Halloween 2014: The Recap

Remember this little guy?

Well, he has now reached the milestone of going to the orthodontist. Yes, that's right. Due to brilliant planning on my part, the Sugar Baby* got expanders put in the week before Halloween. In addition to a new toothbrush, an envelope full of wax and some little tooth-pokey things, he received this.

Now, take a good look at that picture. It meant to make you feel good, like, "Hey! I can still chow down on my Halloween stash." But what you're not seeing is what people really give out. Snickers, Milky Ways, Skittles, Laffy Taffy, Airheads, Butterfingers, Starbursts, Baby Ruths ... all the good stuff that you get a ton of.
Here's a picture of this year's haul:

(Note the glaring absence of Dum Dums. This is a Halloween first.) The doctor promised that he'd give kids $2 a pound for any Halloween candy they brought into him. At first, the Sour Patch Kid was excited and devised a plan to spend his new-found riches on a video game. Then he realized that he would probably max out at $2.50 and couldn't be bothered to bag it all up. It's now sitting in my cupboard where it will remain until next Halloween.

As per the annual Laws of Halloween, we started off with an early visit to Father John. This year we were his first visitors. Somehow the SPK managed to score three full-size bars.

I, on the other hand, was treated to a fantastic bag full of "breakfast," as Father John explained. It was Jacques Torres' chocolate-covered corn flakes and Cheerios. (No picture because I shoved those babies into my gaping maw the next day). Then it was over to Grandma and Pop Pop's before joining up with a wild band of about ten other eight-year-old boys.
Alex the Super Shopper promptly sent me a picture of her son's haul, and it was alarmingly mainstream, as well. No shampoo bottle this year. (Read all about that here.) Thank goodness, though, that my friend Susan sent a picture of something awesome from her daughter's trick-or-treat bag:

 

 

So there you have it. Halloween 2014 was certainly a success in that we didn't get a snowstorm or a hurricane and the Sour Patch Kid managed to score enough orthodontist-approved candies to keep himself happy for a week.

*In addition to being old enough to go to the orthodontist, he is also now old enough to know about this blog and the fact that he has been called the Sugar Baby for eight years. He is not happy about this and so, to respect his wishes, from now on he shall be called the Sour Patch Kid. *Sniff.*

Easter review

The Ice Cube Queen sent me an e-mail on Easter. She was dismayed that I had no coverage of Easter candy. What can I say? Better late than never, that's what!
The Easter Bunny did indeed visit our house and left the Sugar Baby a basket filled with Starburst jelly beans, a tube of orange M&Ms that looked like a carrot, a mini carton of Whopper's malted milk eggs, a "Snapsy" bunny, which you break into pieces, and this:

a bag of Russell Stover Iddy Biddy Bunnies.


Look how cute!

The Easter Bunny also scored big points with these: two cans of "Kidffitti Spray Chalk."

Now I'm just taking a guess here, but I think the Bunny must've thought these were a good idea at the time. But I'm guessing he didn't really think things through, considering 1) it's like training spray paint for a future graffiti artist and 2) the big sticker on the cap that says, "REMOVE CHALK WITHIN 24 HOURS WITH A BRUSH AND WARM SOAPY WATER." So yes, I spent the latter part of Easter scrubbing the back patio with soap and a brush. And guess what? It didn't really come off completely. Color me surprised.

I'm back ... with Circus Peanuts!

Okay, I'm back. I think. I had some computer issues and was just feeling burnt out, but I think I'm back and rolling now. I've been scrolling through the hundreds of pictures on my phone trying to make heads or tails of all the food pictures I have. There's a lot of catching up to do.
Over the holidays, the Sugar Baby took all the empty Amazon boxes and set up his own candy(and medieval weapons) store. Sadly, it's gone out of business since then. His prices were way too high ($1 for a Tootsie Roll!) and the rent was pretty expensive.

I've been kicking myself for not buying these peppermint Circus Peanuts. What was I thinking? I would have loved to have tried them. Did any of you come across these over Christmas?

Halloween is almost here!

