As parents of small children, it’s extremely difficult for Derrick and I to find the time- or the energy- to go out. We typically spend our evenings in front of our computers, or me in front of the television watching really bad made-for-tv movies. We’ve made it a goal in 2014 to start calling a babysitter more often and having date nights IN. New Year’s Eve was the perfect day to try one of our date nights in, since we definitely weren’t going to be able to nail down a sitter. While our families and friends were together celebrating, we were watching two sleeping babies on a video monitor. We could’ve been down in the dumps about this, but we decided to create our own fun at home.

We had a wonderful meal of spaghetti and chocolate by candlelight! We tried drinking wine, but realized that our 4-year-old bottle was no good. FAIL. So we drank coffee and hot chocolate instead. We played cards together and laughed, and we created our very own props for a DIY photo booth. Derrick and I had so much fun cutting out little mustaches and stars out of foam and felt to “bling” out our pipe cleaners. It was so easy and inexpensive, and this New Year’s Eve will definitely be one of our most memorable.