You’ve stuck with me for two date night boxes, and I had hoped to save the best for last. Sadly, that isn’t the case. If I’ve learned anything from three completely different indoor date boxes, it’s this: not all date night boxes are created equal.
Welcome to date night #3: Date Night In Box. After seeing sponsored Date Night In posts, I really thought this box was going to be the gold standard for date night boxes (especially at the $43 price point). But if I’m being 100% honest, I’ll say that my husband and I would have had more fun if we’d taken a nap or gone grocery shopping.
Let’s jump right in, shall we?
The theme of the box was “Giving Thanks” and included salt, vanilla extract, caramel apple dip, apple cider mix, sugar, cards, a dry erase marker and board, and a small Eric Carle book. As soon as you open the box, there is a “newsletter” about 12 pages long — long enough to have a table of contents. I really need to talk to the designer about this. I want to have a date with my husband, not give him material to take into the bathroom for an hour. SERIOUSLY.
For being 12 pages long, you would expect some really fun activities. The first six pages give couples an optional dinner menu, which admittedly is the only thing I plan to save from the box because the turkey, Brie and cranberry pesto phyllo wrap and the Parmesan and thyme mashed potatoes both sound phenomenal. We don’t go out of our way to cook, and I don’t exactly have phyllo dough laying around, so we skipped the menu and table talk and headed straight into the rest of the date, which actually doesn’t even start until page 8.
On page 7 of the “newsletter,” there is a thoughtful dedication to Tripp Halstead. The creators included a book, “LOVE from the Very Hungry Caterpillar,” to donate or give to a child in Tripp Halstead’s honor. While it was very sweet and kept with the theme, the creators of the box admit that they do not know the Halsteads personally and I felt that it was somewhat inauthentic, almost like something to fill the box. We haven’t yet decided a good purpose for the book, but we hope to find one.
Jumping ahead to page 8 and finally diving into the date night activities, we were given instructions to make caramel apple cider floats. I had literally just eaten ice cream with my kiddos before we put them to bed, so we decided to pass on this and save the ice cream making to do with our daughter later in the week.
The next activity was each taking a turn to write a reason we are thankful for each other on the dry erase board and to place it somewhere we can remember to write something new every day. The long-term concept is great, but date night wise, this literally took 60 seconds. Also, I can’t even remember to move the dang Elf on the Shelf — who would expect that I will actually remember to do this?!
And last but not least was a card game, “Gratitude Slam,” where you split the deck of letter cards in half and take turns using the cards to replace one letter of the starting word to form new words. The individual who gets rid of all of their cards first wins a wager of their choice. This took maybe three minutes to play, and then we were done. The end. That’s all folks! They were kind enough to include some more ideas on how to continue the gratitude throughout the month, but that was our five-minute date night in a nutshell. Granted, if we had incorporated the ice cream, it would have been more like 20 minutes. Reading the 12-page newsletter from cover to cover would have taken us longer.
