that I had a really hard time with the letter G. Now, that it’s behind us, I can come up with all sorts of stuff—gardening, Gardens, grandparents, golfing, Great Outdoors, gazpacho—but at the time, I was pretty stumped. Maybe it was just a bad week. With a friend’s help, I found a location, and go karts and mini golf is about as fun as it gets! We went to a place called Treetop Family Adventure. If you’re local to the Birmingham area, I highly recommend this place for a great time. They have go karts, water balloon wars, 18 holes of mini golf, laser tag, and a really cool arcade. So, it’s good for a fun date or a family day out! When we got there, I told Ed what we were doing and he was totally stoked. Ok, so was I!!! It’s really cool how they do things there—you get a card, load it with any amount of money, and as you do things, you swipe it and it deducts the money. We got there kind of early because there was a chance or rain and we just can’t have that. So, there weren’t many people

there, and we were the only ones racing go karts. The track was awesome—full of curves with no straights. This is helpful if you’re in the lead, as I was the whole time, because you can block people from passing you. The track was slick and the karts went a good speed. Very fun! After that, we decided we were in for 18 holes of mini golf. The course was really nice and there were a few holes where it took a lot of strokes to get the ball in the hole, but we managed. I got 1 hole-in-one and that’s just a miracle in itself. Ok Ok…in the end, Ed beat me by a few strokes, but that was only fair since I kicked his butt on the go karts. We had a great time and will probably go back again for play some of the other games they have there!