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Magic Candy Cane Christmas Garden
Several years ago (as you’ll see from the pictures by how young Lily was!) our Elf on the Shelf, Oboe, left Lily all of the makings for a Magic Candy Cane Christmas Garden. I was first inspired by the many Easter “jelly bean” gardens that I saw cropping up on Pinterest where the kids plant jelly beans the night before Easter and overnight lollipops or some other treat magically “grows” from those jelly beans. This blog post first appeared on my now-defunct side blog, so I’m dusting it off and putting it over here where people will actually see it!
I pulled this one off mostly on a whim. I made the poem (that’s a stretch) up myself and just incorporated material that we had around the house (star confetti, heart confetti, glitter, etc.).
Lily had a blast putting everything together and she talked ALL DAY about what might grow in the garden. The next morning she shrieked with delight when she saw that the round Starlight mints that she planted in the “dirt” (oatmeal) had grown into some candy canes!
Here’s what she found waiting for her that morning:
She wasn’t excited or anything. ;)
She got right to work on her magic candy cane garden! First she poured out some oatmeal on the bottom of the planter. Next it was time to “plant” the peppermints. She laid them in two nice and neat rows before covering them up with more oatmeal.
Don’t forget to sprinkle some glitter or confetti or jimmies on top!
Oboe was only too happy to keep watch over the magic candy cane garden for the rest of that day and overnight. And then, the next morning… well what do you know? A beautiful candy cane garden appeared!
This ended up being such a cute, relatively easy, elf adventure to pull off and she STILL talks about it today, years after the fact.
I put the poem in a cute little printable PDF for you – print right from the PDF or download to your computer and print later!
You can grab our printable tags right here. Simply enter your email address in the box and opt-in to receive our free newsletter. Check your inbox for this printable, which you will receive as a subscriber bonus.
Make sure you check out my huge collection of Elf on the Shelf Ideas for TONS of ideas for your elf!
Check out our Naughty and Nice List Free Printable because, well? The holidays!
Check out our Christmas Toy Challenge from Your Elf + FREE Printable Poem! Teach your kiddos to pay it forward while recycling… AND alleviate some clutter in the play room before Santa brings a new delivery!
DID SOMEONE TOUCH THE ELF?! You might need some MAGIC ELF DUST… made even easier with our FREE PRINTABLE!!
Need a free printable Santa Cam?
Make a DIY LEGO zipline for your elf!!
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Love this and just printed to share with my daughter. She found Elf in the bread box today eating a slice of bread and she was so happy because she thought something happened and he didn’t “work” anymore. I found a few minutes ago where she left a note for him and asking him to tell Santa how much she loves him. LOL, she will love seeing your idea so thank you so much for sharing this.
This is so sweet! Hope she enjoyed the magic garden!! :)