Update – We have a winner!

Thank you for all the entries and wonderful comments for this giveaway. We’ve really enjoyed reading all your stories about your best & worst Valentine’s Day.

The randomly chosen winner is (drumroll please….) @Toaster4JC!

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to enter the giveaway and we hope you continue to enjoy Things To Do For Two.

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With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, we thought it would be fun to do another giveaway. We realize that a lot of people have strong opinions on Valentine’s Day. Some people hate it, some people love it, some people think it is just an excuse for Hallmark to suck money out of our wallets. Regardless, we think you’ll enjoy this giveaway. It’s a gift basket full of coffee related goodness from the good people at Perks Coffee. It includes a travel mug, a t-shirt, a few different types of coffee, some Gold and Specialty Club cards, some heart shaped chocolates, and more.

If you’re looking for a nice gift to give on Valentine’s Day for that coffee lover in your life, this fits the bill nicely. Or if you prefer, you can keep it all for yourself. We won’t judge you.

Here are the details of the giveaway

The Prize: 1 Gift Basket courtesy of Perks Coffee

How to Enter:

1) Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/thingstodofor2 and send out a tweet that says (without the quotes):

“Win a Valentine’s Day gift basket from @thingstodofor2 and Perks Coffee. Pls RT. Details here: http://bit.ly/chjWAX”

2) Leave a comment on this post telling us about your best or your worst Valentine’s Day experience.

You can enter the giveaway through Twitter or by leaving a comment, or you can do both and get two entries. If you do both, please include your Twitter name in your comment so we can keep track of everything.

Fine Print: Contest closes Thursday, February 11th at 2pm ADT and is open to Canadian and U.S. readers. If you are chosen as a winner we will message you to find out your shipping address. You then have 72 hours to respond to our message.

This is date number seven in our 12 Dates of Christmas series. What do you do when you can’t decide between 3 restaurants? Go to all 3 for a food crawl!

SHE SAID:

Anyone who knows me knows I don’t have the biggest appetite. It’s not that I don’t want to eat; simple physics keeps me from stuffing much in. So when Brad suggested we go on a food crawl for one of our Christmas dates I was a bit concerned about how I would stuff 3 courses in.

A Christmas miracle happened. I somehow managed to stuff in some Mexicali Dip, lasagna and cheesecake without needing a tums. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t necessarily finish each course, but at least had a healthy sampling of each. Now I sit and wonder how I did it and hope I didn’t stretch my stomach beyond repair.

I think the key to enjoying all 3 courses is to have ample time in between to recover. For instance, after our main course I was sure I wouldn’t be able to stuff in any cheesecake at Perk’s, but instead of heading there right away, we went on a mini drive to look at Christmas lights. This did wonders for the gag reflex. I was so happy that I could shove in more than one forkful of Chocolate Eruption dessert.

The food crawl was probably one of my favourite dates thus far. We got to try out 3 new restaurants and enjoyed a full night of each other’s company.

HE SAID:

After doing a bunch of Christmas themed dates that kept us mostly inside the house I was happy to get to do the food crawl. The idea is simple, take a pub crawl and replaced the pubs with restaurants and the alcohol with meals.

We both agreed we wanted to try at least one restaurant that was new to us. Our first stop was for appetizers at Mexicali Rosa’s. If you remember our post about the holiday parade, our car got trapped in the parking garage due to the traffic, so we went out for nachos. That was our first time at Mexicali Rosa’s and we really enjoyed it so we decided to come back. We ordered the Mexicali Dip which has beans, taco beef, Monterey Jack, sour cream, Pico de Gallo, guacamole, and green onions. It was very tasty with both the nacho chips and the pita bread for dipping. The best part about going to Mexicali Rosa’s for nachos/dip is that you get a little basket of nachos to snack on (instead of the usual bread) while you wait for your nachos!

