24 new Elf on the Shelf ideas

December is such a busy month for any parent. Sometimes I wonder why I make life extra hard for myself but whilst the children are young we have an Elf on the Shelf.

I bought our Elf on the Shelf from Amazon a few years ago. It was really expensive at the time but they are a lot more affordable now. It came in a presentation box with a story book.The idea of the Elf on a Shelf is that he keeps an eye on children during December, reporting good and bad behaviour back to Father Christmas. It’s definitely a bit of an incentive for my children to behave themselves, as well as the special reward charts I picked up.

If you don’t like the official Elf on the Shelf then you can buy all kinds of different little Elfs. This year I bought a second Elf. I’m not really sure why I did this – perhaps I thought that one Elf was fun and two would be more fun! Our original Elf is called Buddy, and the children named our second Elf, Fred, and he is green.

In previous years I have kept an Elf on the Shelf Pinterest board and this has been really easy to go to for ideas. It’s the best place to look for ideas when you are just about to go to bed and have forgotten to move the Elf!

24 new Elf on the Shelf ideas

Here are the activities our Elf on the Shelf got up to this year:

This was my favourite and also one of the easiest to set up, our elves sitting in a homemade ball pit

Our elves decorated one of the walls in the living room with Christmas stickers

One of the elves pinned all of Big Brother’s new Beavers badges to himself

We found the Elf playing with our Christmas Lego set

Both of them had fun in my daughter’s Sylvanian Families vehicles

Sitting in one of the tealight holders 

Sitting in the Christmas tree

The children really liked it when they ventured to their bedrooms 

My daughter really liked finding one amongst all her soft toys

This year some of the ideas were really simple to do, like sitting inside a wreath decoration

We love Star Wars, so did the Elf

It’s a family tradition that they wrap my son’s packed lunch up in Christmas paper. He enjoyed taking everything to school and discovering what they had made him. He did question why they hadn’t made his father’s lunch too. 

One morning we caught them climbing my peg board – I think they were aiming for my prized Pez collection.

It was fun to cut out the faces on the cereal packets so they could peep out.

This year they seemed to enjoy exploring our house. We found them in the hallway, hanging out on my alternative tree.

And also hanging from the mirror.

They seemed to like playing with the children’s toys.

Although they didn’t stay like this for long as I knew the kids would want their toys back!

They also made it into the downstairs loo one day. Luckily they didn’t take the toilet paper and decorate the tree like last year ….

They brought their own swing so they could hang out by the Christmas tree.

We found them in the kitchen a few times, trying not to be seen.

They also took my lovely Christmas baking tray and used it to slide down the stairs.

One day they brought the popcorn so we could sit and relax. I think that was the day we managed to watch Elf and Harry Potter.

On Christmas Eve they provided a lovely North Pole breakfast for us all. The children were sad to see them go but 24 different adventures was enough for me.