I’m not sure if the elves travelled back to the North Pole last night in a sleigh pulled by a boomer, but it is certainly where we found Tinkles and Baby Elf this morning!
The boomer usually sits on our mantlepiece but we hadn’t seen the sleigh before today! I think the sleigh can stay with the boomer up there now though…
If an elf visits your house, where did you find him or her this morning?
We have a baby elf in the house!
The children looked around the house for Tinkles this morning, then found her in front of her door. Only, this time Tinkles was not alone! Inside a cradle beside the Christmas tree, we spotted a baby elf!
She is very cute and even has a milk bottle and dummy in the cradle with her 🙂
My daughter absolutely loves babies so she is beside herself with excitement to find there is now a baby elf in our house (I have to clarify that it is a baby elf as we already have a number of her babies living with us!) She is also happy to find the baby elf on the day she transitions to a new school – I suspect Tinkles chose today to give her a confidence boost so thank you Tinkles 🙂
Oh dear, I don’t think went well for the snowman Tinkles invited to our house overnight…
We did of course have our usual search for Tinkle this morning, just to find her in the lounge room trying to sneak a peek at tonight’s advent calendar items! I just didn’t get it posted this morning because, well, it’s Sunday and a bit of variety is a good thing, right?
Not only is her hand instead the Harry Potter Lego advent calendar, but we can see the flap for day 8 in the City Lego advent calendar has also been pushed in a bit – cheeky elf tried peeking at both calendars!
Although I haven’t done daily posts this year, we do have two Lego advent calendars on the go – my daughter has the Harry Potter one this year (the Friends one seems to be hit and miss so we may as try something exciting!) while my son has the City calendar (which he is happy with but also a little jealous to not get the Harry Potter version!)
This set is exciting as it’s new and different, and because it is a character and book/movie series my kids enjoy (as far as they have got anyway – we limit them to those we feel they are old enough for so they only know the first three books/movies).
The scene is obviously the great hall at Hogwarts.
Day one was a harry mini fig, followed by Professor McGonagall on day 6. Hogwarts Express (the train) was behind flap two, and I even got to make that one.
My daughter was thrilled to get two Christmas trees on day 3 and then a fancier Christmas tree on day 4 as well! This advent calendar is making her much happier than the Friends calendars so it was a good choice for this year.
The Gryffindor flag pole is nice and I love the bench as it truly invokes images of the students gathering in the Hogwarts great hall. Harry and the Professor sitting there with goblets in hand also reminded me of drinking butter beer in the Three Broomsticks Inn!
Note the Slytherian flags are actually from day 9 as Tinkles was in the way to my daughter getting out the day 8 item! We just swapped for today!
Like most years, the City calendar has a winter and snow theme – it would be nice to see that changed up a bit next year but I’m not holing my breath!
This calendar has also had two mini figs so far – a boy wearing a propeller cap and a man in a parka with a broom for clearing away snow. The first day revealed a snow plough and the second day was a catapult.
On day four, we discovered a structure that the catapult can, if aimed well, can throw a snow ball – as per previous years, this may be something that makes more sense to those living in snowy climates than it does to us! My son thought he got a strange Christmas tree on day five, but it was more of a log with an axe and chopping stump.
The Christmas tree was on day six and today he made some presents to go under the tree.
Tinkles had the idea of making a gingerbread house today, which is a lovely idea, but in trying to make one before us we can see her ideas are not quite the same as ours…
Well, it is logical to use ginger and bread to make gingerbread, but not quite the reality! And in building our house we do use drills and screwdrivers, amongst other tools, so getting them out also makes some sense, but not what I usually use for preparing anything edible!
And having got out some tools and ingredients, I think it became a little difficult for Tinkles so she adjusted her note to us and stopped making her house…
Has your elf been a bit literal or logical with anything in your house?
by Smriti Prasadam-Halls
Illustrated by Ada Grey
Bloomsbury Childrens Books, United Kingdom, 2015
This book combines my love of books and my daughter’s obsessions with babies, so it was bound to be a favourite in our house!
Santa’s young son and his young reindeer friend, Roo, are disappointed at not joining Santa on his big Christmas Eve trip.
I fond the premise of this book cute – namely that Santa has a baby and Roo is a baby reindeer – presumably Rudolph‘s baby although this is not said or hinted at.
So Baby Santa is disappointed at not being old enough to go out in Santa’s sleigh and has to wave goodbye as Santa takes off with a sleigh full of gifts. It amused me that Santa sent the baby (really a young child!) to bed as you can’t get any gifts unless you get to sleep!
