Stuck in a date night rut? Last month I reviewed DateBox, a fun and inexpensive way to spend a date night with your spouse without leaving the house. There are a quite a few of these dating subscription boxes, so instead of giving just one a try, I decided to try out three different ones and stick with the one we liked the most.
That brings us to date night #2: Crated with Love. I really wanted this to be a surprise since the first box had been spoiled for me, but that didn’t work out. The shipping notification email mentioned “carnival” so that was a dead giveaway. As you can tell from the photo, if the email didn’t give it away, the box sure did!
I should probably mention that Crated with Love is about half of the cost of Datebox. There’s an option to add “extras” to the date for an additional fee – a music playlist, recipes, etc., but I opted out of the extras.
Before we started the date, my husband was at the grocery store so I opened the box without him to see whether any “date prep” was needed. It wasn’t and I considered that a good sign. There might have been some prep if I had gotten the “extras” because there was (regretfully) mention of a funnel cake recipe.
Inside the box was a small stuffed gumball machine, a roll of 20 tickets, a plastic ring, two small plastic balls, a fake goldfish, sticky darts, a fridge magnet and some candied popcorn. Our first assignment was to divide the tickets in half and write something we would like to “win” from our spouse – it had to be 
something easily obtainable (e.g., a massage, a chore, etc.). The other person would have a chance to win whatever we wrote on the ticket, so it had to be something we could both enjoy. Some of our ideas included the following: a 30-minute massage, a clean car, and a no-kids-in-the-house-nap.
After we were done writing on the tickets, we put them in a bowl and got to pick them as we competed in the “carnival” games. The first game was a ring toss with the plastic ring that had been provided. We used filled water bottles and took turns tossing rings. Any time one of us missed, we had to say something nice or mention what we loved about the other person. If the ring landed on the bottle, the person got to draw a ticket. Cue the “awwww,” until we both missed so many times we were running out of things to say. Fortunately, we had a rubber diving ring laying around that we swapped out for the plastic ring; this was easier and made less noise (remember, at home date night = sleeping children). The instructions stated that after one person got to five tickets, the ring toss was over.
The second game was a silly and romantic version of beer pong. We needed five water bowls (and yes, we totally used red Solo cups), one of which contained the fake goldfish, and cards with instructions. I won’t go into too much detail about the cards, but the object of the game was to get the ball into one of the bowls (preferably the one with the goldfish), and before each throw, we had to draw a card with instructions on how to throw the ball.
The last game was a dart-throwing contest using the sticky darts and fridge magnet that had been included in the box. Sad to say, we were competing for only one remaining ticket in the bowl so it didn’t last very long.
The winner with the most tickets got the stuffed gumball machine. Really though, in the end, we both won because we now had these amazing tickets to redeem.
I absolutely loved this date.
It was really quite simple, competitive, and fun! The only complaint I had about the date is that I wish there had been a way to win or steal tickets back from your partner, being the competitive person I am. We ended up doing a sudden death match with the plastic balls and water bowls – the first person who got a ball into a bowl got to steal back one ticket of their choice.
