THE DAY YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR…
Ok, probably not.  You probably don’t have the faintest idea what I am talking about.  I’m not so crazy to think people actually frequent my blog…  yet.  But you will after this.  At least you should.  I’ve got some super awesome stuff coming up… But I digress, onto the reason you are really here:

My Mr. Right and I went on the funnest date a couple weekends ago.  (Funnest is not a word?  What?!?  Since when?)  I had seen tons of ideas for a “Choose Your Own Adventure” Date.  Most of them consisted of putting the different choices in envelopes and then choosing the envelopes and surprise!  The instructions inside the envelop are the next activity.  Well, we did the “chose an envelop” date last month, but I still really loved the idea of a “Choose Your Own Adventure”(CYOA) date.  The envelop date was fun, by the way.

Did you ever read the real “Choose Your Own Adventure” books when you were younger?  You know, the ones where you read part of the story and then at the bottom of the page you get to choose what you want to happen, followed by which page you turn to in order to continue the story with that decision?  Maybe I’m the only crazy bookworm?  Well, I really enjoyed reading those.  So, I decided I was going to write my own story for our CYOA date… Crazy, right?!?

I started out with a list of choices… Dinner at “Our Spot” (a special place in town that My Mr Right and I enjoy going, just the two of us) or at a park down by the river.  Flying a kite or throwing a frisbee (which we did on our 3rd date).  Playing mini-golf or playing games at the arcade.  Sundaes at McD’s or Frosties at Wendy’s.  You get the idea.

My “Ideas” List

The Cover of Our Book.

One of the story pages.

One of the “reveal” pages.

Then, I started concocting the story.  Now, I’m no pro story maker-upper.  It was goofy and lame and cheesy, but still a ton of fun to come up with.  I tried to make my choices in the story relate somewhat to the activity, but it was a stretch sometimes.  For example:  Our main characters had to decide whether to eat on a hillside or down by the river.  Or to escape a rainstorm in a cave (the arcade) or amongst some old buildings (the mini golf course has a couple castles and haunted houses and other random small buildings).  The one I had to explain to My Mr. Right was the kite flying vs frisbee reference.  Our main characters were helping a poor family by giving them either some of their jewels or some of their gold coins (jewels=diamond=shape of kite(but not our kite… haha)=kite flying.  And the frisbee was round like gold coins would be)… See, a little far fetched.  But it worked out nonetheless.  And we had fun.

Ours had quite a few choices.  They went all the way from dinner up to the bedroom.  I had almost 30 pages in my book.  There was, by no means, the need for that many.  Several of our activities only took 5-10 minutes though.  I think next time (that’s right, I wanna do this all again… it was THAT much fun!) I’ll plan fewer activities that take a little longer.

Some of our “choices” included:
Dinner location
Kite Flying or Throwing a Frisbee in the park
Miniature Golfing or Arcade Games
Carving love notes in Stone (sand at the beach) or on a tree (cards from $ Store)
Ice Cream Sundaes from McD’s or Frosties from Wendy’s
Lingerie or a Scratch Off Card
Bedroom games or a “Taste Testing”
A Paper Airplane Contest or A Paper Boating Contest
and others…

Dinner at “Our Spot”

Flying Kites

Mini Golfing!

Love Notes “carved” in stone.

The choice was between lingerie and a scratch off card… My Mr. Right always gets everything!  =]

It was such a BLAST!  I promise if you put the time into your story it will totally be worth it.  If you need any help, feel free to ask.  Email me: whilehewasnapping[at]gmail[dot]com.  I’m more than willing to answer any questions.  Don’t want to make that much effort?  Let me know…

Jamie was the winner of this giveaway and here is the post she put up of her experience with one of the generic books.  Take a look.

**GIVEAWAY CLOSED**

You know it’s a winner when the man who never writes a love note unless it’s in a birthday or anniversary card takes the time to leave you a message on the white board…

You can’t tell me that doesn’t just sound super yummy.  And the butterscotch makes me think fall, it’s just got such a warm flavor that goes so perfect with those chilly nights!  So, let’s get to cookin’!

BUTTERSCOTCH MARSHMALLOW BROWNIES

1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups miniature marshmallows
2 cups milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9×13 inch baking pan. Melt butterscotch morsels and margarine in a large bowl in microwave. Stir the mixture well and let it cool to lukewarm. While the liquid mixture is cooling, mix flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, vanilla, and eggs into the butterscotch mixture; mix well. Fold in marshmallows and chocolate morsels. Spread batter into a lightly greased 9×13 inch pan. Bake 25 minutes. Be careful not to overcook.  ENJOY!

It takes a little work, but is soo worth it, promise!

Ok, I don’t know about you guys, but my bathroom counters are always a mess.  I’m a busy mom and the time it takes to throw on some makeup, run a brush through my hair and a toothbrush over my teeth is about as long as my little buddy boy will allow me to primp in front of the mirror.  And it takes three times as long as it used to because I’m constantly pulling my curious little monkey out of things!  One thing he loves to get into:  Cotton balls and Q-tips.  Alright, I guess that’s two things.  I used to keep them in a drawer, still in their respective boxes they came home from the store in.  Too easy, Momma.  The little monkey has them all over the floor before I even get half way through the routine…  So, organization to the rescue!  Away go those store boxes (now he can play with them to his little heart’s content) and enter glass jars.  But the glass jars by themselves were soo boring.  Vinyl to the rescue!  Whatcha think?

Found the jars at the Dollar Store (I love that place!) and had the vinyl on hand, so this project cost me a whole $2!  Score!