Elf on the Shelf: Best Last-Minute Ideas to Celebrate the Christmas Tradition

As Christmas swiftly approaches, it’s become time for holiday festivities again. This year’s Elf on a Shelf ideas are looking slightly different this year as parents are stepping up their game in attempts to outsmart the kids –– and celebrities are following suit. Ellen Degeneres recently surprised her audience with a surprising elf on the shelf setup during a recent taping of her show, which is in its final season.

“A lot of people have the Elf on the Shelf thing…where the elf doll is in your house so that your kids behave because they think the elf is watching,” DeGeneres told the crowd, motioning to the green curtain that showed Jordan sitting in costume on the shelf.”I hope you’ve been behaving because I have an Elf on the Shelf here in the studio as well, he’s right over here.”

“Hey, how y’all doing?” Jordan opened as the camera panned to him. “They put me up here to test the shelf and forgot about me.”

Another keen holiday idea is to show what kind of mischief the elf can find themselves in before their return to the North Pole. This pair found themselves on the wrong side of the vacuum, leading to a very dusty and dirty trip into the tank.

Take a note from Floridinos Pizza and Pasta. The restaurant took its elf named Buddy and made a nice and cheesy snow angel out of parmesan. The restaurant had to improvise since it’s not getting any snowfall in the hot Arizona weather, but for a white Christmas, maybe opt for a sugar snow angel instead of using the yellow snow.

Use some of those extra toilet paper rolls and turn them into your own Frosty the Snowman. It’s definitely an easy and fun craft to carve shapes into the construction paper to use as the eyes, nose, and buttons. Then place the family elf at the top of the new creation.

Grab some of those extra chips and make the kids think their elf was attempting to make a snack. This Instagram user took one of the potatoes and placed it on top of a cheese grater to get potato chips. Even if it doesn’t fool anyone, at least there’s a nice salty snack at the end.

Put together a tiny weight room with some toothpicks and marshmallows to give the elf a tough lifting workout. “Happy Friday! Remy is showing out today on his workout! Happy Holidays,” the user shared.