Parents trying to up their Elf on the Shelf game should take note: sometimes, you're better off just plopping the damn thing on your mantel and being done with it. But if you are determined to Pinterest-ify your kid's experience with their little elf [3], please, just heed this mom's cautionary tale first.

Poor Lynn Heinrich set out to pull a clever Elf on the Shelf prank on her son:

"I was feeling creative and I got shaving cream and sprayed it all over the bathroom mirror and filled one of the two sinks with shaving cream and left a little note that said, 'Miles did it,' and Angel the elf was holding the pencil and had his arm around the shaving cream," Heinrich wrote in an expletive-laden Facebook post on the Love What Matters page [4].

What happened next, she never could have prepared for:

Miles woke up before me and went to the bathroom and apparently got scared sh*tless that he was going to be in so much trouble that he needed to cover his tracks. So my son, apple of my eye, the monster I was on bed rest for five months for, that I went through 21 hours of labor for and took three hours to push his huge-ass head out, well, he decides to frame the elf. So he gets a magic marker, black to be exact, and draws squiggly lines all over my bathroom walls . . . Then writes a note with the said marker saying, "You are ugly Lynn," and then the mastermind puts the marker on the elf.

I have to give him credit there, he is smarter than some of the dumb asses on Snapped or I Almost Got Away With It. Kind of scary if I think about that. Anyway so now because of this Mother F%^$%$& elf I have to paint my bathroom again. I mean how can I yell at him without telling him I know he did it because I did the shaving cream?

Related:

18 Real Thoughts About Elf on the Shelf That Every Parent Can Relate To [5]

So, yeah, on the one hand, she should be impressed with her kid's ability to troubleshoot on the spot [6], but maybe she — and Angel the elf, for that matter — should also, um, sleep with one eye open?