Elf on the Shelf

Well since I was late in posting my Christmas decor ideas I figured it wasn't too late to post about our Elf on the Shelf.  This is the first year we've had an elf.  I've heard about it from my kids for a couple years now.  My son had one in his classroom two years ago and now my daughter has the same teacher.  She is our last one & a little more persuasive than her older brothers.  She would come home from school everyday telling us all about her elf in her classroom.  Our neighbors all had an elf too and the kids would share their stories of their mischievous elf's on the bus ride home from school.

Honestly, I was not looking to add another tradition to our holiday season.  We've done an advent calendar with our kids for years.  I put a note in each box with a little treat such as hershey kisses.  When the kids were little they would say things like a kiss from Daddy, or an extra bedtime story, or watch Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer after dinner.  But as the kids got older I decided to change up the notes to include family game nights or one of them reads a story to the family and things like that.  So, I felt I was ahead of the game with a great family tradition.  Then the peer pressure of these Elf on the Shelves came about.  Seriously???  Wasn't our advent calendar good enough?

But when my daughter came home with instructions from her friend on exactly how we can "catch" an elf for our family I caved.  I looked at my husband and decided that our children are only little once; they only believe in the magic for such a short time.  The very next day when the kids woke up they found an Elf on the Shelf on our fireplace mantel.  They named him Buddy after their favorite Christmas movie.

And so Buddy became a part of our family.  My two little ones had such fun searching for him each morning to see where he would be or what he may have been up to overnight.  Our 14 year old even got into the fun helping us on a few occasions that we may have forgotten about Buddy.  No one is perfect, right???

I found lots of ideas on pinterest.  Here are some of the places we found Buddy during the holiday season...
 


We all really enjoyed having Buddy around this holiday season and are looking foward to his return next year.