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!

F is for Free

Just before we left for our F date, Ed told me to come in the kitchen and bring him my purse. Weird…yeah!! I was thinking—is there some clue in my purse? Haha. Well, he told me to take my ID out of my wallet and leave everything else at home because F is for “free”. Ok…hmmm. What the heck can you do for free these days?? First, we went to George Ward Park to play disk golf.

It was so much fun. I even beat him on 1 of the holes, which is pretty good for me! It took about an hour to play 9 holes and drink a beer or two. And, it was so hot, we were both ready to get some air conditioner action by that time! We came home and he made some frozen daiquiris—deee-licious!! After a brief rest inside, we went to the pool, with our refreshing beverages in tow, of course! We both enjoyed the afternoon sun, and even worked on our tans a little. And, for dinner, Ed made fajitas. They were awwwwesome! F was a great date—and it was cheap!! Woot! Woot!

E is for Espana

June 3, 2010--E was by far the hardest letter I’ve had yet—ok, yeah, I know it’s only the 3rd one I’ve had, but it was much more difficult than I anticipated. After some unhelpful suggestions for friends (exhibitionism…hahaha!) and internet searches that yielded NOTHING, I found a blog where someone else was doing alphabet dates, and they had use Espana. I liked their idea, so I must give these mystery people due credit for their help—I can’t seem to find the same blog again, so I can’t provide names or a web address, but I just can’t take the credit for this idea. I did give it my own spin though! I found that the traditional dish of Spain is Paella, which is a chicken and rice dish with some veggies. It looked good, and somewhat easy to make. I also found an avocado salad recipe that is common in Spain. Now, both of these recipes were originally in Spanish, so I printed them as is, and then (with the handy google) also printed the English translation. I went through the recipes and bought all the ingredients, then printed off miniature Spanish flags, and taped the flags to each ingredient. I thought this would be the easiest way to figure out what ingredients we were working with—like a matching game. I know, it’s lame, but some of the words were difficult and I didn’t want this to take FOREVER. I also purchased some Spanish wine, and made little nametags for the wine glasses.

We made the recipes and DID have to resort to the English translated recipe on step 3 of the paella. It was pretty good when we were done. It could have used some more flavor. I think next time we try it, we’ll use chicken stock instead of water to give it that little something extra. The decorations were cute —Ed said that I was creative, and the dinner was pretty good! That goes down as a win in my book!

D is for Do Dah Day, Daiquiris and Doughnuts

May 15, 2010--Ed said he had something planned for D that required a weekend (disco, anyone?), but we had plans for about 4 weekends in a row, so he modified his plans. We wanted to take Sweetie to Do Dah Day (hello…3 Ds!!).

It was great—we got lots of free stuff and both decided that we need a big dog. Sweetie seems to get along well with big dogs too, unlike the little ones. There were some Great Danes there that I swear may have really been ponies, but hey…I wanted one!!!

After a really hot day out at the festival, we needed some nice refreshing beverages. And, what do you know—when we got home, Ed made daiquiris. They went really well with the krispy kreme doughnuts he picked up too—hot ones, might I add!!

C is for the Coca-Cola Ferris Wheel

April 30, 2010-- We had planned on going to the Crawfish Boil to see Seether and Theory of a Deadman, annnnd, it just so happened to fall on the week of my C date. I felt like it was a total copout to use Crawfish Boil as my C, but it was the only possibility (my favorite C was coasters, and we could go ride roller coasters, but it was too early in the season for Six Flags to be cooperative with their hours). While reading the Black & White, I noticed that the Coca-Cola Ferris Wheel was going to be at the Crawfish Boil, and if you clipped the ad out, you could get a fast pass to jump the line.

We rode it twice, and had a great time listening to all the music, and eating some yummy food. The second time we rode the ferris wheel, it was a little squeaky, and we were up top of a long time while other people were getting on an off. Both of us got a little freaked out at that point. I was so ready to get off that thing! But, all’s well that ends well and C was fun!