This is the 3rd year our elf, Buddy Griswold, has made an appearance after Thanksgiving. He always arrives with a note to our kids, and then stays until Christmas eve when he takes Santa’s sleigh back to the North Pole.
I know the Elf on the Shelf tradition freaks a few *cough cough* people out (you know who you are) but we have SO much fun with him. The kids wake up every morning wondering where Buddy is and cracks up when we find him. We don’t necessarily make it as much about Buddy spying on them (although I have threatened them) as we do about Buddy just coming to hang out with us during the holidays.
I imagine Buddy will be with us LONG after the Santa discovery is made. I can’t wait to see how this tradition takes a new form when the kids can hide him, it makes me laugh thinking about what we would have done to scare my mom with the elf in high school. Hahaha!
But for now I’ll share some of my favorite Buddy moments from the last few years in hopes that it inspires some new games with your families!
This was our first year with Buddy. He brought with him cotton bolls and glue to use for an advent calendar Layla was doing. He also brought his book with him so we could read about the magic of his kind. 🙂
Last year we put the tree up after Buddy arrived so he needed to make sure we knew he approved.
Buddy loves to play with the other toys at night. This time he put on a parade for the animals.
This photo was taken this year. Layla decided to make a “house” for Buddy a few days before she know he was coming. She welcomed him with a dining room table full of ice cream and cupcakes, a bed, swing and slide. Some friends even decided to join him!
That mischievous elf decided to cause a little trouble and put mustaches on some of our photos. This was probably my favorite…Layla did NOT see the humor in it.
Sometimes we find Buddy in the cabinets. Sometimes we just like to try to scare people with him…
And other times he’s making egg faces in our fridge!
Something he does every year is bring in snow flakes. I kid you not my husband spends a lot of time on Martha Stewart’s site making fancy snow flakes for this. Last year he decided Buddy should be hung up WITH the snow…giving us a different than we really wanted effect, but the kids thought it was hilarious.
I would LOVE some new ideas for this year- please comment or shoot us a picture of some of your favorite ideas!
One night this year, about two days after putting the elves out, (we have three of them! Gah!) I fell asleep before my elf alarm went off and then drug myself to bed without moving our elves. My daughter came into my room at about 5am practically in tears because the elves didn’t move. So I crowdsourced some ideas on Facebook and one of my friends suggested putting a bottle of Nyquil next to them to make it look like they were too sick to move … which I thought was brilliant, but I put my own twist on it:
I got a box of festive Kleenex and put that next to them, then I filled a bunch of wadded up tissues with glitter glue and scattered them around on the floor nearby. My daughter was so focused on where the elves were that morning that it was easy to convince her that she hadn’t noticed the tissues, and when I showed my kids the glittery elf boogers (I know, ew!) there was much hilarious disgust. Haha!
That is HILARIOUS Becki and SO creative!!