Keeping The Relationship Alive: Dinner and A Movie #CouchCritics #CBias

Life is hectic.  With different demands pulling couples in various directions, it’s important reconnect with the people you love.  As any parent knows, actually being able to get a babysitter, going out for dinner and a movie isn’t always the easiest thing in the world.  What seems like an easy process requires a small act of divine intervention at times.

The past two weeks has been extremely busy for our family and it’s only going to get worse as we leave for our Spring Break vacation on Saturday.  So this means the next week is non-stop: errands, getting animals taken care of , laundry (someone please tell me how this stuff multiples) and a last ditch effort to lose 3 pounds before I have to be in summer clothes!  Because of that, my husband and I decided to have a date night in: dinner and a movie.  Simple right?

The first thing we had to figure out was what movie to see.  We decided on Footloose since both of us loved the original and I think Julianne Hough is such a talented dancer.  I reserved the movie at Redbox.com to make sure I could get pick it up at the location of my choice.  Reserving online makes it each and quick to pick up my movie and I don’t have to worry about the movie I want to see being sold out.

I also did my grocery shopping that night.  I love going grocery shopping at night.  Usually it’s less crowded and I can take my time browsing through the aisles.  The downside is that sometimes the stores can be out of the items that you want to purchase.  Luckily for me, I found everything I needed.  For dessert, we were having banana pudding so my first stop at Walmart was in the produce section.  You can see my full shopping experience in my Google + album.

For our date night dinner, I wanted something that was fairly easy to make, somewhat low-fat, yet something new.  After looking through all my favorite food sites, I decided to go with a super easy recipe from the Food Network for baked chicken.  I paired that with some roasted potatoes and then found a low-fat banana pudding recipe.  A word of advice when planning a date night in and trying new recipes.  Have a backup plan.  While in theory the chicken sounded delicious, it really didn’t have flavor and the coating on the chicken never quite crisped up like I expected.  If it weren’t for a bottle or ranch dressing, I would have probably ordered pizza!  My husband was a trooper though and ate it.  Without ranch dressing.  I applaud him for that!

Regardless of how it tasted (I’m probably being overly critical as the recipe received 4.5 stars out of 5 on Food Network), I found it was easy to buy all the ingredients for our meal for less than $30.  Plus, many of the items will be used for multiple meals.  On my shopping trip I bought the following items, all for $29.32:

• Natural chicken breasts
• Bananas
• Reduced-fat vanilla wafers
• Kettle corn popcorn (YUM!)
• 12 Pack Diet Coke
• Organic skim milk
• Dijon mustard
• Instant oatmeal
• Sweetened condensed milk
• 2 packages instant pudding

I should have skipped dinner and went straight to the movie, or so I thought.  We put in the movie and things were going great, until we were 23 minutes into the movie.  That’s when it started skipping.  At first I thought we’d be able to make it through to the end but by 57 minutes, I was pretty frustrated with it.  Of what we saw, we enjoyed the movie.  My husband kept comparing it to the first movie (in a good way), which I made him stop doing.  Any movie that plays Bang Your Head by Quiet Riot (yes, I used to LOVE hair bands) is a plus in my book.  But after the skipping got to the point we were missing key scenes, I immediately got online and contacted customer support.

So at this point, I’m thinking this date night as pretty much been a bust.  Dinner wasn’t so great, the movie is scratched and on top of it all, my voice is now completely gone (it had been raspy for a couple of days).  BUT as I’m getting ready to close out my emails, I noticed another email from my professor.  One that stated she hasn’t received my online assignment yet, which was due in 2 hours.  Yikes!  So, if it weren’t for the Redbox movie being scratched, I wouldn’t have remembered to turned in my assignment on time and would have lost out on those points.  Funny how things always seem to work out in the end.

This morning, my husband and I are just laughing about it.  The best laid plans are never a guarantee.   responded quickly to my email and sent me two free movie codes to make up for the inconvenience.  All I know is that the next date night can’t be worse and that I’ve got 5 more bags of Kettle Corn flavored popcorn in my cabinet.  

 

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias.  All opinions are my own and yours may differ.