Date Night Des Moines: exploring the city

The weekend before my surgery, I told Adam I wanted to do "lots of walking activities!" since I knew I'd be laid up for a while afterwards. Sadly, the weather was cold, windy and rainy both days. We had plans to explore downtown a little bit, but decided it wasn't worth the drive if we were going to end up hiding out from the rain. So instead we made our first trip to the West Des Moines Public Library (it's been years since I've been to a library outside of studying!), where we found a beautiful pond with walking trails...

So even though it was a chilly 50 degrees and we were both underdressed for it, we stayed out for a while and walked around, taking in all the strange sculptures and beautiful weeping willows (both Adam's and my favorite tree) and the geese swimming/flying around.

Walking has always been one of my favorite activities. Whether it's with a friend, a date, my sister or my dad — it's a nice way to talk without pressure or expectations; it's just relaxing and free. And what's even better is walking somewhere that you're not completely familiar with because you never know what you might discover.

P.S. Mini-golf date night, coffee, books and Lent and Creme Cupcakes

Date Night Des Moines: Double dates and dive bars

I live in Grimes, which is a mostly residential suburb of Des Moines, and even though I've been here almost a year now, I really haven't explored much. My mom has lived here for four years though, and her favorite local place is (surprisingly) a dive bar on Main Street. If you knew my mom, who found beer disgusting until about six years ago, you'd be as shocked as I was when she told me about Stevie C's.

Date Night Des Moines: board games for two

Adam and I got into Settlers of Catan last year while we were both still in college. His roommates played it and taught us, and then it became a growing thing in our friend group — like to the point where we would have plans to go out and then end up staying in just to play it! Have you ever played before? It's such a fun game!

Date Night Des Moines: coffee, books and Lent

So I already missed one Date Night Des Moines post since I announced the new series last month. We were traveling one weekend, and then Adam was sick, and I had a few work things going on...you know how it goes. But I'm back with the latest date, which is kind of a throwback to our college days. We found a cute little cafe we hadn't been to before, grabbed our books and spent an hour having our own little book club discussion. It's kind of fun to take a normal activity like this — one that could easily be done at one of our apartments — and get out of the house with it.

Date Night Des Moines: Creme Cupcakes

Happy Wednesday, lovelies! I'm excited to announce a new series coming to miscelenious! Twice a month I'll be posting about a date night with Adam. I love the idea of taking one night every few weeks to have a real date with your partner. When you've been dating someone for a while it can become easy to get complacent and routine with your time together (I'm talking to you, Netflix). But Adam and I really want to change that. So in our attempt to bring more creativity to our adventures as a couple, I'll be sharing our date night ideas here with all of you — and I hope you'll share yours too!

Since we're both still kind of new to the Des Moines area, we've had a good time finding new places to go and things to do. There are so many great restaurants and bars, as I've said before, and we're still finding our way through it all. So when we were trying to find something fun to do that was a little more exciting than dinner and a movie, we stumbled on this adorable dessert bar downtown called Creme Cupcake + Dessert. It was close to the restaurant where we had dinner and we'd never heard of it. Plus I had been craving cheesecake for weeks, so it was the obvious winner ;)