The start of a new year means preparing for another 365 days of exciting festivities. We've put together this helpful chart to give you an overview of some dates worth putting in your diary - dates like Valentine's Day, International Women's Day, and of course Star Wars Day!

It's always good to be prepared, so make a note of the dates that are important to you...and don't forget to stock up on sweet gifts for that special someone!

Need some sweet gifts for a special occasion? Browse our full range here >

With summer over and Christmas still a little while away, it's Halloween that everyone's excited about right now. The 31st of October is always a great opportunity for fun and shenanigans, and even if you're a bit too old for trick-or-treating (or you simply prefer to spend your autumn nights indoors), you can still throw a spooktacular Halloween party to mark the occasion!

We love a good Halloween hoedown here at Sweets in the City - here are some suggestions to help you organise your own end-of-October bash:

Halloween Party Games

A great Halloween party is all about the games! Try these old favourites, and make sure you have plenty of sweets on hand to give away as prizes!

• Bobbing for Apples - Fill a bowl, basin or bucket with water and drop a few apples in (one per player). The apples will float on the surface of the water - players take it in turns to pick up an apple using only their mouths, no hands allowed. Be sure to keep a towel handy!
  
  
• Doughnuts on Strings - Buy a pack of ring doughnuts and tie a string around each one. Hang the doughnuts from a line and challenge players to eat their doughnut without using their hands. The first person to finish the whole doughnut wins!
  
  
• Jelly Babies in Flour - A sweet alternative to apple bobbing! Heap some flour on a plate (you can also use icing sugar if you prefer) and arrange some jelly babies in the flour. Players take it in turns to pick up a jelly baby using only their teeth...and hopefully get their faces covered in flour in the process. (Speaking of jelly babies, have you read these fun facts about everyone's favourite wibbly-wobbly sweets?)
  
  
• Memory Game - Arrange a variety of objects on a tray. Halloween-themed objects are ideal: rubber spiders, vampire fangs, fake eyeballs, and so on. Give everybody a minute to memorise the items on the tray, then cover it up with a tea towel and secretly remove one object. The aim of the game is to spot which item has gone missing - the person who guesses correctly gets to remove the next object.

Other Activities to Try

• Get dressed up! Fancy dress is one of the best things about Halloween - it's always fun to see what gruesome and creative costumes your friends have come up with! If you're feeling lazy, of course, you can always cut two holes in a bedsheet and dress up a ghost...or just cover some old clothes in fake blood and go to the party as a zombie version of yourself. But it's always better to do something a bit more imaginative if possible!
  
  
• Carve a pumpkin! Nothing says 'Halloween' like a jack-o'-lantern. Be careful when using a knife to give your pumpkin a suitably menacing grin - if you're not sure how to do it, have a read of this guide from BBC Good Food.
  
  
• Decorate your home! If you're hosting a Halloween party, you should make sure your home looks the part before welcoming your guests. Obviously you can buy all sort of fab things online or in your local shop, but it might be even more fun to create your own decorations - grinning ghosts, black-winged bats, and scary spiders are all surprisingly easy to create. Check out these ideas from AnglianHome.co.uk.

Halloween Party Treats

Of course, it would be Halloween without a few sweet treats to share out! We've got plenty to choose from here at Sweets in the City, including...

Spooky Treats Super Shake

This large shake is filled with delicious Halloween-themed treats! Grab a couple of shakes to pass around at your party, or add a personalised message and send someone special a dreadfully delicious Halloween gift!

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Letterbox Treats

We've added three great 'Trick or Treat' designs to our popular range of letterbox-friendly sweet gifts! Customise the Halloween-themed box and send it to someone special to wish them a happy Halloween.

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Pick & Mix

We've got plenty of other treats to choose from in our Pick & Mix section, including vampire fangs, jelly eyeballs, and sugar-coated worms. Pick your favourites and buy in bulk to make sure you've got plenty for everyone at your Halloween party!

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Pumpkin photo from Pixabay

Want to win some delicious sweets? If so, you're in luck - to celebrate the launch of our brand new website, we're having a competition and giving away a couple of great prizes to the winner!

What You Could Win

One lucky winner will receive:

• 1 x Variety Treat Box
• 1 x Retro Classic Giant Jar of Joy

How to Enter

If you fancy getting your hands on the above prizes, here's what to do - you will need a Twitter account to enter:

1. Find the special Gold Jar of Joy (as pictured below) that's hidden somewhere on our website. You'll need to click around a bit to find the right page!
   
   
2. Once you've spotted the gold jar, take a screenshot to prove that you found it.
   
   
3. Log into Twitter and tweet your screenshot along with the hashtag #HideAndSweet - make sure you include the hashtag or your entry won't count!
   
   
4. The competition will close at 2pm on Friday 15th June, at which point we'll pick a winner at random from all properly-hashtagged screenshots.

Here's the gold jar that you're looking for:

We suggest you start on the Sweets in the City homepage. Good luck, and don't forget to follow us on Twitter!

Stock up on nostalgic sweets with Sweets in the City!

Nostalgia - that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you think about the past - can come from all sorts of different places. It could be a catch-up with an old friend, a film you once saw in the cinema, a song you haven't heard for years...

...or it could be a jar of the sweets you used to eat when you were little! Sweets in the City have a range of nostalgic sweets that are sure to send you back down memory lane.

Our Retro Classic jar is filled to the brim with all the nostalgic sweets you remember from the school playground, including...

Flying Saucers

Can you think of a sweet more nostalgic than flying saucers? The mere sight of these colourful sherbet-filled treats is enough to take you straight back to the school tuck shop! Flying saucers are consistently ranked among the UK's favourite sweets, and it's not hard to see why.

Did you know? Flying saucer sweets are Belgian. They were created by an Antwerp-based company that originally sold communion wafers.

Love Hearts

First sold in 1954, Love Hearts have been an enduringly popular treat for generation after generation of British sweet lovers. The little message on each sweet makes them almost as fun to share as they are to eat - they might even take you back to your very first crush!

Did you know? Love Hearts have always moved with the times. When text messaging first took the world by storm, messages like 'luv u' and 'how r u' started appearing in packets of Love Hearts. Nowadays, your pack of Love Hearts may well contain a few sweets with emojis on them!

Fruit Salads & Black Jacks

Sweets don't come much more nostalgic than this! Black Jacks have been around for nearly 100 years now, and while both Black Jacks and Fruit Salads are yummy on their own, we happen to think they're best when they're mixed together. It's a nostalgic match made in sweet heaven!

Did you know? An original Black Jack wrapper from the 1920s is on display at the V&A Museum of Childhood in London.

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All of these nostalgic sweets - and more besides! - can be found in our best-selling Retro Classic selection, available in the following sizes:

• Super Shake
• Jar of Joy
• Giant Jar of Joy

You can also buy your favourite sweets (nostalgic and otherwise!) in bulk on our Pick & Mix page. Be sure to have a browse - we've got loads of other nostalgic sweeties to choose from!

View All Pick & Mix Sweets >>