Getting Crafty: Date Night Invitations

So I saw this awesome idea on Pinterest where this lady gifted her husband 12 manila envelopes, one for each month, each with a pre-planned date night inside including gift certificates, information about the date, etc. 

I really liked the idea for homecoming, but wanted to be able to do more dates than just one a month and didn't feel like I needed quite as many materials that detailed what we'd be doing because Eric will just look everything up on his phone :) I loved the idea of having all the planning done for a day out, or a night out, with the research completed, some money already set toward it, so that it will be easy for us to just pick up and go on a whim. I also wanted it to feel like something special, something to anticipate.

That got me started thinking about what kinds of things Eric likes to do, things he's mentioned he wants to do when he gets back, and about stuff I want to do in my new permanent home, and came up with a dozen different date ideas, some requiring a full day and some travel, some just a morning, some just an evening, so we'd have some variety in how much effort we wanted to expend that particular week. 

The next step was how to present my date ideas, and since I wanted it to be something special we could look forward to, I decided to essentially use my leftover craft supplies to create themed "date invitations" like so:

Using up those extra craft supplies from care packages!

There's something so exciting about getting a formal invitation! On the back, I printed an itinerary for the day (Portland is pretty much his favorite place ever, and about a 2 hour drive for us) and am enclosing a gift card to one of the main things I want us to do there, as well as a card I made that says that coffee is on me that day :) 

I'm still not sure how I'm going to package these invitations with their matching gift cards/cash as Manila envelopes are too big, and I do want to keep track of which ones are time sensitive, which ones require more/less effort, etc. I've made 5 unique invitations so far, so I'll post how I wrap them up when I figure out how I'm going to do it! I'll also be posting each invitation and pictures from the date as we use them, of course. 

I'm off to make a few more!