Elf on the Shelf │operation be prepared

Last year was the first year an Elf came to visit us during Christmas and it didn't arrive until December 20th. It arrived late because she came with our visiting families Elf and the two of them had a lot of fun together. This year will be my first year doing it on my own and for longer than 5 days. I knew I wanted to be prepared and to have some ideas already mapped out as best as I could. I have been pinning lots and lots of Elf ideas on Pinterest but wanted a way to see them all in one place without having to open each pin and hunt down the ideas. I absolutely didn't want to be scrambling at 10:00pm each night! I want this to be fun, and to enhance the season, not make it more stressful.

The best way for me to make that happen was get the ideas I wanted in one easy place so I always knew what was next. I decided to make a simple sheet that I could slip into my planner where I could show a photo of the idea along with a place for notes of things I needed to do or buy to make that happen.

sources in planner top to bottom left to right one, two, three, four, five, six, seven

sources bottom cluster top to bottom left to right one, two, three, four, five, six, seven

Our Elf will not arrive until December 1st and my goals for our Elf is to make it fun but also pick things that didn't impede our lives too much. I've seen some super cute ideas where the Elf wraps your toilet it wrapping paper or goes fishing in the bathroom sink but since the Elf isn't supposed to be touched or moved the idea of keeping a bathroom out of service for a day didn't seem realistic to me. Maybe one day but this year, I'm aiming for easy and free if at all possible.

I went thru each of the items I had pinned as potential possibilities and just grabbed a quick screen shot of the idea. I cropped the images down to 2" x 2.5" and just printed them out on paper, nothing fancy here, but I knew an image would be more helpful than just words.  I used my date roller to label each day and just starting sticking them down. I kept some key events in mind so that the Elf could help out if needed or coordinate with what I knew we were doing some days. I did plan out the whole month but I can easily change it up if needed or even eliminate an idea all together if I'm feeling overwhelmed. I have some extra images tucked in a glassine envelope at the back of this section that I can pull from if I decide to make a change.

If you think this is something that could help you with your planning this season, you can download the sheet right here and the cover here. You can either print it out and fold it in half or print it out double sided and just cut it down the middle, it is sized to fit into a A5 sized planner 5.5" x 8.5".

My goal this year is to get as much stuff done before the season is in full swing so we can enjoy ourselves as much as possible. I definitely think this is a step in the right direction.