Y’all. Life has been busy. I know I’m always saying that, but for real. Date nights for KP and I have been pretty hard to come by as of late. Heck, even just “hey-hon-what-did-you-do-today?” has been hard to come by. Three kids is still kicking my butt. Yes, even 5 months in. KP works long hours, then comes home and works on his newest writing project.
Want to know what #writerlife (or really anything entertainment industry related) is like with a spouse and kids? It’s definitely NOT ‘home-at-5-and-dinner-on-the-table-and-let’s-have-quality-family-conversations-together‘. It’s more like ‘home-after-kids-in-bed-because-I-had-a-dinner/screening/meeting-so-I’ve-already-eaten-and-now-I-have-to-work-on-these-notes-for-this-draft-I-have-to-turn-in-next-week-so-I-don’t-have-time-to-talk-much-right-now‘. I’m not complaining though. This is just this life. If you want to come to L.A. and chase a Hollywood dream with a family in tow, this is what you’ll have to expect too.
Anyway. We survive. Our marriage survives. And can I be honest? These date night subscription boxes things that I talk about all the time have been a wonderful for us. For the past couple years, they have comprised the majority of mine and KP’s date nights.
I’ve tried a lot of these date night boxes, and have reviewed several Crated With Love boxes. They recently made some changes to their subscription plans and digital content and asked if KP and I would do another review for them. Of course I said I would. We needed a date night so badly!
Crated With Love (CWL) sent me three of their new boxes to check out. We chose the “You Rock My World” geology box at first, but found out that we needed rocks. Can you believe it, but even here in the L.A. suburbs, we had ZERO large enough rocks needed in our yard! And it was dark with our kids in bed so we couldn’t walk down the street or anything to look for some. Man, my Texan childhood would be so ashamed that this is city life I live now, ha ha. I mean, really? No rocks? That’s crazy.
So we moved on the Puzzle-themed “You Complete Me” box.
(Please note/disclaimer: while this post was sponsored by Crated With Love, all opinions below are fully mine. As with all my date night subscription box reviews, I seek to give honest reviews and helpful feedback to anyone who might be deciding a date night subscription box service for themselves. I hope you find this post helpful!)
Here’s what the box contained:
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a pack of Perfect Pair cards
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a wrist counter
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You Complete Me date night instruction booklet
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2 “Our Crazy Story” activity cards
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a jigsaw puzzle
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foam puzzle box pieces
Challenge 1 was an activity called Our Crazy Story. It was a mad libs type of activity about how we met. I’ll be honest, since KP and I have done a lot of these date night boxes, we inevitably end up being reminded of and talk about our first “date” a lot. And the truth is – we don’t even know when our first real date was! We were good friends before we started dating and our “hangouts” kind of slid into “dates” over the course of several months. Either way, we always seem to enjoy talking, aka arguing, about what we each considered to be be a “date” instead of just “hanging out”.
Challenge 2 was an activity called Finish The Sentence. Which is where we had to tell a story taking turns saying one word at a time. Hah, sometimes KP and I would be locked in and right on the same page with where our story was going like some gloriously orchestrated in-sync team…and then other times we were like ‘what the…?!?‘, totally clueless to the strange path the other was leading us on. Man. Marriage. Sometimes you just know a person…and then you realize you don’t. Lol. Except don’t lol, because you lose in this Finish the Sentence game. Lol. 🙂
Challenge 3 was a game called Perfect Pairs. Kind of like dominoes, but with words. We ran out of room on our table. I had to ixnay (btw, is this even a real word?) some of the more, um, B.S. “connections” KP tried to pull on me, ha ha.
Challenge 4 was a puzzle activity, titled “The Inception Puzzle”, which was coincidental, considering that just the day before the twitter writer community at The Film Brigade had all watched and commented on the movie Inception together – and I even threw out my Inception theory blog post into the mix (which to date, no one has proved me wrong on, btw). Man, I heart me some Nolan films. I’ve been jonesing to re-watch Interstellar for forever, especially since I’m super big into the metaphysics of time right now lol, and luckily for me, THIS Sunday’s pick (which is my birthday 🙂 ) is in fact Interstellar!
…oops. Sorry. Went off on my only film nerd obsession there for a moment…back to the CWL review!
So Challenge 4. I don’t know if KP and I have ever put a legit puzzle together in our marriage. Is that weird? I’ve done puzzles with my kids. But not with my husband. Until now! Even after a decade, there’s always new things to discover and do together. 🙂 Each section of the puzzle had a riddle in it and honestly, we went to bed without figuring the whole thing out! I texted him at work the next day when I’d finally figured it out and could access the online bonus material.
The online bonus material. This is a brand new thing that CWL has just begun doing. And it’s a fun addition! I like that you can have a regular date with the date night box, and then extend the date if you want with all the extra stuff online. The You Complete Me puzzle date box offered free online bonus material (but you have to complete the puzzle activity in order to get the secret access code first!). Here I found directions to the activity Before Bed Block, which used the white foam puzzle block that came in that month’s date night box.
However, for future boxes – such as the “Your Love Rocks” box they are offering a totally upgraded content online through their new “Diamond” service.
How it works:
– When you sign up for a subscription, you can choose either the regular subscription for $19.99/mo. This gives you the date night box and all its physical contents each month. OR, you can sign up for the Diamond subscription which is $26.99/mo AND on top of the physical box that gets ailed to you, you ALSO get access to the online bonus materials.
– The online bonus content includes weekly date night activities for the entire month to go along with that month’s focus.
– Here’s an example of the bonus online content for the October 2017 Your Rock My World Box:
By the way, the “You Rock My World” date looks totally rockin‘ (yes, I went there 🙂 ) and hopefully KP and I can find some rocks soon and, um…rock this date (I’ll stop now. Promise). Because how much fun does this look? For real:
I hope you enjoyed our newest CWL review – thank you Crated With Love for letting KP and I have a date night at home together!
You Might Also Enjoy my other Crated With Love reviews:
October 2017: You Complete Me
April 2017: I Love the 80s!
March 2017: My Kaizen Crush
February 2017: Stuck on You
January 2017: FounDATEions
April 2016: Tea For Two
Related posts:
5 Comments on Crated With Love Subscription Box Review: You Complete Me (& promo code)
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This looks like so much fun! I love the idea of a date in a box because it makes spending time together that much easier. No excuses for not making your spouse number one priority!!
This is such a great idea! There are so many subscription boxes out there now, but this is definitely one of the more interesting ones. I love the idea of adding this to a date night!
This is awesome! I’ve never heard of this subscription box before, but I’ll totally be ordering from them soon 🙂 I love the date night one! How cute and creative!
Hmmmm….. code doesn’t work. It says “Sorry, this coupon is not applicable to your cart contents.” even though i put the monthly $20 subscription into my cart. Suggestions?
hmm…I just tested this out. It looks like CWL just created a new product called “Story Mode” which is a monthly subscription that give you suggestions for weekly date nights. So it’s a bit different of a product than their traditional date night boxes. CWL hasn’t told me much about this new subscription, but I think it’s brand new, hence why my code might not apply to it. My code (WRITERSWIFE) DOES apply to their regular Diamond subscription that $26.99.As of today, 12/1, the code is still giving 50% off too!
I hope this helps some! I’ll update this post once I know more about this new “Story Mode” subscription! 🙂