After we finished with the appetizers we headed to Dofsky’s Grill for the main course. I had the Dofsky’s Burger (adventurous, I know) and Susan had Dofsky’s Signature Lasagna. We enjoyed it all very much. I got the burger because I wanted something that wouldn’t be too big since we still had another restaurant to go to. Little did I know that the burger was going to be massive. It tasted great though and I’m pretty sure we both liked it enough to go back some day. We were terrible at remembering to take pictures though, so you’ll have to settle for staring at my half eaten burger.

Lastly we went to Perks for dessert. If you’ve been reading our blog for a while you know that Susan and I enjoy Perks quite a bit, but we usually just go for coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. We had no idea they had such great desserts until a friend told us about it. We had some kind of Chocolate Eruption cheesecake or something that was really great.

The food crawl was a lot of fun. The best part about it for me is that we can do it again and make it feel like a totally original date if we pick a different set of restaurants. In the summer time it’s fun to pick places within walking distance of each other so that you can work off each course, but since it’s freezing cold this time of year we opted to jump in the car.

I would recommend a food crawl to anyone without hesitation. We had a great time. It’s fun to mix and match different types of food into one night, plus we got to experience a new restaurant. If you’ve ever done a food crawl we would love to hear about your experience.

This is the first of our 12 Dates of Christmas series so we thought reliving our first date would be fitting. We jumped in the car and went to Perks in Halifax where we reminisced about old times and dreamed about things to come. We also had a run in with a crazy lady, but you’ll have to read on to find out about that!

SHE SAID:

Our first date was definitely not very glamorous and some might argue it was no date at all. We simply went to Perks, a local coffee shop in Halifax, ordered hot chocolates and talked for a few hours. It was simple and perfect and not too costly to relive!

It’s hard to believe it’s been over six years since our first date, so it’s no wonder I barely recognized the inside of Perks. I no longer live in Halifax and therefore don’t frequent Perks as and had no idea they had undergone such extensive renovations. The only thing we did differently than our first date was that we opted to sit in the new cozy little nook off the main entrance.

While we were trying to think of the details of our first date, I found I remembered really odd, useless details like what we drank and Brad nervously playing with a napkin. Brad, on the other hand, can practically quote our conversation verbatim. This time around the same thing happened. Once again we ordered hot chocolates and once I again I forget what we talked about. I swear I was paying attention.

I really enjoyed going back to the place it all began. Not only did we get to reminisce but we got to make new memories as well.

HE SAID:

I’m not sure what most first dates look like, but I’m pretty sure ours was a little unusual. We had been friends for several years so we knew each other quite well. It was more of an unofficial first date since it was quite a while after this that we were officially a couple.

You know how men are typically the ones who forget important details about their relationships? Well, in this case it’s reversed. Susan totally forgot the fact that I bared my soul to her on our first date. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever worked up the nerve to do, and all she remembers is the music we listened to in the car on the way there.

It was a lot of fun to go back to Perks all these years later. Life has changed a lot, and so have we, but it was nice to take a minute to look back and see how far we’ve come.

No relived date would be complete without making new memories. Let me set the stage. We’re sitting off to the side of Perks, drinking our hot chocolates, and enjoying our evening, when all of a sudden this older woman comes around the corner talking about how she should have a reserved sign on her seat. She then proceeds to sit down right next to us and just sits there and stares at us for a good five minutes. She wasn’t sitting in the next seat over either, she was so close we could almost smell her breath as she snorted in disgust. Susan wanted to get up and leave, but I refused to give in. We sat there staring at each other in silence determined to out wait this woman. After what seemed like an eternity, she angrily got up and moved to another seat. It was one of the strangest things a stranger has ever done to me. If she had politely asked us to move I may have considered it, but since she decided to force us out by making us feel awkward, I decided to out last her awkwardness. It worked!

There were no life altering conversations at Perks this time around, but it was great fun. We talked about the memories of when Susan used to live in Halifax and the fun we had just hanging out together. We also talked about the future and how grateful we are for the way life has turned out. Reliving our first date was a great idea. It gave us perspective on how far we’ve come, and reminded us to have fun in life as much as possible, because time goes by very fast. Hopefully your first date experiences were positive enough that you want to relive them. If so, get out there and give it a try!