Picture, Picture Date Night

Coming up very soon, we have a family trip planned to California! As excited as we are for it, we know it's going to cost some extra cash. And while John's going through his MBA program, it definitely helps to save money where we can. To help save a little extra money for our trip, we decided to plan some free date nights! (Sort of so the money can roll over like we normally do for date nights, but we'll be using it on our trip instead!)

While brainstorming free activities we could do for our date night last week, I had an idea that was so great, I was wishing I had thought of it sooner! And that was to play real life "Picture Picture".

"Picture Picture" is a board game we have where you choose a picture and have a minute to write down one thing for each letter of the alphabet that you see in the picture. You then get a point for each item you wrote down but only if no one else has the same thing written on their paper.

To play this in real life, you can go to any place that has a fair amount of objects or people. Go to a thrift store, playground, food court, or even in your own house if you want to stay home. Try to stay in the same room or area as each other to make the game more fair. Give yourselves 5 minutes (or more if you both need it) to write down something you see in the room for each letter of the alphabet. When the time is up, compare lists. If you have any items that are the same on both lists, cross them off and don't count them. You get one point for each item left on your list. Whoever has the most points wins!

A fun thing about this game is that you can play it more than once, just by going into different stores at the mall, or even by playing the game while going on a short walk!

To get ready for this date, I made a cute little printout for the game, but if you don't have one printed out and on hand, you can always just write A-Z on any piece of paper and play the game on that.

(For easier printing, get it here.)

I really wanted to play this game on a date night at Temple Square and then again at the mall across the street in the Disney store and the food court. Buuuut, with John at the end of the semester, date night didn't really happen as it typically would. So instead, we played it while waiting for a church adult fireside to start while my sister babysat our kids for us (which, keeping with the "cheap" theme for the month was our "date night" haha!).

John ended up winning overall and it was surprisingly more difficult than I thought it would be. It's always when the game is over that you start thinking of all the things you could have written! Oh well, better luck next time, I guess. And bonus points to John for thinking of "aglet" while all I could think of for "A" was to search the room for an "afro"... I definitely married my better half. Haha!