Have you been naughty or nice this year? Hope it’s the latter… because someone just might be watching you! ;)  HWTM Guest Contributor Maureen Anders of Anders Ruff here, with lots of excitement to share our recent Magical Elf Christmas Party! Bring the tradition of the magic elf to your Christmas party and the kids will surely be on their best behavior for this holiday season (or at least until the party is over!).

PARTY HIGHLIGHTS to look out for….

• DIY Yarn Wrapped Frames with Printable Holiday Posters
  
• Meringue Christmas Tree and Elf Hat desserts
• Naughty & Nice treat displays using repurposed card catalog drawers
• Printable Advent Calendar Hangtag Ornaments

THE THEME

The magic of the “magical” Christmas Elf is a tradition that my family has enjoyed for years. After all, how can Santa possibly watch over all little boys and girls? Our sweet little Japanese knee hugger elves are so precious and this year our holiday party was themed around their magic.

Adria and I always listen to Christmas music when we are designing – no matter what time of year. Can you tell that Christmas is our favorite holiday to design and style for? Our fabulous friend and client, Audrey, of Sweet Cheeks Tasty Treats brought us the idea of focusing on the Magical Elf tradition and we loved it. This year we wanted to design and style a Magic Elf Christmas Party and incorporate lots of printables that people can enjoy and add to their traditions with their own Magic elves every year.

THE STYLING & DECOR

The party boasts the traditional red and green colors with added pops of aqua and light blue. The printables include classic patterns such as candy cane stripe with mixes of trendy chevron, ditzy dot and snow flake patterns.

We setup the party at the corner base of Adria’s stairwell which gave us a lot of flexibility with hanging decorations as well as the wall space. Also, stairwells always remind me of Christmas morning as we waited to be called down to see what Santa had brought us! Especially once we hung the garland and custom elf feet shaped stockings (from Aimee Broussard) to the railing.

When thinking of what elements and textures to tie into the styling, we immediately knew we had to use yarn to keep with the “feel” of those cute little elves and keep the decor playful and whimsical. We utilized the yarn thoughout the decor on the tree (yarn pom ornaments) as well as the Christmas gift packaging and Sugarbelle cookie displays (using the popular and so functional Blumeboxes!).

We thought of a craft that would help make our printable Christmas Posters (the set of 3 printable posters are available in the shop) really pop off the walls. We cut custom frames out of foam core board and wrapped them with yarn. This was a super simple (just a little time consuming) craft and one that was economical and made a big impact. We cut felt holly leaves and placed those as an embellishment on one of the frames with yarn pom “berries.”

Because elves are sometimes mischievous, we got a little crazy with the fun yarn pom string and dangled it around the tree and hung from the frames and doors. Little knee hugger elves were found all over the party to tie the theme back into the decor. They can be seen stuck in the gorgeous custom stockings (from Aimee Broussard Events), in the tree, on the frames, hanging from the yarn garland and tucked in the drawers.

When thinking of little elf treats, we decided to reuse an old pop bottle crate as a display for little treats. We spray painted it a bright blue to add a pop of color on the display. We filled it with green rock candy, red licorice, little containers of naughty and nice treats, lollipops, meringue elf hats (which we made!) and little printable notes to Santa. We placed some plastic (kid-friendly!) drink bottles from Smash Cake Studio filled with milk on top of the display with a printable wrapper and straw.

Keeping with the elf tradition, we wanted to show “naughty” and “nice” treats. We packaged red and white Sixlets in clear containers (from Nashville Wraps) and put our printable “Nice” label. We packaged black gumballs in the other clear containers and added the printable “Naughty” labels on those. These were placed around the table and on the cola bottle crate.

We also reused old card catalog drawers as displays for “naughty” and “nice” treats and labeled them with the appropriate printable party logos. The “naughty” treats included black rock candy, black licorice wheels, black gumballs and homemade “coal” (flatted marshmallows dipped in black chocolate and sprinkles). The “nice” treats included red and green ribbon candy, lollipops, gumballs and candy canes.

On top of those drawers, we put a drawer on its side and lined it with patterned paper. We then made green Meringue Christmas Tree treats and placed them on baking cups (from Smash Cake Studio) that we trimmed and put upside down to add height. We also wrapped an old $1 store mailbox with red yarn and used it as “Santa’s Magic Mailbox” display where the kids could put notes to Santa which were printables from the collection.

The Christmas tree was decorated with various sized yarn pom ornaments. We had the kids help us make these in the colors from the printables.  We also strung the white yarn pom string around the tree as garland.

Last year we featured our printable North Pole mitten advent calendar idea and this year we introduced a new idea for an Advent Calendar – printable Advent Calendar Hangtags that fold closed and can be used for ornaments (write activities for your family to do each day of advent! Arden enjoyed opening the one that said “eat pancakes for dinner”!) Get creative and come up with 25 fun activites to do with family. Another use for the Advent Calendar Hangtags could be to wrap small gifts and place them hidden around the house or tree – each day of advent they can open the appropriate gift. This year I am doing 25 new books to help add to our library!

We also wrapped several gifts for under the tree with yarn. We added our printable tags from the magical elf collection. The collection includes “insepcted by elf #” tags as well as cute santa tags and elf tags. We think the elf tags would be so much fun to use every year.

Another craft was the yarn and patterned paper Christmas Trees. Those were so fun to make and we layered yarn and scraps of our patterned paper to make adorable tree decorations.

Cookies for Santa were left on a plate and a diy cake stand (wood plaque + candle stick base) with a little printable note.  How amazing are the Elf cookies by Sugarbelle!?

Adria’s holiday card was hung on the tree, too. We designed our signature holiday photo hangtag Christmas card to match the elf theme. We trimmed and punched a hole and added The Twinery twine to the tag and hung as part of the decor on the tree.

FASHION

The kids came to the party wearing a dress and a tie from B. Belle Couture. Arden was wearing a precious snowflake hair accessory from Drop of Honey Bowtique. Later, the kids got cozy in custom pajamas by Great Stitch that featured embroidery based on designs from our Magical Elf printables. They loved them! I especially love finding unique and special pajamas for my kids to wear on Christmas eve and these were perfect!

THE DESSERTS

We enlisted help from a few fabulous bakers. Got What It Cakes made festive snow cone mini cupcakes (that we displayed in printable party cones out of the dresser drawer). Sweet Cheeks Tasty Treats made whimsical cake pops that were stuck on paper straws, which were perfectly displayed next to a magical elf in the other dresser drawer.

The amazingly talented Sugarbellemade gorgeous elf and christmas gift sugar cookies.  We displayed those gift sugar cookie pops out of fun Blumeboxes that we wrapped with pom yarn garland. We also displayed reindeer chocolate pops from Nicoles Treats out of the Blumeboxes. They looked so precious and festive and were an unexpected way to show the treats.

Favor boxes were shown with green candies and a white chocolate reindeer pop from Nicoles Treats and tagged up with a cute printable.

The desserts we made included the Elf Hat Meringues and the Christmas Tree Meringues.  Those were so simple to make and the kids loved them! They added to the fun decor as well.

THE PRINTABLES

The printable Magic Elf Christmas party invitation, banner, posters, tags and Coordinating Printable Collection are available in the shop here. We also offer our signature Hangtag Style Christmas Photo Card to match!