The countdown has begun! Halloween is almost here and the excitement is mounting. This week, Father John sent me this link, which I thought was fantastic, although flawed: The Definitive Guide to Trading Halloween Candy. I mean, seriously, there's no way a Fifth Avenue beats out a 100 Grand.
On the homefront, the Sugar Baby will be going as the Grim Reaper. This is the first year that he is A) dressing as something not cute or interesting; B) is wearing a mask; and C) is more interested in scaring people than the actual candy part. I know this is a totally normal stage, but I must admit, I'm sad. Doesn't he realize that going as a mushroom or The World will garner him more Snickers than a stupid store-bought costume? The Sugar Baby, back in the days when he didn't even know that the Almond Joy he was holding would become part of the Mommy Tax that night.

Random candy tidbits

I've got a new computer, which should be a good thing, but it came equipped with Windows 8, which is a bad thing. It's the most un-intuitive, difficult abomination of a system I've ever experienced. I'm telling you this because I'm just going to start posting some random candy stuff since everything seems to be working okay tonight. You never know what will happen tomorrow.

First up, candy from Singapore. The Sugar Baby's friend from preschool (who has the same name, only spelled differently), moved to Singapore for a couple of years. But last summer, Shuger Babee returned from the other side of the world, much to everyone's delight. And lucky me! His mom brought me some super yummy hard candies called Sticky. I love these. First of all, they're visually fantastic. The Passionfruit Rock looks like little pieces of passionfruit. The I (Heart) Mango Pudding has little red hearts in the center and the Pineapple Rock has pineapples in the center. The Lychee Pillows are little pink and green puffs. They're adorable. Even better is the taste. They're juicy and tart. Why can't we have hard candy like this in the U.S.?

 

 

 

Next up, a picture of the contents of the Sugar Baby's piñata. He turned 7 in May and I filled his Minecraft Ghast piñata with Ring Pops, Laffy Taffy, SweetTarts, Bottle Caps and other assorted sugary delights.

 

Lastly, we have this York Peppermint Patty-flavored creamer. My boss put these out at work one day and I couldn't wait to try some in my coffee. Looks yummy, right? Wrong. It was too artificial tasting and it didn't do anything to satisfy my chocolate craving.

You win some, you lose some

Yes, Easter came and went without a peep (no pun intended!) from Candy Yum Yum! I took lots of pictures of some of the new candy that I saw on the shelves, but I just wasn't motivated this season. Even the Easter Bunny didn't really pull through for the Sugar Baby. He brought some jelly beans, some gummies and a chocolate rabbit, but overall it wasn't a big sugar rush here. I guess I've just been in a candy funk lately. That doesn't mean I haven't been eating candy, of course. It's just that there's not much to say about eating half a bag of Hershey Kisses, especially when you only meant to eat four.

In any case, here's something new that I tried recently: a Trader Joe's PB&J Milk Chocolate Bar. My first thought was, why ruin a peanut butter cup with jelly? But then I tried it. It's a different taste experience than a peanut butter cup. Obviously, first of all it's a bar. The peanut butter is very smooth and creamy and the jelly is more like the liquid filling you find in "fancy" candy bars, like the Godiva raspberry bar. It wasn't overly sweet, which I liked. I would definitely do this one again.
However, the same can't be said about the Snickers 3X Chocolate. Snickers with three times the chocolate? What's not to love, right? Well, let me just say that this bar was a dud. It was actually 2 mini bars inside one package. I like that concept, because sometimes you just don't want a whole candy bar. The description says "milk chocolate, chocolate flavored nougat, chocolate caramel and peanuts." All of that adds up to, well, practically no taste difference between the ingredients. I missed the lip-puckering maltiness of the regular Snickers nougat and the chocolate caramel just seemed blah. I really uphold Snickers as probably the most iconic candy bar, so this was a huge disappointment.

Happy Hallo--- oh wait, I mean, Valentine's Day!

As I've written in the past, Valentine's Day is the new Halloween. The Sugar Baby came home from school loaded down with with all sorts of sweets from his friends. Note the tube of Skittles arranged like a rainbow. I wouldn't have the patience to make one of those, let alone 20. 

Limited edition art from the Sugar Baby

Look what the Sugar Baby brought home from school one day. A candy masterpiece! Admittedly, I didn't know what it was until he told me, but now it seems so obvious. Up top, we have chocolate coins, a candy Lego piece, a stick of rock candy, a lollipop, a wax bottle filled with black syrup and those smiling people? Those are Air Heads. I'm so proud.

