December whizzes by pretty quickly for any family but especially for parents who are trying to hide an Elf on the Shelf. My children still believe in the magic of Christmas so we were excited to bring out our Elf on the Shelf to bring some extra magic throughout December. This year I bought a few books and extra accessories to help me as there’s nothing worse than remembering you haven’t moved your Elf when you’re off to bed. I bought an Elf on the Shelf Gingerbread Activity Set, and two books – Elf On The Shelf Scout Elves at Play Paper Crafts and Scout Elves at Play: Tools and Tips for your Scout Elf!

21 new Elf on the Shelf ideas

We started off the month with lots of ideas and enthusiasm. Our official Elf on the Shelf is very cheeky and loved to mess up our homemade Christmas countdown.

The next day I had clearly run out of time as they hid amongst the Book Advent books.

We find that weekends are much easier to have time to set up your Elf. We loved setting our Elf up to make it look as though he was making snowflakes from toilet roll. The kids loved this one and kept the snowflakes!

One of the books we bought contained some fun props and the shoes with suckers proved really useful if you wanted to make your Elf hang upside down.

I bought a cardboard postbox which came with a pad of Elf notepaper which was great for leaving little behaviour reports.

We decided to set up our Christmas tree earlier in December but our naughty elves ‘hid’ in the Christmas tree box. Little Sis wrote them a note asking them to move as she wanted to put the tree up!

Little Sis enjoyed the antics of the elves this year. She left them lots of notes. One of our favourites was asking them to help with the Pokemon puzzle she got for her birthday. They helped her, but not enough. She couldn’t quite tell how much hey had done and wanted them to do more!

One day the elves left a letter from Santa – every year my mum pays for the NSPCC letter from Santa which they love.

I loved making a little Minecraft Steve paper mask to fit over the elf’s head.

There was a Pokemon mask too.

I didn’t use the props as much as I thought I would but I did use the candy cane sign to send the kids on a candy cane treasure hunt one morning. Of course they were allowed to keep the candy canes they found.

We loved making a little Elf Twister game for them to play with, inspired by Little Sis playing Twister!

Those suction boots came in handy again when the elf hid the children’s Advent bags and sent them on a hunt to find them.

We had fun sticking the elves inside the washing machine so they could go for a spin. The children loved this activity, although they had to move so I could do some washing!

Some ideas were a lot simpler to set up, such as playing with craft supplies and stickers.

Our Elf on the Shelf was clearly crafty though, judging by the rock painting station he set up.

I found a miniature connect 4 board which was the perfect size for the elves to play with.

We only made one of the cardboard props from the Elf on the Shelf Paper Craft book we bought. This was a lovely bright and cheerful sweet shop.

The kids always have plenty of sweets which we raided to help them ‘cook’ breakfast one morning using sweety fried eggs.

Our Elf on the Shelf loves to dress up and enjoyed making himself into an Egyptian mummy, just like the ones we saw at the Tutankhamun exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery.

We said goodbye to our elves on Christmas Eve when they left our Christmas Eve Box out, filled with treats. This year is contained new pyjamas for the children, fluffy socks and iced gingerbread biscuits for the whole family.