DH and I have decided to do one date night a month, starting this year. We NEVER do anything as just a couple, and frankly, I'm sick of it and so is he.
WE need ideas! LOL! For March we are going to a music concert (My Chemical Romance), but I don't want every date night to break the bank!
What kind of htings do you guys do?

We started this last year and it's been really nice. In the winter we'll sometimes go out for coffee or to a free community event. In the nicer weather, we often go for long walks or hikes. We go to the movies about once a month but we tend to go towards the cheaper theaters that tend to show movies that have been out for a while but aren't on DVD yet. This winter we're going to try going cross country skiing more.

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I wish I had a lot of inexpensive suggestions but for us...LOL, we rarely are able to keep things cheap. We like nice resturants, good wine etc so that's the name of the game for us! Luckily we can afford it. We go out a lot, usually have a date each week.

Sometimes we go out early in the evening and sit in the bar area of our favorite resturants. Some of them have deals on appetizers if you order by a certain time, so we do that for 'dinner' and then spend some time at home, watching stuff on TV that we've saved on the DVR or just sitting and talking in front of the fire with wine or whatever.

I am not a fan of going to the movies- becasuse we have this time to spend together and then we are sitting next to each other quiet for 2hours watching a movie.
Some things we have done:
dinner
shopping- mainly window shopping
we live near the beach- so we go for walks
get coffee (I get hot chocolate) and we sit at the park
bike rides

BLuejay! I so agree with the movie thng. I want to TALK to him...not sit next to each other.

With the little one around we never go anywhere or do anything that she can't do, too. However, there was a point in our lives when hubby and I used to do date nights. I highly recommend them.

You may want to trade off who makes the plans. We used to challenge each other to see who could arrange the cheapest date. I think the best we got was dinner at the Costco food stand (it was less than $5 and we were full) then a free one-man play at the local art gallery for a special opening. Scour the newspaper for free activities in your area and be flexible on when you can go. A daytime date is just as nice as a night time date.

Ideas:

- Some senior community centers or fraternal lodges will have open dances for free or very little money.

- High school or college sports games. Our local college has a "Beauty and the Beast" event in February each year. It is a combined wrestling and gymnastics competition - a little something for him; a little something for me.

- Picnic. Hike or long walk. Go rock hunting. Try geocaching (www.geocaching.com).

- Wine tasting. Art gallery openings. Take a cooking class.

- Paint your own ceramics.

- Bowling. Billards. Auto racing or a destruction derby. A B-league baseball game (B-leagues are small town teams that 'feed' the big baseball teams.)

- Visit greenhouses to pick out a special plant that you can put into the garden together.

- A spa visit. Even our little town has a NICE hot tubbing place that you can rent by the hour. You can get a his / hers massage as a special treat. Alternately you could get a couple of free passes to the local gym and try a different work out together.

- Stay at home! Send the kids to a babysitter and pamper each other with massage oils, give him a facial, etc.

As far as dinners ... If we want to try out a nice (new) restaurant we'll go there for dessert only or go for lunch (and sometimes share an entree). That way if the place isn't to our liking we haven't dropped megabucks on a so-so dinner.

My DH and I are doing the same thing!

This month we are going to dinner and to see a comedy show, but like you said I dont dates to break the bank either!

For good, cheap dates dh and I are thrilled to just get a few hours to go out to a chinese resturant (buffet style). We love chinese and it's only $18 for us both.