Have you seen the latest craze?
The premise is that (and I haven’t read the book so I’m just reporting what I’ve gleaned from the interwebz) an elf shows up at your house, checks out what’s going on there, and reports back to Santa whether the kids are being naughty or nice. But, the elf shows up in different places every day.
I know it’s been popular for a few years, but apparently my kids hadn’t heard of it before now. This year, though, they really wanted an elf!
I couldn’t bring myself to buy the $30 brand name version, though, so meet Fake Elf.
I bought him for $7.99 at a local gift shop and printed a letter I found online, explaining who he was.
The kids totally bought it, and I saved myself $22.
So, Fake Elf has been bouncing around our house, hanging from light fixtures, doing snow angels in powdered sugar, and sitting atop a pineapple, among other things. It takes 5 seconds to do and it’s so fun to hear the kids search for him and squeal in excitement when they find him. I love hearing them conjecture about how Fake Elf got from where he was last night to where he turned up this morning.
Of course, there are a million people more creative than their elves than I am, and I’ve seen some really cute elf hi-jinks! In fact, there’s a whole Flickr pool dedicated to the subject. Here are a few of my favorites:
My elf placement has been much less involved than those, but aren’t they cute?
Do you have an elf on a shelf?
