One week until Santa arrives which means there is little time left to get a personalised letter from Santa this year.

Unlike on Christmas Eve, Santa relies on Australia Post to deliver his letters so final delivery times vary depending on where you live so the Posties have time to get your letter to you. Here are the deadlines…

Melbourne                                             midnight Tuesday 20 December

Victoria and other capital cities      midnight Monday 19 December

other states                                            midnight Sunday 18 December

However, the sooner you order the better chance it will arrive before Santa – the Posties do get very very busy this week! And it’s good to let the kids use the activity ideas included with each letter, too.

In the past, I’ve organised some Santa letters for my kids – they liked them so we’ve done it every year. Last night we opened our Love Santa letters and the difference is incredible.

It’s not just that there is the little surprise added, stickers on the envelopes and the craft and recipe ideas are a great idea. Having different letters for each child was a nice change (yet so important for realism to my thinking).

But what really blew us away was the obvious fact each letter is adjusted for the child. You changed the good deed wording I typed to actually fit the letter wording and added lovely comments that could only have been done manually – a truly personalised letter that made my son stand up straight and feel proud of his achievements this year.

I’ve let the kids play with previous letters and never had any desire to keep one. This year’s letters are going in their scrapbooks – and so will next year’s!

Thank you for a wonderful addition to our Christmas celebrations – and this blog of people’s stories and traditions is heart warming.

The postmarking machine at the North Pole has stopped working, just when they have the most letters to mail across the world!

While repairs or an alternative is being worked on, every letter will be manually processed and an Elf written postmark will be used to ensure the mail is not delayed. Maybe these hand marked envelopes will become collectors items and treasured more highly than the usual postmarks!

Did you know that you can easily keep up with the Love Santa blog by following us (LoveSantaAu) on Twitter? We tweet all posts (whether written by us or by the community, so yes if you post we’ll tweet about it!) and other bits of information and updates.

And this week, we’re running a competition through our Twitter profile, too – all the details are in our specials page but the short version is just retweet any of our tweets this week to be in the running.

Santa has visited Australia, said good-bye to the Boomers and headed off with the reindeer, so it’s time for us to say…

MERRY CHRISTMAS AUSTRALIA!!!!!!

Have a fantastic day full of love and laughter,

Tash and all of Santa’s Elves

I was at my daughter’s house on Friday when her children got Love Santa letters and /I think they were just lovely. All those little details like the postmark and stickers on the envelope, the truly personal and positive message and the little surprise inside – just beautiful and shows your love of what you do.

ALL my grand kids will Love Santa next year!

Christmas is very close now, and many children are excited with their letter signed Love Santa. It isn’t too late to order one for the special children in your life – in fact you have until 5pm …

Wednesday 22nd December if you live in Melbourne

Tuesday 21st December if you live in another capital city or elsewhere in Victoria

Monday 20th December if you live in other areas (although very remote places may need longer for the Postie to deliver letters in time.)

Ordering is easy – just fill in our online form and we’ll take care of the rest for you on behalf of Santa.

Any chance you could give us a hint of what craft activity Santa will send out this year? I want to make sure I have all the stuff on hand becuase my daughter want to make it as soon as she finished reading her letter!

I’m really looking forward to the Love Santa letters arriving soon – the craft activities included for the last 2 years have been fantastic and a great way to keep my kids occupied while the big count down goes on FOREVER!

SO very Santa to give something for kids’ happiness as well as answering their letters. Thank you!

One of the pleasures for many children in the lead up to Christmas is writing a letter to Santa. There is something very special about actually writing your own letter and of course there is the hope of getting what you asked for!

Yet many people struggle with writing letters (how do I start, what can I say, etc) so we’ve added a template to our site to make it easier.

Free to use, our Dear Santa template can be printed off and used to write a well structured letter to Santa, or just use the text and write out your own letter altogether.

By using this template, children can write to Santa and include ore than a list of gifts they want – it teaches them to show interest in others and end a letter gracefully. The template (like Love Santa letters) also encourages children to recognise their achievements and be proud of them.

So, please feel free to use this template and send Santa some beautiful letters this Christmas!

In the seven years we have been writing letters to help Santa, we haven’t changed the price so our letters are still $10 each (or $9.25 for orders of 3 or more).

Why no increases, even after some rough financial years and two postage increases? Because Love Santa is not about the money, it’s about the love of Christmas, magic and children.

We know others are selling letters for more than us, and not always at Santa’s request, but we’ll stay with covering costs and making people happy.

And of course our letters still contain a number of personalised details, craft and cooking ideas and a small surprise mailed individually to each child.

Just a quick announcement that Love Santa is now on Twitter, so as well as tweeting any posts you like, you can follow us on Twitter directly (and we intend to tweet each time we add a blog post, too!)

Our twitter name is @LoveSantaAu (we want to emphasise our Australian connections!) and we’d love to say hi so let us know when you find our profile