Date Night Idea | Painting Patriotic Letters

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Date night in the summer time can be difficult for us--we live in Phoenix, as you all can imagine it becomes unbearably hot outside and to the point where you don't want to leave the house to do anything. For me and Adam, we like to spend time together as much as we can indoors during the summer--and that includes date night! For our date night, we wanted to create some patriotic home decor for the upcoming holidays this summer--Memorial Day and Independence Day.

I couldn't resist--I had to sneak an unsuspecting selfie in the car when Adam drove us to the craft store. Hehe!

One of our favorite things to do when we want to wind down and just talk and spent time together is to paint. It varies on what we paint--in the past we've painted a spectrum of things varying from Doctor Who scenes onto canvas, to something as simple as painting wood we bought from our local craft store. And that's just what we did for our date night this past week--which was one of the hottest days of the year so far! At the start of our date, we headed into town to buy some supplies at our local craft store to bring home. 

The supplies we used were: wooden letters for our initials, 2 brushes, 1 sandpaper brush, and red white and blue chalk paint. After we got our painting date night supplies, we headed down to Walmart to buy our date night dinner: CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHEN® Hand Tossed Oven Ready Pizza - The Works! 

The first thing we did for our patriotic letters was paint everything in multiple coats of white chalk paint. We let it sit and dry in-between coats--and then returned to continue to paint more white layers, until the letters were fully covered.

After the white layer(s) were dry, we went back and painted the "A" and the "C." I painted Adam's "A" for him in red, and he painted my "C" for me in blue--the reason we chose red and blue chalk paints is because we wanted to create some home decor for the patriotic summer holidays coming up.

And then of course in-between painting the colored layers, there were a few smooches and silly selfies!

If you follow us on social media, you already know Adam and I always take the most ridiculous selfies!

Once the layers were all dry, Adam and I went back over them with sandpaper to give them that distressed look we like. We took turns with this step, since sanding is a lot of work!

But our efforts were totally worth it, and we love our patriotic wooden letters decor! We put the letters away to keep in storage, and they will stay there until I pull out all of my fourth of July decor in a few weeks. Once everything was put back to its rightful place, we devoured our CALIFORNIA PIZZA KITCHEN® Hand Tossed Oven Ready Pizza - The Works. It was so easy to make, and was very affordable to buy (which is perfect for me, since that means I have more money to buy more craft supplies for future date nights!)

If there is anything Adam and I have learned about date night in the four years (almost four--anniversary is coming up!) we've been married, it's that date night does not have to be fancy or cost a lot of money to be fun or memorable. When it all boils down to it, what is important is that we make time to create new memories together!

This certainly won't be the last painting-related date night we have this summer, and I'm sure there will be a lot more silly selfies and pizza in our near future as well!

Do you have "date night" at home? What do you usually do?