Bonding Bees is a monthly date night and relationship building subscription box! It’s designed to provide dates that both new couples and couples married for years can enjoy together.
Each box comes with an information booklet that talks about your box and the activities they included for you.
This box was sent to us at no cost for review. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)
About Bonding Bees
The Subscription Box: Bonding Bees
The Cost: $39.00 a month + free US shipping. Save with 3 and 6-month subscriptions.
The Products: Each month will have a unique theme with activities to go along with it, such as crafts, games, relationship building, cooking/baking, and more
Ships to: the US for free and Canada for $10.00
Bonding Bees December 2018 Review
The theme for this month was "The 12 Days of Mini Dates" and I think this is a great idea for a December box! The dates are designed so that you can go at your own pace and do one date at a time or multiple dates if you choose. They provided a checklist in the front of the book for you to keep track and if you complete all twelve dates and share with them, you can get 10% off your next box. I thought this was a great idea!
Some of the dates were super simple and could be combined with other dates to make it more of a complete experience, while others were more of an activity. Some of the smaller ideas included making a playlist together, designing your Dream Home together, or making some cocktails and a dessert, Eggnog Pie, using the provided recipes. The cocktails weren't really our style, but I appreciated that they included them!
Some of the dates were a little mushy, like the 6th date which was Meet Me at the Mistletoe and involved kissing exercises, some were very low-key like watching a romantic movie together from the list they provided, and some were fun and competitive, like the Goodbye 2018 trivia questions for date 5. My husband and I can both be competitive with trivia, so this was fun for us to do together and even more fun when I beat him fair and square. Haha. Although we both realized, that we are pretty out of touch on pop culture from the past year!
They also provided opportunities for us to get personal with a trivia section that asked us to discuss some things like our hardest trial this year, something silly we fought about and our most romantic experience. These were great questions that allowed us to each give our own opinions and perspectives as we reflected on the events of the past year together. I always love when date boxes get us talking about things we wouldn't think to discuss otherwise!
The final date involved planning a date in order to keep the romance going. On the back was a final checkbox for when you have completed all of your mini-dates.
Bonding Bees Soie Mates Socks
To help us get cozy for our dates, they provided these cute, soft socks that say "Kiss me if you can read this" which I think is a nice subtle way to be romantic with each other if we happen to wear them around the house.
We put our cozy socks on to get us in the mood for our date night!
Bonding Bees Ghosts of Past, Present and Future Board Game
The first date in our booklet was to play this board game based on Charles Dickes, A Christmas Carol. I thought it was really cool that they took the time to design and include a board game of such nice production quality. The design was pretty as well with the florals and snowflakes.
The board game had a front and back to it and was separated into ten different puzzles with several little snowflakes with extra activities on each one.
The instructions sheet showed us what we were supposed to get from each puzzle and there was an answer key underneath each one, but it was in code and we had to decipher those before we could make sure our answer was correct. After you completed each puzzle you were supposed to do whatever was listed on the snowflake for that number. These included activities like turning on some music and dancing together, getting on the floor and making snow angels together or giving each other a long congratulatory kiss at the end. These were cute and silly physical ways to break up the mental challenges!
We set up our board and cards and went through the cards in the numbered order. Each card had another larger number at the bottom that told us which puzzle it corresponded to. There were even some hint cards that we had to use code to figure out the answers to if we got stuck. We enjoyed a lot of the challenges of the game which included some math, problem-solving, and other riddles, but we found that it didn't really flow very well and was sort of confusing with all of the cards and having to consult them so many times to make sure we had the correct answers. We still had fun playing it, but we didn't feel like it had a real cohesive feel. There was a prize though for solving all of the puzzles!
Wooden Ornament
This sweet wooden ornament is a great reminder for us as a couple to appreciate each other. I love the simplicity of the wood and the elegance of the lettering.
The Grinch Mini Gingerbread House Kit - Retail Value $14.50
The next date we chose involved making a gingerbread house together using the kit they gave us. This was something we never would have thought about doing together, but was fun to do once we had our own kit that made it easy for us! They actually turned this into a competition and if you post photos of your gingerbread house you could win up to $200. That's a pretty nice prize!
This was just a mini kit, so it wasn't the best for designing together since it was smaller, but we had some fun being creative with it.
This is also the time when our youngest decided to crash the party, so I don't think our house will be winning any contests, but it was a fun activity to work on together.
After this, we flipped through our mini-date book and this was when we completed the trivia section and just talked about a few of the other dates. We haven't made a definite plan for what our next date will be, but we like that we have a booklet full of some good options!
The Verdict: This was our first experience with Bonding Bees and I think 12 mini-dates was a really fun idea for the holidays! I'm hoping that since my husband will have some time off work after Christmas that we will be able to try a few of the other dates like watching a movie and designing our dream home together while we have some extra time. I liked that we could do the dates all at once or spread them out, which is much more ideal for us as parents of three kids who never seem to sleep. I thought it was nice that we got a pair of socks, a nice ornament, a treat that was also an activity and a nice quality board game as well as some date guidance. It didn't feel as light on the goods as some of the other date boxes we've tried. Overall, we enjoyed this one and I'm eager to see how we feel about future boxes!
To Wrap Up:
Can you still get this box if you sign up today? No, boxes for each month ship the first and second week of that month. If you ordered today, you’d get the January box. (Their website says if you order a box in the 2nd week of a month, they’ll try to get you that month’s box as long as supplies last but they can’t guarantee.)
Coupon - Use code MSA50 to save 50% off your first box or use MSA12 to save $12 off your 3 or 6-month subscription!
Value Breakdown: Date boxes like this are very subjective, but considering the gingerbread kit is retailing for $14.50 alone, I think the experience along with everything else we received was definitely worth the extra $24.50 to bring it up to the $39 cost of the box! Plus, there is always value in something that gets delivered to my door and provides me with an opportunity to spend quality time with my husband!
Check out all of our Bonding Bees reviews and more date night boxes in our Subscription Box List!
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