US Candy Swap

Last month, I organised a sweet swap with a fellow snailmailer & blogger, Amanda ,who's from the United States and today, I wanted to show you what she sent me. Firstly, the packaging she used was awesome! It was decorated in a Halloween theme with lots of washi tape and stickers, and she wrote on 'Trick or Treat, Smell my feet, Give me something good to eat!' which reminds me of my childhood halloween so much. My favourite thing about the packaging was the adorable glittery ghost sticker. 

The rest of this post is going to be quite pic heavy, but 'a picture paints a thousand words' and I want you all to see the great things I received. She sent me a few kinds of snacks that are enjoyed in autumn & around halloween, plus some crafty bits I can use for snailmail or scrapbooking. Here's what was inside:

 This morning, I tried all of the sweets, apart from the candy corn. I couldn't resist eating some as soon as I opened the package a few weeks ago because I've wanted to try candy corn for around 10 years now and it was the only candy I asked for (the rest was all a surprise)! The candy corn was really nice, very sweet and I thought it was quite similar to the soft rock we can get at the seaside. I read online that it has a taste like marshmallow, but I thought it tasted more like vanilla. I can see why it's really popular in the US and I will probably have to buy some online each Halloween now. 

 When I noticed I'd been sent m&m's, I was really excited to try them. I love m&m's and I know in the US, they have so many different flavours. Although we can get some of them here in American candy shops or B&M Bargains, I've never seen these before! The sweets are orange, yellow and white in colour and are filled with white candy corn. The candy corn inside the m&m's tasted different compared to the original candy corn that I was also sent, but they are still yummy. I can't really describe the taste but they were very sweet. I wish we could buy them here!  

The next snack I tried was the Reese's peanut butter cup with pumpkin. I'm not a massive fan of peanut butter but I do like the reese's products and I was quite interested to try this because I've never eaten anything pumpkin flavoured before. I love how in Autumn in the US so many pumpkin flavoured foods are available! The taste of pumpkin in this snack was very subtle and I couldn't really taste much more than peanut butter. I've only ever eaten an original Reese's peanut butter cup once before... I think I should have bought one so I could compare the flavours. I still have some of the pumpkin one left so I will look for Reese's when I next go shopping. 

How cute are candy corns!? (if a sweet can be considered cute haha). I love all the little halloween bits that were added to the package. I am putting my Drawlloween Challenge drawings (see them here) into a scrapbook so I can use all the halloween crafty things for that. The sweets in the photo above are called Goetze's Caramel Creams and at first glance, I thought they would be similar to English dairy fudge. I was wrong, the outside of the sweet is coated in a sticky toffee, the middle is creamy with a little hint of a vanilla flavouring and the rest of the sweet has a similar texture to fudge but tasted like toffee. I enjoyed being able to try these but they are not my cup of tea. 

 
 I really love jellybeans! They are one of my favourite sweets & I was so happy when they started selling Jelly Belly jellybeans in the UK :) the only problem is that they are quite expensive if you want to buy a big bag or jar. I like how these jelly beans come in so many flavours, some are great and some are not so great, but this means there will be at least one flavour to suite everyone's tastes. My favourite ones are french vanilla, strawberry cheesecake, coconut & dr.pepper. I love how colourful they are. Me and my niece enjoyed trying to figure out what each flavour was without looking at the label :) 

Here are some of the lovely crafty things and a postcard I was sent in the package. I'm going to use the paper for writing to-do-lists and put the halloween bits in a scrapbook. I love the funky colourful striped envelope that was filled with even more lovely bits and pieces. Here's a photo of what was inside: 

 

 Everything inside the colourful envelope is so pretty! I can't wait to start using it in some of my penpal letters. Foxes are one of my favourite animals so of course I adore these stickers, and I will probably keep them all to myself instead of using them for snailmail.

 Thankyou Amanda for sending me such a lovely halloween candy package! 

 ♥

I hope you all enjoyed reading this post. 

Have any of you from the UK tried these sweets before?
Which other US sweets can you recommend for me to try?