December is a great month for dating. Nearly every city, and even small communities have lots of activities going on that make for fun and often free, dates. And many of the winter activities you can attend are quite romantic. Here are some of our favorites.

• Holiday Light Displays – Lots of areas have drive through or walk through holiday light displays. If yours doesn’t, find a neighborhood that really does a good job of decorating for the holidays and go for a drive there.
• Ice Skating – You don’t have to live near Rockefeller Center to have romantic ice skating dates available. Lots of areas, especially where the weather is really cold, have winter skating rinks.
• Christmas Plays and Pageants – Churches and communities always put on Christmas shows. They can be a fun and inspiring way to spend an evening, just be sure to take your date’s faith into consideration before picking one.
• Volunteer – Spend a Saturday working with an organization that is helping provide toys or food to needy families during the holiday season. You’ll have fun and feel good about your time spent.
• Stay home and build a fire. Winter is also the season for hibernating. A warm fire with some hot chocolate and a great old Christmas movie is also a great way to spend a holiday evening.

Tips and Ideas Christmas, Church, Holidays, Volunteering, Winter

People blog about everything and everyone it seems these days. From politics to their cats, it seems the blog has become the best way to communicate your feelings about every possible subject – even if no one is listening.

But with this ability to converse comes a little responsibility – after all, if you’re blogging about your dates, you might end up with unwanted attention and a long line of suitors that might run away before you even meet them.

If you’re going to discuss your online dates online, you need to know a few things:

• If you found your date online, they can find you – Don’t think that your blog is as innocent or as private as you might think. Everyone Googles their dates these days.
• Use pseudonyms – Don’t use your real name or their real names if you’re going to vent about your online dates.
• Consider keeping your opinion to yourself – While the business of online dating can be quite comical, often it’s better to stick to writing in a tangible journal instead of an online one.
• Only discuss the ‘bad’ dates – When you limit your talks about the bad dates, you might actually teach your future dates how to behave around you. But saving the good dates will allow your potential long term relationships the opportunity to grow uninterrupted.

Blogging can be a great way to release stress during the online dating process, but it can also hurt you. When you think about blogging, think about what you want a prospective date to read – because they will find you out. Eventually.

Tips and Ideas Blogging, Relationships, Stress

When it comes to dating, most of us are a little skittish. After all, we’re talking to someone we hardly know and hoping they like who we really are.

Well, most of us, anyway.

For the rest of the daters out there, you might not be skittish because you’re projecting a completely different personality than the one you wear during your dating off-hours. Yes, you are faking it during your dates, but it seems to work, so what’s the harm in it?

Let’s sit down for a moment and think about why being yourself is the best way to date:

• It’s easier
• It takes less energy
• You don’t have to constantly second guess your every word, action, and expression

When you are just ‘you,’ you get to show your date what they’re in for – like it or not. And would you really want to waste your time with someone who isn’t truly the person they seem to be? No, you’d call them a liar and something that was just trying to get something from you.

So, why are you doing it too?

Becoming more comfortable with yourself is not an overnight process, to be sure. But it is something which will help you hook up and match up with a person who likes you for who you are – on the date and down the road.

Self Confidence, Tips and Ideas Fake, Personality