DIY Gift: Date Jar

As hinted in yesterday's post, we added a little DIY flavor to our Christmas gifts to each other this year. My homemade gift for Philip was the Pinterest-famous Date Jar. The first place I saw them was here. 

Life in the Green House Date Jar Inspiration

This was a pretty elementary craft, finished in a couple of hours, minus the time I had spent thinking up date ideas throughout the week before which was more scattered and not really dedicated time. 

I started out getting a jar from my mom's house. I cut out a piece of paper for the top to cover the expiry date (popsicle sticks with words on them don't expire - fancy that). On the paper I wrote what the different colored sticks would mean. 

After shopping with the intention of buying popsicle sticks and paint, I could only find already colored popsicle sticks which actually saved a lot of time. I used blue for Winter dates, yellow for Summer, and green for anytime. Then I painted the tips of any dates that cost money with white. This way when we go to pick we can pick something more specific to what we're wanting to do that day. 

Date Night Examples:

• Movie Night: His Choice
• Go to a restaurant we've never been to
• Make a craft together
• Make dinner together
• Pick out a 5 dollar item each from Superstore to make a surprise date night
• Build a snowman

Philip appreciated the thought that went into it, and it was fun and easy to make. It will hopefully also save us some time every time we want to have a date night and don't have any ideas. 

I have some pictures of it, but for some reason my iPhone decided to crash today...not too sure what will happen with that. Hopefully we can get it up and running tonight and it doesn't cost a fortune. I will add some real pictures tomorrow hopefully, but until then, this I-can't-believe-it's-not-a-photograph illustration should tide you over.

Update: Phone randomly fixed itself, so here's some photos!

Finished date jar!

60 popsicle stick date ideas!

Also be sure to head to the Facebook page and answer our weekly poll! We want to hear all about your New Years Resolutions or plans for 2013, and we'll share ours as well next week.