Sam’s Impish Elfy Mischief

We introduced our mischievous little Elf, Sam X, this year for Darcey to play with. The Elf comes in a beautiful presentation box, complete with a lovely book with bright illustrations to read with children. Now, yes. Like her lunchboxes, Darcey is still too young to understand and appreciate the ‘real’ Elf on the Shelf’ shenanigans. However, it has taught her (genuinely!) some awesome things and is absolutely part of our morning routine now – we will be really sad to pack him away on Thursday morning! For older children, the story goes that the Elf has been sent by Father Christmas to check on behaviour and report back to him at the North Pole each night. Children aren’t allowed to touch the Elf, because he’ll lose his magic powers. If Darcey had been following those rules, I think we’d have killed him by now. He gets smothered in kisses and cuddles every morning. It’s relatively cute.

Below, I’ve rounded up a few of our favourites so far. The majority of them have been very quick “Eeek (insert swear word of choice) we’ve forgotten to do the Elf and it’s quarter past midnight – quick, shove him in a bowl of chocolates” type affairs, but there have been a few little brainwaves amongst them!

Darcey loved this little snowball fight. (Mainly because she got mini marshmallows and a gingerbread cookie for breakfast) and it really didn’t take long to set up. I sprinkled the whole affair in some edible glitter and she had lots of fun hoovering up the mess the next morning!

This was a funny one for Darcey to discover. She walked up and down the room twice and kept calling “Saaaaaam! Where you?” until Nath looked up and pointed and she was so excited, running in circles below! This was really quick to set up, using some Hessian I’d been using to wrap presents and a rather tall husband! It was definitely one of Darcey’s favourites.

After Friday night’s forest adventure at Westonbirt, Oliver and Darcey had a sleepover so they got to discover Sam together. Apparently they each needed to sample Sam’s breakfast to make sure it was tasty enough before Oliver decided it definitely was and that he definitely was going to finish it. Poor Sam, he must be starving. We’ve purposely been planting Sam in very obvious, similar places because Darcey is so little but I’m sure we’ll shake things up a little more next year when she’s that much more aware.

Some of Darcey’s favourite toys are her wooden play scenes in a tin and she has a lovely wooden activity table with magnetic fish (hence the questionable scaling as they’re from different sets…even so, the crabs are the same size as the houses…). Darcey thought this was brilliant and helped to teach Sam how to fish!

This was my personal favourite which Nath set up – it took a bit of fiddling with some bluetack but the end result was fun. I’m not sure Darcey understood this one at all but I liked it!

We’ve both really loved thinking up cheeky little mischief for Sam to get up to on an evening and I really can’t wait for this to develop into one of our family traditions as Darcey gets older & we can be more creative. This year, she’s learned to sign “where” as part of our Elf on the Shelf Routine and calls out for Sam from the top of the stairs whilst Nath turns the Christmas lights on. It means she’s really excited to come downstairs and nearly every morning she greets the tree with “woooow!” before pursuing Sam! I’ve also loved keeping up with everybody else’s antics…I’m going to bank a few for my ideas tin for next year!