Halloween 2011: You can't keep us down

You didn't really think we'd stay in on Halloween, did you? Despite the odds, we decided we were going to keep up with tradition and do all of our annual Halloween activities. So after the downtown trick-or-treat, it was off to my parents' house to show off the mummy costume (and score a Russell Stover Chocolate Marshmallow Pumpkin). Then, onto the church to visit Father John!

As you may recall, last year 186 kids visited the church to get a full-sized candy bar. Every year, Father John tries to beat the previous year's record. He said he was hopeful that this year would be good, since school was closed and people were anxious to get out of the house. But since it was weird with the snow and all, it was questionable whether the turnout would be good or not.

Just a side comment, here. Father John does a great job of setting the scene in the rectory. There were candles burning and Gregorian chant playing on the stereo. He had cheese and crackers set out for the adults, a really cool frame that displayed old timey candy bags and-- you've gotta love this-- a table decorated with spooky stuff, including a copy of "The Exorcist." Now that is funny!

Of course, the focus of it all was the big basket filled with not just full-sized candy bars, but KING sized. Nice, right? He let the Sugar Baby take not one, not two, but THREE candy bars. He picked a Hershey bar, a Snickers and a bag of Skittles.
We talked a bit and then it was back in the car to drive home and contemplate what the night would bring. The Sugar Baby took a brief snooze in the car after all the exercise and candy.

By the time 6 o'clock rolled around, I was wiped out, but I saw some of the neighbors put their lights on. People were posted frantically on Facebook: "Are you going out tonight?" "Who's trick-or-treating?" "You can't cancel Halloween!"
So Mr. Goodbar and the Sugar Baby headed out into the vast unknown while I stayed behind to hand out full-sized Twix. One gaggle of teenagers nearly wiped out my full supply.
An hour later, the crew returned with a bucket brimming with candy. We dumped it out and began the ritual sorting.
As you can see, there wasn't anything particularly unusual, except for the Toy Story notebook. What was surprising was the absence of certain candies. No Smarties! No Necco Wafers! No pennies! The selection was kind of disappointing, really. I mean, it's great that he got such an abundance of top-tier candy bars, but it's nice to have a little variety.

All in all, it was the weirdest Halloween ever. Some kids went out, others waited until the rescheduled Halloween that took place this past Saturday. (Friends are reporting that it was just creepy. Desolate streets and hardly a spooky Halloween atmosphere.) Let's hope the rescheduling of Halloween never happens again.

And oh, as far as Father John, his Halloween wish came true! He had 262 trick-or-treaters and he had to run down to the corner gas station to get more candy. Now that's some Halloween spirit!

Scariest Halloween Ever.

Q: Why did the vampire love this year's Halloween?
A: Because it was a giant suckfest.

I began writing a detailed post about all of the elements that went into making this the most bizarre Halloween ever, but it was too painful to relive. So here's what you need to know:
1) Snow in New England.
2) School is cancelled.
3) The First Selectman cancels Halloween and reschedules it for this-coming Saturday night.
4) The vertigo which I've been experiencing for 3 months now takes a wicked turn for the worse.
and then this:

I took the Sugar Baby to my parents' town for the afternoon trick-or-treat in the downtown shopping area. On the green, all the local politicians and police set up booths where they give out candy and fliers. There was one table being manned by some grouchy old men offering up lollipops. The Sugar Baby took one just as another kid grabbed a handful, so one of the old men said loudly, "Just take one!" This freaked the Sugar Baby out, so he reached into his bucket and pulled out a Butterfinger, which he tossed back into their pile of low-rent lollipops. Oh the horror! A bad trade! I couldn't really reach back into the pile and pull out the Butterfinger, so we just moved on. But it was that kind of day.

Tired, dizzy and hungry, we took a short break where I had some soup and the Sugar Baby began sorting his loot, including the two glow-in-the-dark bracelets with politicians' names on them. (Who thought of this brilliant idea? Don't they know these are going straight into the landfill?)
So how did the rest of our Halloween go? Did we follow the rules and stay in on Halloween night, or were we rebels, hitting the streets as soon as the street lights went on? Stay tuned ...

Happy ... Halloween?

Yep, this is the worst trick of all. You may have heard that New England was walloped with a storm last night. Giant, wet flakes of snow fell from the sky while the winds blew and tree branches snapped off. It was all kind of crazy. The Sugar Baby of course thought this was great, but in the back of my mind all day I just kept thinking, "What about trick-or-treating?" Let me tell you, nothing kills the candy-begging mood like the crunch of wet, cold snow under your feet. Fortunately, it warmed up pretty well today and the streets are pretty clear. School has already been canceled for tomorrow, but as far as I'm concerned, Halloween is ON!

