Crated With Love Halloween Date Night Box Review, October 2018

Happy Day of the Dead!! See, I feel like it’s still appropriate to post a Halloween-themed date night box review TODAY, because TODAY is sort of the last day of the “Halloween” season. Right? Maybee? Either way, I’m going with it.

I’m not going to again go into how much KP and I never get a chance to have date nights anymore and how these date night boxes are pretty much the only date we have anymore. Because I think I’ve alreay started with that in all of my other review posts. Hah. Rest assured that these date night boxes are still as important to our quality time together as always. 🙂

This is going to be a short and sweet little review post because I’m on my way this morning to my very first blogging workshop/conference! Got up before sunrise to take the train down to Anaheim by myself and everything.I’m actually typing this post from the train! Gotta love technology. And how productive a mom can be when she actually has a quiet moment to herself, amIright? Sigh. #momlife

Anyways – on to the Halloween themed date night box review!!

Disclaimer: this post is sponsored by Crated With Love, but they don’t tell me what to write or edit my words – this is all me! My own thoughts, my own opinion, my own experience.

Crated With Love‘s theme this month was “The Haunted Mansion”. As with all Crated With Love boxes, it opes with a story/adventure that you and your partner can immerse yourself in. And if you subscribed to the online bonus content (see here for info on that), then you also have access to their curated monthly spotify playlists, recipes and date night activities.

Box contents:
– Instruction Book
– Pumpkin cardboard box
– LOTS of goodies as shown in the pic! Read below to see more. 🙂 

Oh and I should mention that this time, KP and I did this date night box on my birthday. So to make it extra special fun, KP picked up a to-go order from a local favorite restaurant on his way home from work to make it even extra special!

Activity 1:Let’s Make a Monster This was a quick little ice breaker activity. We had to come up with words to describe certain things about our relationship. Then, based on the number of letter or syllables, etc. we had to use different hats, eyes, and mouths to create our monster. It worked out to be a great little simple activity to do over dinner.

Activity 2: Slime and a Spell sadly did not turn out as hoped due to user error. 🙁 The directions had mentioned using an old bowl or something that you wouldn’t mind getting stained (just in case the food coloring did) and we had the bright idea to re-use a plastic food container lid from the to-go dinner we’d just had. I’m total a fan of being environmentally-friendly; reduce, reuse, recycle and all that. Except. After adding the water mixture into the glue, the plastic lid leaked…all over the table! We tried to salvage what we could of the liquid and get it into the new bowl, but I think we were too late. The ingredient rations were off. And our slime turned out to be less like slime, and more like dried out Gak (if you remember this stuff from our childhoods?)

I suppose we probably could’ve done some slime science research to figure out how to fix our Gak back int slime, but we decided to let it go. We played the rest of the letter-finding-word-spelling activity without it.Not as much fun without the squishy slime elements, alas. But still fun.

Activity 3: A Pumpkin’s Scary Face. I really liked how CWL incorporated the box itself into the ate night activities! And carving a pumpkin box into a jack-o-lantern? Way less messy than an actual pumpkin.The “catch” though was hat we had to first design the jack-o-lantern face on a piece of paper…while blindfolded. We were supposed to take turns drawing, but KP was feeling confident so I let him do the whole thing. What’ca think?

After drawing it, we traced the design by poking small holes through the lines and then connecting the dots on the box. Then we “carved” the box, and put in a battery-operated candle. Ain’t she a beauty?  

Activity 4: Love Language’s Labyrinth. Using the 5 Love Languages, this activity was a little board game. Roll the die, move your piece. First person to center wins. Along the way you landed on small tasks that corresponded to the different love languages (Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Physical Touch, Acts of Service, Gifts). It was a simple and cute game. 

After the date, we added our date night badge to our collection. Hah – look at how many we’ve earned now! It’s fun to keep these magnets on our fridge and remember the Crated With Love date night box adventures we’ve had. 

Confession: KP and I often don’t clean up our date night areas before we go to bed. Or we’ll just kind of throw everything back into the box and leave the box on the table. My daughter’s caught on to this though, and assumes that an opened ate night box left on the table the next morning becomes fodder for her to explore. Here’s I found her:

Here’s a few more quick details about Crated With Love:

• There’s 2 different kind of subscriptions: Digital Subscription (review here) $1.99/mo, and Story Mode Subscription (reviewed above); $17.99 – $26.99/mo depending on the options you choose
• With the Story Mode Subscription, you choose to add online Bonus Content. The Bonus Content is a great option if you’d like to extend your date each month. It comes with weekly activities to go along with your date box, as well as curated Spotify playlists and themed recipes. I review the Bonus Content in more depth in my previous post, see here.
• Free shipping, ships to U.S. only
• If you click through THIS LINK to order, you’ll get $5 off your subscription!

Thanks so much Crated With Love for letting us review your October 2018 The Haunted Mansion date night box!

BUT WAIT – BONUS MATERIAL AVAILABLE!! 🙂

Click on over to my previous post about CWL’s bonus content to learn more about the extra special bonus content material you can add to your CWL date night subscription as well.

Related posts:

Crated With Love Subscription Box Review: You Complete Me (& promo code) A New Kind of Date Night At Home – Crated With Love’s New “Story Mode” Subscription Box Apple of my Eye Date Night: Crated With Love Box Review (Nov. 2018) Crated With Love Jan. 2019 Sweetheart Safari – Review & Promo Code