Give Me Something Good To Eat!

 

If you've followed this blog at all, you probably have figured out that I love holidays and I doubly love Halloween. Yesterday, John got his first of two Halloween boxes, so I can safely post this one for you to check out. I wanted this box to be filled with stuff that John could share with the guys in his barracks and the people at his command.

How I made it:

•  I covered the inside of the box with Walmart-brand black wrapping paper like this. 
• Then, using Elmer's, I glued lengths of Halloween caution tape (found at Five Below) onto the inside of the box. 
• After that, still using Elmer's, I glued cotton spider webs and the plastic tarantulas that came with them (also found at Five Below) all over the box. This was absolutely the most fun part of making the box! (Tip: I found the easiest way to make the spider webs look especially spider-webby is to glue and let it dry, and then pull and glue new sections of the same web later. The layers separate much easier and get wispier if you repeat the process a few times.)
• Finally, I glued the caution tape to the outside of the box and covered it in boxing tape so it couldn't unravel during shipping. 

All told, the raw materials for the decorations cost about $3 with tax (exempting the roll of gift wrap). With the gift wrap, it was about $6.

Contents:

• Dulce de Leche Marshmallow Bars
• Pumpkin Spice Pretzel Bites
• Halloween Oreos
• Cake-Mix Pumpkin Cookies (As an aside, John reported that after a work week in transit, these cookies were still very chewy and fresh! And I didn't even heat seal them with my Food Saver. I was afraid I'd squash them! I just put them in Ziplock bags and squeezed as much air out of them as possible. I think they're much more resilient than they look!)
• individual bags of mini pretzels

The hardest part about this box was playing Tetris to try to fit everything inside and close the top. But, after about 10 minutes of shifting, squishing, and praying (and I'm only half joking),  it fit and it (eventually) shipped! Yay!