Elf on the Shelf bed and our advent box

Let me start by saying we have the 1.o version of Elf on the Shelf. Meaning we have had our Eddie the Elf for four years, before posting sneaky elf happenings went viral on Pinterest. Until now he had a simple life of landing on spots up high in our house, where the temptation to touch him (because he loses his magic that way) was avoided, and he was safe from becoming a chew toy for the dog – minus that one mishap!

Now that my oldest daughter has gone to other people’s homes and seen what kind of shenanigans their elf’s are getting into. She was inspired to give Eddie some royal treatment.

This is the scene she created for Eddie yesterday. She got out her sewing machine and sewed the pillow to complete his Christmas bedding, and crafted the canopy on the bed as well. She made him a compass and a headlamp, put out doll size snacks for him, gave him a stocking with M&Ms in it, and left out the book Twas the Night Before Christmas for him to read. THIS WAS ALL HER DOINGS!

Eddie is no longer a 1.0 version of Elf on the Shelf. This is what we found him doing this morning!

Eddie has one more job at our house. Every night he leaves three M&Ms in our advent house, one fore each girl. After the girls eat them they put a dried bean in the box for that day, to mark them as days gone by. It’s kind of the reverse of an advent calendar.

Eddie thinks this works better than leaving them all out at one time, because there have been toddlers and puppies living here the last four years. And asking them to not open the boxes and eat all the M&Ms at once is just too much temptation to for them to resist.

The girls LOVE this tradition. In October they start talking about when Eddie comes back, and counting down the days to his return. During the month of December they RUN to the box every morning to get either M&M and find Eddie.

They also leave notes for Eddie to take to Santa, next to the advent box on our mantle.