I admit, I’ve always though the idea of Elf on the Shelf was kind of cute. And there are some hilarious ideas out there – some kid-friendly, some not so much – of what you can do with your Elf so that you aren’t wracking your brain every night. But the actual Elf  … well, he’s never quite been to my taste. Plus, our kids haven’t really been old enough to understand the idea of the Elf reporting back to Santa, so we’ve largely ignored/avoided the little guy. But now that Abigail has hit the Frustrating Fours, it seemed like a good time to reconsider our options for reminding her to be nice, not naughty/cranky/yell-y.

Except, of course, that the original Elf still isn’t quite to my taste, and we didn’t have a stand-in for him. But a few days ago I had the brilliant (if I do say so myself) idea of making a little Gnomey to watch over our house instead! Luckily I found a half-finished one in my stash, so all I had to do was make the arms and hat and he was ready to go! I skipped the beard for this guy (mostly because I couldn’t find the yarn I usually use for the beard) and also opted to give him some legs that could dangle over the shelf. Abby thought it was amusing to have a Gnomey with legs. Abby also thought our Gnomey should be a girl (maybe because of the lack of a beard?). And so Lovela (as named by Abby) was born and has taken up residence in our house to watch over the girls and report back to Santa.

Lovela Gnomey / Lovela burning off the Christmas calories on the jumpoline / Lovela Gnomey and her homeys

We’ll see how this plays out. So far Abby seems to be buying into the idea

Abby telling Lovela about the good and not-so-good things that she did during the day