Feeling Like a Kid Again

Have I told you all that I love love love teaching preschool.  I think I like it the most because you get to be so hands on with the kids.  Whatever they do, you get to do to.  I have always loved to do crafts, and now I get to do crafts every day and I get paid to do it.  I have an amazing job.  Well, all this to say, because I work with 4 year olds all day I sometimes come up with some pretty crazy ideas for our date nights.  This last date night Matt and I decided to stay at home to try to "conserve" some money.  So, I rant to Pinterest as quickly as my little fingers could take me.  After looking at several good ideas for date nights at home this is what I settled on:  Making pizza together completely form scratch, paining on miniature canvases with acrylic paints, building a really cool fort together and watching the Lorax movie inside the fort, and making homemade peanut butter glazed popcorn.   I know some husbands would think all of these are crazy ideas for a date night, but not my husband, he's amazing, and he's really a big kid at heart, so when I told him about my ideas for date night, he was just as excited as I was.  He was really excited about getting to build a fort inside.  He planned all week long how he was going to build the fort.  Well, I decided to show you all how are date night went through a journey of pictures.  I hope you all enjoy!  Also, I pray that this post will encourage all of you married couples out there to go and do something fun and crazy with your spouses.  It doesn't have to cost a lot of money and it can be so memorable.

First we decided to paint our miniature fall paintings.  Aren't those little tiny canvases and easels just so cute.  We had so much fun doing this.  I have to admit, I cheated a bit though.  I watched a 12 minute tutorial on You Tube on how to paint an aspen forrest with acrylics.  Matt did a great job on his painting especially considering that he didn't cheat like me and just painted on his own.  We had so much fun with this project.  

While our first coat of paint was drying on our canvases we made the pizza dough.  I found a recipe by Paula Dean from Food Network.  I don't like mixing dough but Matt didn't mind at all.  The dough came out simply amazing.  If you would like to use this recipe for pizza dough, click here.  

After we finished making the dough, we left it to rise and continued painting.  As you can see, Matt took his painting very seriously.  It's so fun to be able to do crafts together.  

I really liked painting as well, as you can see, my side of the table is so much more messy than Matt's.  We are definitely opposites in this area.  He likes everything to stay neat and clean, and me, well, it would be nice for everything to stay neat and clean, but it usually looks like a tornado has touched down wherever I have been. :) 

Here's my aspen forrest.  

Here's Matt's Kentucky autumn countryside.  

And...Here's our finished Autumn paintings side by side.  Mrs. Smith's painting classes paid off for us.  We had so much fun, and we were both so glad that we had already taken painting before with Mrs. Smith.  It made our project so much more enjoyable since we kind of knew what we were doing. :)

Time for dinner.  We both made our own personal sized pizzas.  We had a pizza at a local pizzeria here in Kentucky called the loaded backed potato.  We loved this pizza, and I searched the internet for a recipe that seemed similar to the loaded baked potato pizza.  I found a close match on Pinterest.  Click here if you are interested in making this pizza for yourself.  The pizza was delicious beyond words, and we had so much fun making it together.  

Here's the pizza before the oven....

... And here's the pizza after the oven.  Just look at all that yummy goodness.  

After we finished eating our amazing pizza, Matt began working on making our fort.   It looks kind of crazy from this angle.  Notice all the Seminary books being put to good use as a counterweight to hold our fort down. :)

Here's an inside view of our fort loaded with pillows for watching our movie.

And... here's the inside view of our fort with my computer in the background that we use to watch our movies on.  Yes... that's a hospital bedside table the laptop is sitting on.  That table has been such a versatile piece of furniture that we picked up at a thrift store in California.  It gets used as a desk, a computer holder, a breakfast in bed table, kitchen counter, and much more.   In our fort we watched the Lorax movie.  Yep, I know it's a little kids movie, but hey it went with the theme of the night:  "We're all just kids at heart."  

While watching our movie we snacked on homemade peanut butter popcorn.  It was pretty good, but it was really sweet.  If you're interested in the recipe, click here.  

Seminary life is very busy, and it is often hard to find time to be with each other, but Matt and I have determined to make every moment that we are with each other count.  We have such great times together.  I love being married to my best friend.  I hope that this post will inspire many of you to plan a stay at home date night with your spouse.  They're really fun!!!

On a side note, Seminary life has been going well.  Matt is doing good in his classes, but he can always use your prayers, especially for his Greek class.  My car just died on me today in the middle on an intersection.  I wasn't quite sure what to do, so I just let it keep rolling through the intersection.  After rolling through the intersection I wondered where I would have enough momentum to roll next,  and then I saw it,  "The Golden Arches."  Whew, I had just enjoy momentum to roll into a McDonald's parking lot.  I pulled the keys out of the ignition, waited a few minutes and then started the car again.  It started right up but I was real nervous about driving it.  So, to make a long story short, I believe that my catalytic converter is gone, so it's off to the mechanics for me tomorrow.  Please pray that I'll be able to get  a good deal on this expensive part.  But, I'm praising God that He didn't let me car die in the middle of the intersection, that would have been horrible.  Besides this, everything is going well, we miss you all so much.  Until next time, have a great week!