No costume, no candy

This time of year, lots of candy statistics get tossed around. 35 million pounds of candy corn will be made this year. About one pound will be consumed in my house, one corn per day. The folks at Twix sent along some interesting tidbits to ponder.

According to their research, women prefer chewy treats more than men do (42 percent to 33 percent), while more men than women seek out treats with a crunch (33 percent to 23 percent). I don't know if I agree with that, but I did take a particular interest in the next statistic:

Nearly 7 out of 10 adults (69 percent) ages 18 to 24, and half of adults ages 25 to 34 said they would do it if they could. Trick-or-treating, that is. The only thing holding them back is dirty looks from the neighbors.

As I mentioned on my interview with The Sporkful, I love taking the Sugar Baby trick-or-treating. Heck, yes, I dressed him up when he was just a baby and strolled him around town looking for treats. I'm shameless that way, and so are many other parents. Sue me. 

I did mention, however, that I have a *special* bucket of leftover crap treats that I use for teenagers who call a baseball cap a costume. I freely admit that I've been known to clean out the pantry and collect all the granola bars, oatmeal packets, tea bags and raisin boxes that aren't going to be eaten and dole those out. I always thought that I was against trick-or-treating once you reached a certain age, say 17 or so. But the guys at The Sporkful made me realize that I'm not really an ageist, I'm a costumist. This was pretty revelatory to me. I feel empowered. So if you've got a costume, stop by my house on Halloween, even if you're 45 and don't have a kid in tow. I'll be giving out full-size Twix.

Post-The Sporkful Interview: When things got really scary

Hopefully by now you've listened to The Sporkful podcast I mentioned in my previous post and you've become instant fans of Dan and Mark. (I dare you to listen to the egg sandwich episode and not stop at the deli tomorrow morning.) If you haven't heard it yet, take a 1/2 hour and give it a listen. Then come back and read the rest of this post in which I reveal to you what happened after the taping. I'll wait here.
***
Okay.

I went to bed that night full of nervous energy. I’m not a public speaker (if you couldn’t already tell), so I thought my nerves were all jangly over that. But then, suddenly! Terror raced through me! Ohmygosh … I realized that the Sugar Baby had never had a full-sized, four-fingered Kit Kat. I knew the challenge that lay before me.

The next day I went out and bought a Kit Kat. After I fed the Sugar Baby lunch and he was fully ensconced in Phineas & Ferb, I casually pulled it out of the pantry. “Hey,” I said, “check it out.”

His eyes grew when he saw, what very possibly might have been, the first non-Fun Size candy bar he’s ever had. “I can have it?” he asked. “The whole thing?”

“Yes!” I said, excitedly. “Your first big Kit Kat!” And then I got out the camera, as if I wanted to document this huge milestone in his life. Of course, what I was really doing was baiting him. I wanted to see what an unconditioned, un-candy-socialized soul would do with four connected Kit Kat fingers. And this, dear Yumsters, is what he did.

He bit into the whole thing. He grasped all four chocolate fingers at once and bit into them. Oh the humanity! I started laughing, not in a good way, but in an anxiety-ridden, holy crap kind of way. “Let me show you something,” I said, and pulled the bar from his grasp. “Look at these sections. Don’t you think it would be fun to break off each piece?” I asked.

He looked seriously ticked off. “No,” he said, and took the bar back. Eventually it split of its own accord, and that really aggravated him. 

 

Meanwhile, I was having a moment of my own, being transported back in time to that day at Grand Union when the little boy chomped on the Kit Kat and forever altered my world.

As I mentioned on The Sporkful, my own way of eating a Kit Kat is certainly not for everyone. (I believe Dan referred to it as "corn-cobbing.") It requires a certain level of patience and dexterity that I understand not everyone has. So then I was hit with a second blow. I was mentioning my typical Kit Kat attack plan to my Partner-In-Crime, and she said, “Well, that’s how I eat it, too.” WHAT? Now this was a shocker. I don’t understand how I’ve never seen her eat a Kit Kat and furthermore, I can’t believe she eats it the same way. We could’ve gone to our death beds and not known that we had this brilliant piece of confectionery minutiae in common.

