For my fianceé Shelly's 26th birthday this year, I decided to do something I've always wanted to do, ever since I heard of their existence. Yes, I made my own SWEET HAMPER - and believe me when I say this; my new mission in life is to encourage EVERYONE to make their own and drive the greedy Amazon sellers out of business.
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Allow me to present my 10 reasons as to why you should take the effort to make your own sweet hampers, rather than buying them from online sellers:
1. You are making an effort to make something personal for somebody, homemade gifts are the best kind.
2. You'll save a SHITLOAD of money - I shall elaborate on this point later...
3. You can make sure that your sweet hamper will contain only things that the person likes - you never know what will come from online sellers.
4. You can build your hamper around a specific theme, again making the gift more personal (i.e. a liquorice hamper, a Haribo hamper, an American candy hamper etc.)
5. You can tailor your hamper to a person's specific dietary requirements (i.e. vegetarian, vegan, Halal, Kosher, gluten intolerant, nut allergy etc.)
6. As you are making it yourself, your creativity is unlimited; you can decorate the presentation box to your heart's content, you can use photographs or drawings and make the gift even more personal.
7. You can decide yourself on your own budget, the size of the box, the variety of sweets - the sky's the limit to all of the variables YOU personally control.
8. If you plan to make a hamper in advance, you can ensure all of the contents have good sell-by dates and are in good condition (i.e. packaging is not damaged by the postage process)
9. Speaking of the postage process - there ISN'T one; you have as long as you want to make your hamper, and there's no obnoxious waiting in for the postman.
10. And finally: it's SO FUCKING FUN. I personally haven't had this much fun making a present for someone in a very long time. Because it's so fun, you could adapt the idea of a sweet hamper into something you can work on with your children or co-workers or whoever you like - just make sure they can keep a secret!
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When making a sweet hamper, there are numerous things you need to take into consideration:
- Their tastes: do they like aniseed, mint, strawberry, raisins, marshmallows, bubblegum? You ideally want to fill your hamper with as many things as possible that the person will like.
- Their age: think about it, a sweet hamper for your young child is going to be very different to one you make for your nana. For example, your nana might enjoy old sweet shop classics like BonBons and Licorice Allsorts, whereas your child may prefer smaller, sweeter things like Milkybars and Jelly Babies.
- Their dietary requirements: as I mentioned earlier, if you want to buy a sweet hamper for a person with a specific dietary need, you may be out of luck - you physically cannot read the ingredients of the contents and have no way of ensuring that they haven't come into contact with other contents that may contain something the person cannot eat. Be very wary of these things - especially for people who are vegetarian/vegan/Halal etc. - SO MANY sweets contain pork gelatine.
- Their personality: Are they a person who would love to gorge on sweets until they're sick or just keep a jar nearby to offer round to guests? Of course, you wouldn't make a sweet hamper for someone who didn't like sweets... Make your you tailor their hamper to THEM.
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Okay, onto the hamper I made for Shelly:
Firstly, Shelly has recently had an operation, and has been told that she cannot eat nuts. This obviously isn't as rigid as someone having a nut allergy - I just had to make sure I didn't buy sweets like Snickers bars, sugared almonds or chocolate-covered peanuts.
Secondly, Shelly is a self-proclaimed chocoholic - so I knew that I had to include lots of different types of chocolate. But at the same time, Shelly also really likes gummies and chewy sweets and isn't a huge fan of bubblegum.
I opted to make a sweet hamper that provided as many different things as possible - ideally providing at least 2 of each thing. I didn't really have a theme, per se, I wanted her to have NO IDEA what was going to be in this box. The solution? As much variety as possible!
So, what does Shelly like and what does Shelly not like?
Likes:
Strawberry, Cherry, Chocolate, Marshmallows, Mint, Sherbet, Popping Candy, Haribos, Gummies/Jellies
Dislikes:
Bubblegum, Liquorice, Wafers, Nougat, Banana, Coconut
Let's begin with the box. This is the box I used:
Shelly likes dogs, so a box pattered with dogs will go down well. Also a good thing to bear in mind is once the box is empty, will they want to keep the box to use for storage? In my case, I don't see why not. This box is lovely. :)
Anyway, it's about 6 inches deep and 18 inches wide. It's a fairly large box, ideally for a large amount of sweets to fill it with.
My dad bought me this box from the homeware store Chiltern Mills for £5.99. So I technically didn't buy the box - but that is your first thing your budget should take into account. Before you go out buying boxes however, check your cupboards - any old box will do - remember, you can jazz it up, cover it with wrapping paper, for example. And if you don't have a box, I can guarantee your nana or your aunt who hoards boxes and gift bags will have one. :)
Push comes to shove, use a shoebox or a hatbox. :)
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The best places to look for sweets I found were:
- The pocket-money section of major supermarkets (i.e. ASDA and Tesco); they sell things like giant Drumstick lollipops, bubblegum, chocolate bars, large chew bars etc, usually at around 10p-30p.
- ASDA sell bags of sweet-shop classics (i.e. Dolly Mixtures, chocolate buttons, jelly beans etc.), 3 bags for £1 - awesome deal.
- Poundland and Poundworld are GODSENDS of discount shops. They tend to sell large multipacks of sweets, especially those made by Swizzels Matlow. They also occasionally sell imported candy from the USA like Wonka Gobstoppers.
- Home Bargains, B&M, The 99p Store and Discount UK are also very good choices. I bought half a shopping basket's worth of sweets from Home Bargains and spent under £8. They tend to sell small packs of sweets and chocolate bars for under 25p.
- Iceland: in Iceland, I found this gem. This is a pack of Nestlé chocolate bars - 6 different bars for only £2. These bars can retail individually for 60p!
- Lidl and Aldi: as most of their stock is imported from Europe (mainly Germany), the packaging tends to be in multiple languages, but the quality is pretty good and they're hella cheap. Shelly and I are big fans. :)
- Local corner shops and newsagents: many of these places tend to sell the classic 10p and 20p mix-ups, but they also sell pocket-money sweets, mostly under 30p.
Another thing to take into consideration: Shelly's birthday is October 25th - smack bang in the middle of the pre-Halloween sales window - where every shop on the high street is overflowing with sweets and candies. Some shops were even selling Christmas stuff! (Poundland in our town were selling chocolate Father Christmases on the 1st of SEPTEMBER)
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Once it was filled to the brim, I weighed my box. It was too big and too heavy for the kitchen scales, so I had to weigh myself, then weigh myself holding the box. The box weighs in at a whopping SEVEN AND A HALF KILOGRAMS.
Let's put that into perspective; I spent around £30 on this sweet hamper (minus the box itself), and it weighs seven kilograms. That's around £4.20 per kilo.
This sweet hamper weighs 1.1kg and costs £12.99 - more or less £12 per kilo there.
This one weighs 2.5kg and costs £35 - more than what I paid for mine, and less than half of what mine weighs!
And finally, out of interest, I searched for the most expensive sweets hamper I could find on Amazon; I found THIS. £425 and says that it weighs "over 25 kilos". £17 per kilo. Yeah, I'm so glad I decided to make my own. :)
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This is a photograph of the finished box I made:
For those who are interested, here is a complete list of everything that was inside my box. Bear in mind, all of these Amazon sellers boast "over 25 kinds of sweets", my box contains over 100!
And finally, because I'm such a huge NERD; I made some lovely pie charts. :D
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| INCLUDED FLAVOURS |
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| TYPES OF SWEETS |
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