About Elf Planner

What we do

Every December, parents scramble to figure out where their elf will hide tonight. Most of us know the tradition; few of us have time to dream up a fresh scene at 11pm. So we built a generator: tell it about your house and kids — ages, pets, whether you have stairs, how messy you can tolerate — and it picks five fresh ideas for tonight.

Behind the generator is a catalog of 972 ideas drawn from parenting bloggers across the web. Every idea on this site was originally shared by someone else; we curate, normalize, and credit every one back to its source.

Methodology

1. Source. We track 23 parenting blogs that publish Elf on the Shelf ideas. Each post is reviewed for ideas we haven't catalogued.
2. Normalize. Every idea gets a structured record: room, difficulty (1–5), mess level (1–5), age range, props, pet safety. That structure is what makes filtering possible.
3. Credit. Every idea links back to the original post. The blogger keeps the audience; we get to pool ideas across many sources.
4. Update. The catalog grows continuously through December. New posts get pulled, ratings get refined, attributions stay current.

What we don't do

• We don't claim to invent ideas. Almost everything here came from a parenting blogger first; the value we add is the catalog and the filters, not the creativity.
• We're not affiliated with The Lumistella Company or the Elf on the Shelf® brand. Trademarks remain with their owners.
• We don't sell email addresses, run popups, or gate the catalog behind sign-up. Ads + Amazon affiliate links fund the site; the catalog itself is and will stay free.

How the site makes money

Two things: display ads (Google AdSense) and Amazon Associate links. When you click an "Amazon search" cart icon next to a prop and end up buying something — anything — Amazon gives us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Disclosure-wise: those links are marked, and our affiliate disclosure covers the details.

Ads help, affiliates help, neither pays for anyone's full-time job. The site is a side project that exists because we wanted it to.