Well, you know where this is all leading. I have to know how you eat a Kit Kat. Are there other four-finger biters out there? Or other deconstructionists? Tell me your technique and I’ll tell you all about yourself. A sort of fortune telling by Kit Kat strategy, if you will.  

Good Reads, Good Eats: Candy 1 to 20

Remember waaaay back when (two years ago) when the Sugar Baby was obsessed with a candy cookbook? (Take a walk down Memory Lane here and here.) His obsessions have turned from candy to the Titanic of late, but just the other day, he got off the school bus and said, "Mom! It's Hanukkah!" (They had just learned about Rosh Hashanah in school.) "You know what that means? We have to get out the menorah and the dreidels and say we're sorry for something we did, like the time I peed on the book!"
Wow. Pretty amazing that 1) he remembered that book and 2) made the connection of Rosh Hashanah to Hanukkah, especially considering that we're not Jewish. In any case, I have to wonder how he would've reacted two years ago if this book had shown up in our mailbox back then:

The title got a little chopped off there. It's called "Candy 1 to 20" by Laurie Wolf and Pam Abrams. The cover kind of gives the book away. Each page is dedicated to a number that's illustrated with real candy. Fun! (As an aside, I've always kind of wondered why these types of books have multiple authors. I mean, once you get the idea, it kind of writes itself, doesn't it? Not to knock children's authors. I know what a cut-throat business children's publishing can be.) 
The photos are colorful and crisp. Frankly, I think I liked reading it more than the Sugar Baby did. Now, just because I'm this way, I'm about to give away the ending. Spoiler alert! Stop reading here if you don't want to know how it ends. Here we go ...

How's that for a surprise ending? Such a cliff hanger!

Rainbow Cupcakes!

 

Someone has a birthday coming up, so I've been trying to figure out if I should do a cake or cupcakes for the big "5."  Then I got a review copy of "The Big Book of Cupcakes" (Wiley Publishing, 2011) and I started experimenting. I made the "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" cupcakes, using the cheater's recipe. I took a box of white cake mix, prepared it, then divided it into six different bowls. Then I added food coloring to each and began the process of pouring a little bit of each color into each muffin cup. I was really expecting that all the colors would blend together and I'd end up with some nasty-looking grayish brown cupcakes, but as you can see,

Voila!

Beautiful rainbow cupcakes. They were quite impressive, I must say. However, I've decided not to go that route for the Sugar Baby's birthday. I felt kind of icky using all that food coloring in the cupcakes. I've been more in-tune to color additives lately, since The Connections have been tracing their daughter's recurrent hive issues to Red Dye #40. So I'm thinking it's going to be vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting. (It's merely a coincidence that that's my favorite combination.) Stay tuned for my pre-birthday cupcake jitters.

Good mailboxes make good neighbors

Who has the best neighbors? I do! I do! Big Tony and the Necco Door Neighbor clan asked if I could bring in their mail last week while they went off on a jaunt. At first I thought it was just a ruse, that they were just trying to show off their new mega-awesome, kick-butt mailbox they had installed after this winter of discontent (in which the town snow plow sheared away everyone's mailboxes). But they really did go away, as evidenced by this:the motherlode of Cape Cod chocolatey goodness.
When the doorbell rang last night, I thought it was yet another pizza being delivered (mistakenly) to the House of Yum (123 Chocolate Hill Road) instead of the House of People Who Eat Pizza Nearly Every Night (123 Chocolate Road). But to my happy surprise (and clearly, someone else's), it was the Necco Door Neighbor bearing a bag o' candy.

I love, love, love the big egg with the vignettes of the bunnies busily toiling away at the Easter eggs. The Sugar Baby and I have been playing "Easter egg hunt" all day with the little foil eggs inside.
The chocolate-dipped Peeps are great; kind of gives you an excuse to eat the whole darn row at once. (Not that I'd ever do that, of course.)
And look at that deviled egg from Chatham Candy Manor. Is that not the cutest thing ever? I LOVE this.
Last but not least, we have about 20 pounds of Bailey's Irish Creme fudge from the Provincetown Fudge Factory. (Insert your own joke here.)
So what's the lesson we learn here? It's two-fold. First, when you move, make sure you get cool neighbors. And second, when they ask you to take in their mail, say, hell yeah I will! (Even if you do kind of feel jealous of their fancy mailbox with the slide-out tray.)

Let the Easter reviews begin!

