Elfred standing next to the glass of Kool-Aid the kids left for him on our table.
Our little elf Elfred is visiting again.
He starts coming every night after Thanksgiving. He’s our family elf that watches the kids to make sure they are going to be on the "good" list.
The kids write notes to him every night and he leaves treats like a candy, ding dongs or small gifts. He will visit every now and then during the year, too, just to check up on them.
The kids get the biggest kick out of trying to figure out where he his spying on them now.
He even helps out now and then. This summer he made a surprise visit and cleaned the kids room. He helped me and painted the gingerbread ornaments that I made out of craft clay for my holiday tree. Sometimes, he gets into mischief and will make snow angels in flour. I think tomorrow he may make a mess and toilet paper the house. :-)
We really do it up big here on Christmas Eve. After the kids are in bed, Santa will fly by and we will hear the sleigh bells jingling and of course Santa can’t stop because they aren’t asleep yet. Mike always misses it cause he out cleaning up the mess from opening the presents. ;-) (We open our presents and celebrate on Christmas Eve.) We leave reindeer food out so the reindeer will have a snack and, yes, most of it’s gone in the morning. The one year we did have snow there were reindeer prints on the deck. (It looked just like the end of a 2×4!)
We have lots of fun around here with the elf and Santa visiting. It’s fun for the Mom and Dad too! LOL
Tawra
I love this idea!
I keep telling the four y/o that I am calling Santa(dial time & temp) and telling him to skip us this year, when he misbehaves. This causes much distress-yeah going need some big-time therapy there!
Did you start Elfred with a story?
I just bought the “Elf on a Shelf” package and it comes with the elf and a really nice book to read your children. The book is a story on how to give him a name and what his role is evry day, etc. Is really a cute story. I have seen the “Elf on a Shelf” in magazines and in stores. Sure you could find online also. Amy
There is a man in Sudbury, Ontario Canada and he was quite famous in the city and surrounding area for his songs about Christmas and Imaginary Friends. This song is about an elf named Ethelbert. I can’t post the music but the lyrics are cute and I thought if you wanted to tell the story to your Children here it is.
The man’s name is Bert Collins His wife and daughter and a friend make up the group. Bert and his wife are short chubby people and make the perfect Mr & Mrs Claus.
Yah Yah Yah Yah Yah Yah
for six or seven centuries he’s stood and braced himself
Watching Santa blasting off, old Ethelbert the elf.
His eyesight’s not too good today and his taste is kind of queer
So when he helped Mrs. Santa’s cooking for the year
yah yah yah yah yah yah
chorus
He put ketchup in the gum drops, mustard in the pie
Garlic in the candy cane-I can’t imagine why
Onions in the cookies and just to please himself
Pepper in the chocolate of Ethelbert the elf
Mrs. Santa waved good-bye to Santa and his sleigh
Blasting off to make his trip in time for Christmas Day
and as she waved she munched upon some goodies from his bag
Her face turned green, her tongue popped out and she began to gag
yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk
chorus
She tried her best to get a hold of Santa in his sleigh
But he was filling stocking up all along the way
So if on Christmas morning you can taste the stuff yourself
Don’t blame Mrs. Santa Claus – it’s Ethelbert the elf
yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk yuk
Poor Ethelbert has always thought his recipes were tops
He thought that everybody like some pickles in their pop
So when he heard that other people didn’t share his taste
He shed a tear and packed his bag he felt he was disgraced
Boo Hoo hoo hoo
chorus
The letters came to Mrs Claus from kids in every land
“your goodies sure were different and some of them were grand
So now she has a special place with a sign upon the shelf
“for goodies made by “super chef” – Ethelbert the Elf”
yum yum yum yum yum
chorus.
we got the album when my sons were 1 and 4 and they loved it then and they still enjoy it. No CD’s back then and the album has a few marks so we can’t transfer it to cd now and poor old santa must have gotten old because we can’t even find him in Sudbury.
I hope you enjoy the story I know it is a tradition with our family.
I thought your elf and Ethelbert would be good friends.
My parents and elder sisters told us such great stories about DECORATING THE TREE WITH SANTA AND THE ELVES when we little ones were alseep that I was disappointed to learn the truth and never told a santa story myself.
We have 2 magic Elves that come and visit our home. They will move about at night so they can see what the kids are up to and then they disappear before christmas to report back to Santa. My older 2 know there is not a real Santa, but they sure do love when the elves come and visit. My youngest (3) likes to look for the elves every morning and she gets so excited.
But our elves dont cause mischief, maybe next year they will…hehehehe
When I learned the truth about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, I gave up on God too, because the true stories and the make-believe stories were so intertwined and spoken as truth. If one part was not true, then I figured it must all be a lie. My parents never wanted to give up on Santa. I’m not sure they are over it yet… (I’m in my 50’s)
But now that I really know the Truth, I only tell my children the truth. It’s all about JESUS! Jesus is the reason for the season!
My parents never did the Santa stories so I never did believe in Santa. The thing I did believe in, because I saw him with my own two eyes, was what my sister and I called the PS Man (insert UPS delivery driver Mike here). He always brought us presents at Christmas time! Yes the presents were from our Grandparents but Mike brought them every year and Mike was a real man, the PS Man! There’s no need to make up stories about Santa when you have your own PS Man making deliveries.
My hubby and I tell our kids about Santa but we don’t make a big production about it. I think the elf idea is fun and maybe we’ll do something like that……We do talk about the baby Jesus and why we celebrate in the first place but at our kid’s age (4 & 2) the presents and lights and tree are the biggest excitement. We have a living nativity at a church not far from our house and so we’ll visit that and hopefully go to a Christmas program as well. One of my favorite things is listening to my kids say their prayers at night. It’s priceless…..
It sounds like you have a happy balance on Christmas Leah. I had to laugh because we had a mail order business for years and the UPS man came to our house pretty much everyday to pick up our shipments for that day. Tawra and David (my kids) always called him the PS man too and do to this day. It’s funny because I had never heard of anyone else calling him that tell now.
Reading some of the comments from others, there is a site called homeschool freebie of the day and homeschool radio shows that specialize in old time radio shows. We bought a huge cd compilation this year. It has over 100 Christmas shows that our family loves. Our favorite are the Cinnamon Bear series. A little bear takes two children to a magical land to get their Christmas star back from a crazy quilt dragon. It’s wonderful!
My kids love our elf. Every morning it is a race to see where he flew to. It is soooo cute to see them going up to him and whispering their Christmas wishes to him. We recently lost our home due to a power surge frying the entire electrical system. It melted the breaker box! We were renting from my uncle and the place is now uninhabitable. We are staying with my grandparents. The kids were sooo happy to wake up the next day and see that Evan (our elf) had been able to follow us to Mamaw and Pawpas. It is the little things that make life special.