Do you love a good date night? My husband and I are empty nesters so we are embarking on new ways to spend our extra time. I love to see a movie but don’t love going to the theater that much any more. When we do venture the wild and go to the theater, we love getting the popcorn and candy…the ritual of it all including watching the previews! So fun….but…not much connecting happens during the two hour movie….you can’t talk and I love to talk about what we are watching!

Watching them at home is so fun even though I can’t lie, I usually will fall asleep and have to rewatch LOL! But we can talk, gasp, laugh, scream at the tv….or go into philosophical conversations about what we just saw…or we can just be stifled by them…depending on the movie! (Todd said or we can press pause and talk about that scene)

To combine our love of the ritual of the movie theater experience, we wound up purchasing an awesome popcorn machine and candy jar setup to have on the ready! My absolute fave is putting Sno Caps in my popcorn for that sweet and salty combo! Todd loves the red Twizzlers and we both love Skittles! So those are our go to’s…though a Milk Dud or Peanut M&M or two does tend to find its way into the mix!

We have had that popcorn machine for years now and have had no problems with it……we break it out for crawfish boils or late night porch nights too!

But recently, we embarked on a new adventure, that has become one of my most treasured date nights ever! I will tell you now that yes I got bamboozled by a Instagram Reel or TikTok…it’s like it heard me talking about flowers or something! But ideas for making flower bouquets at home kept showing up in my feed! I absolutely love flowers! I love floral bouquets, but I refuse to pay or have anyone pay a lot for them for me! (PS: some of the accounts I drew my initial inspiration from were @ashleypaige.w and @happy_arranging)

Sooooo, months before Mother’s Day, I begin nonchalantly (lol) sending Todd and Peyton ideas for the types of flowers I love, as one does right? I sent mainly from accounts featuring Trader Joe’s and Costco. Those are my two faves! I’d love to go to the Nashville Flower Mart and it’s on my list to do. But so far TJ’s and Costco rank high on my list.

Costco I love for the roses….you get double the amount of long stem roses for a fraction of the cost. And they have so many colors to choose from. Love Trader Joe’s as well, for all of the selections of colors and variations of roses, bouquets and seasonal blooms, and they are also so affordable as well.

This Mother’s Day, with Peyton having already left to study abroad for the summer, and Todd having to leave for work travel late Sunday afternoon, we decided to celebrate Saturday night and Sunday morning. We had a graduation party to go to in the late afternoon, so we celebrated with our friends. Afterwards, we promptly left to go straight to Trader Joe’s.

I had sent him a reel weeks ago on how to make a bouquet and he saved it! How cute is that. So when we got there, he and I walked in and he opened his reel and we quickly scanned it for what flowers we should get. We looked around and realized that TJ’s had been picked through of all of the colorful blooms for Mother’s Day..my rookie move…..but silver lining ever present, we decide to do all whites and greens.

We walked up an down each flower aisle and grabbed multiple bouquet’s each of white hydrangeas, white roses, whites baby’s breath, green mums, green evergreen filler and what we thought were green reeds (turned out to be Iris’s …which means blooms of purple and yellow appeared…geaux tigah’s LOL…..also the flower of the Fleur de Lis…..also the symbol of Louisiana, also the flower for KKG’s ….story for another day! Anyway….they were symbolic as you can see and a heart full surprise. It was an embarrassment of riches when we walked out of there with a bucket full of water and a dozen different bouquet’s of flowers…..lady in the car next to us who had to help Todd open the door to get in the car with all of the flowers but not hit your car….we see you….and we were pretty impressed with ourselves too! LOL…..We were like kid’s in a candy store with only the sugar high not the sugar crash.

We came home so excited…..got them all out, opened them up, trimmed the leaves off and cut the bottoms! And then one by one we followed the guidance of our reel and laid them out one across the other on the counter……when we picked it up as one bunch and set it in the vase….it was like music was playing and light was shining on it. I have never really done a bouquet for myself, nor has Todd…..we really were impressed with our outcome. Although, for sure, it was not perfect….we had the best time! We sipped on some bubbly and placed the flowers in the vase- just hanging out and creating beauty together! I highly recommend….we spent $50 and the value we got from it was immeasurable.

For dinner, he had purchased my favorite stone crab claws from George’s Stone Crab to be delivered from Florida and had made me a Key Lime Pie….yes…he is the man! So we decided to have charcoocoo and crab claws on the porch that evening. And with the fire pit burning, we sipped a delicious red….one of our faves…The Prisoner with aged parmesan (also a huge fave of from Costco) and other various cheeses, meets, olives and fruits! We listened to music, watched the sunset, talked about our landscaping blooming, when the hummingbirds would show up and our dreams for the future and we laughed alot.

And then we went inside and watched a couple episodes of Baby Reindeer….so disturbing, had some popcorn….. and yes…I fell asleep. But when I did it was the most beautiful sleep- feeling full from living my best life that night, using all 5 senses. And so grateful for the universe to have paired me with my best friend. A night for the books, for both of us!

☮️💗LG

(note this was done May 2024 for Mother’s day but it can be a fun date night any time!)