I must admit, I've been in a huge candy rut lately. Nothing has excited me. My sugar soul is weary. Fortunately, Easter candy has arrived! My first foray into the land of springtime candy is Dove Coconut Creme eggs. I was not thrilled that they were covered in milk chocolate; doesn't every candy aficionado know that coconut goes best with dark chocolate? In any case, I wanted to try these. The Sugar Baby had one last night and said, "Coconutastic!" He likes them.
Then I handed some over to the Easter Island statues that have taken up residence in my home. They seemed suspicious at first. The Rapa Nui king had this to say: "They are tasty, but unfortunately have that sort of fake coconut/suntan lotion flavor. If they had been made with dark chocolate, they would be better. Also, I wish the creme was fluffy instead of the same consistency as the chocolate. Still, they're better than a kick in the head."

A model of my next house

After the previous post about "Ye Olde Sugar Wafer Castle," I got an e-mail from Yumster Philly. She sent these awesome pictures of a castle her Grandmom had created, along with an original magazine article on how to make this fantasy structure. How cool is that?So on Day 2 of the Dreaded Winter Break (as opposed to the Dreaded Spring Break which will occur in just a few more weeks), the Sugar Baby and I headed to the grocery store with nothing but an empty cart and a sense of wild abandon in the candy aisle. We bought sugar wafers and gumdrops, licorice and Puckerooms, Vienna Fingers and vanilla wafers. I unearthed some Smarties, lollipops and ice cream cones out of the closet.
We started by ingesting as much as we possibly could until our stomachs hurt, then we got to work.
Two hours later, Voila! A sugary sweet hot mess.Some things I learned along the way:

• Use frosting like most normal people would. Yes, for some bizarre reason, I initially started gluing the sugar wafers onto a shoe box with Elmer's. Why glue, you ask? I don't know. Even the Sugar Baby questioned my decision. Frosting works so much better.
• Have a vision before you start. Otherwise, you'll end up with something that looks like it was crafted by Antoni Gaudi.
• And, most importantly, eat lunch first.

Happy Valentine's Day Yumsters!

It's the night before Valentine's Day. I've just tucked the Sugar Baby in and he says to me, "Did you buy me a heart?" Despite the fact that I've just spent the past 15 minutes tearing my hair out trying to convince him that he does not need his shell collection, presidential dollars, Easter Island statues and ukulele all on his night stand, and all I want to do is sit down and watch Lady Gaga emerge from her egg on the Grammy's and drink a glass of wine, I say "you'll find out tomorrow." Then I turn out the light and bolt out the front door to the grocery store.
Somehow, I managed to a) not only forget to buy the Sugar Baby a candy-filled heart but I also b) have absolutely no candy in the house that could possibly serve as a Valentine's Day present. I think I've lost all credibility as a candy blogger.
To make things even worse, I wrote an article about Valentine's chocolates this week. I mean, hello! I was at a bunch of different chocolate shops. I could've picked something up at any time. This is serious, people.
Fortunately, I scored a really cool balloon and a box of chocolates. Whew.
In the meantime (just so you don't think I'm a complete failure), I saw these Jelly Belly Jelly Bean Chocolate Dips. I love the combination of orange and chocolate, so this is probably the only jelly bean flavor I'd ever want to try with chocolate. At first, I was unsure. The jelly bean lacked the usual punch of a Jelly Belly ... it didn't scream ORANGE! But then I ate a few more and decided I liked them. They're similar to chocolate-covered orange peel.

Valentine's Day is on its way!

This morning the Sugar Baby decided to play "grocery store" and he unloaded everything from my pantry onto the bookshelves in my living room. Stacked in the front window are boxes of Rice Krispies, Apple Jacks and taco shells. There's condensed milk and applesauce in front of the home repair books, and frosting, red beans and Sleepytime Tea in the fiction section. The only candy present is a bag of leftover Halloween candy, mostly lollipops and Smarties. The stash of Christmas goodies has diminished to the point that I'm ready to take on the next holiday: Valentine's Day. Yes indeed, it's right around the corner. Are you ready? Have you thought about what you're going to give your sweetie?
This year, Lindt has come out with some Valentine's-themed packaging. It used to be that you could only get a few basic brands of chocolate in heart-shaped boxes at regular old supermarkets and drug stores. Thankfully that's all changed now because, really, who doesn't love a heart-shaped box?