A creative mom who refused to shell out $20 on a ‘quarantined’ Elf on the Shelf for her young daughter decided to make her own using a condom instead of a balloon. Sapphire Grimes-Williams wanted little Ayala to have the experience of popping the balloon after the doll’s two-week quarantine period was over but thought shelling out the cash for a big enough balloon was outrageous. Thankfully, the condom seems to have worked perfectly!
- Regular balloons just didn’t work. Sapphire did try to use a regular balloon to quarantine her Elf on the Shelf, but every time she tried, the doll’s head just got stuck. She then looked online for a big enough balloon but was put off by the price as well as the lengthy delivery time. What other choice did she have but to improvise?
- The Elf slipped into the condom easily. Then the idea hit her: why not put the elf inside a condom? Funnily enough, it slipped right in without a problem and she was able to blow it up just like you would a balloon. Problem solved!
- Don’t worry, she washed the latex. Sapphire admitted that the lubricant on the condom left a “slimy” feeling all over the outside, but she gave it a good wash once the elf was inside to take care of that. It also enabled her to decorate it for the season.
- Ayala was pretty excited when she saw the setup. Considering she’s only five years old, Ayala was none the wiser about the fact that her beloved Elf on the Shelf was quarantining inside a condom. In fact, she loved it and was really excited to see the mischief the doll would get up to leading up to the holidays. “Her reaction was brilliant. I put it down in the evening and she woke up to it in the morning, and all I heard from her was, ‘mummy come here now,'” Sapphire recalled. “I said, ‘what’s the matter, what’s wrong?’ and she said, ‘come here.’ I walked into the living room and she said, ‘the elf is back – in a balloon.’ I read out the letter to her and she was like, ‘mum, do we get him out now?’. I said, ‘no baby, he’s got to stay in there because he needs to self-isolate.'” She added that her daughter understands what’s going on with COVID-19 so totally got the fact that the elf needed to self-isolate.
- Sapphire had no idea her little project would become so popular. “I’m a bit overwhelmed by the attention I got. I wasn’t expecting it at all,” she said, according to The Sun. “My sister was like, ‘to be honest with you, it is an absolutely amazing invention’ but my family are used to me doing things like that. I wasn’t expecting that reaction.”