They find some gifts, think Santa left them behind, so take off in their mini sleigh. After a couple of distractions (typical of a toddler or young child!), they get into trouble and {spoiler alert!} are rescued by Santa. As an adult I predicted who the left behind presents would belong to, but young readers will be surprised and amazed at the twist it gives to the story!
The illustrations are clear and cute, the story is nicely paced and easily understood by young readers. My nine year old enjoyed reading it out loud – the only word she stumbled over was ’twas 🙂 – and loved the story itself.
Would I recommend it? Yes I do recommend it! Santa Baby is a lovely little story and young children will find lots they can relate to, with a bit of dreamed off excitement thrown in!
“Mummy, Tinkles needs a blindfold back on!”
This morning, Tinkles was found wrapped up like a mummy, sitting on the towel rack in the main bathroom.
Above her head was a piece of paper asking a question…
And besides Tinkles was the answer…
My son in particular enjoyed the play on words to create the joke. And made him remember to finish reading Bab Sharkey and the animal mummies (third in a series by Andrew Hensen and Jessica Roberts – they are funny and a great read for mid to primary school kids).
But back to the greeting I hadn’t expected from my daughter this morning… Apparently Tinkles sitting in the bathroom was a bit much for the kids and their desire for privacy! My son showered in the en suite instead of the bathroom (lucky he had an option!) and then I covered Tinkles’ eyes so my daughter could use the bathroom! I’m sure Tinkles was just looking for an interesting place to tell her joke…
Tuesday morning, we discovered that Tinkles had brought a Lego Christmas train and yesterday morning Tinkles had partially made the train set.
During the afternoon and evening yesterday, Tinkles did some more Lego train building…
and actually finished the train itself…
Overnight, she covered the full Lego set and went off to play pin the nose on the snowman with the tooth elf!
However, during the day as the kids were at school she has gone back to Lego building apparently as this is what we just found:
Tinkles with her completed Lego Christmas train set!
For those who are interested in Lego sets, here is a quick summary of this Christmas train set…
When complete, the set consists of a locomotive engine and two train carriages, three mini figures (a driver, a passenger and a stall holder), a Christmas tree, a street lamp with wreath, a picnic table and two food/drink stalls. It’s actually quite a lot for a compact set. There were 169 pieces in total.
It is small so easily fits in with other sets, either Christmas sets, general village sets, or even to make a town from pieces in previous Lego advent calendars. Apparently it is easy enough that an elf without fingers can create it 🙂 I like that there are distinct components so you can split the build up if need be, like to enable siblings to work on it together or for a child not yet able to focus on a bigger build.
Tinkles had found a new friend and they like playing together!
This morning we found a chopping board leaning against the couch to enable Tinkles and her new friend, Tooth Elf (this elf lives with us all the time and holds onto any fallen out teeth until the tooth fairy collects them, usually leaving a financial token in the elf’s pouch in appreciation!) to play pin the carrot nose on the snowman!
I am feeling a bit inspired to set up some sort of pin the … games for this afternoon. We have done many variants of this game to suit birthday party themes, etc, and we’ve even done a snowman before (it was Olaf for a Frozen party). I think I will need a slightly bigger blindfold for the kids though – the ribbon suits Tinkles but the kids’ heads a little bigger!
What would you call Tinkles’ game though – pin the carrot on the snowman or pin the nose on the snowman?
It was no surprise that my son ran to the lunge room when he got up this morning, looking to see if Tinkles had left the Lego Christmas train set for him to play with.
I think it was a mix of pleasure and disappointment when he found that Tinkles had opened the box and started building the set herself – he is happy Tinkles shares his love of Lego, but still itching to build it himself!
You may have picked up that we are a Lego family – my son in particular loves Lego, but two of his sisters have also been keen Lego builders, and as a family we’ve enjoyed a number of Lego advent calendars. And now it turn out that our elf Tinkles is also happy to build Lego!
To their surprise, the kids found Tinkles this afternoon in the lounge room, having set herself up nicely with a red cloth (easier to spot Lego pieces there than on the carpet!) and an unopened Lego Christmas train set.
My son is bursting to open the box himself and make it, but Tinkles can’t be touched of course so I have told him we must wait and see what Tinkles has in store for us.
Tinkles made my children work hard to find her this morning as she was hiding in the sock drawer in our en suite which is not somewhere the kids usually visit in the mornings!
Of course, the first thought for us all when putting an elf with socks is Dobby the house elf who befriends Harry Potter! Tinkles has little else in common with Dobby, and unfortunately doesn’t seem to much work around the house, but we love her visits anyway!
