xmaself's posterous

Its do something fabulous Friday!

Who doesn’t love Fridays? Well this Friday I want my elf army (i.e. you guys) to do something fabulous.

The Idea is to find one person who has been fabulous and get all 7,500 of my followers to tell them. At the same time with the same message.

Result is we can collectively make someone feel really special. Cool huh?

This is an experiment, if it works we will do it again, if not then at least we tried.

We have the perfect Fabulous Friday person, who has been nominated by her daughter @maddyleigh94. Maddy has been really ill and she wants to show her mum how much she appreciates her.  

So at 5pm GMT today (12pm EDT, 9am PDT) please can you all send the following message to @mangler1970

@mangler1970 Hi Amanda, Maddy thinks you’re fabulous and I agree. Have a great weekend xxx #dsff

Now it’s really important that as many of you send this message as possible, I want to get #dsff to trend!  But please send it at 5 PM GMT.

The good thing is you don’t have to remember to do it then, there are lots of tweet schedulers so you can do it now and then forget about it.

I like http://futuretweets.com/ but you can also use tweetdeck and lots of other tools.

So Schedule that tweet and do something fabulous this Friday

Thank you

Love

Toplius

XXXX

Happy new year

Look it's 2012!

This year I’m going to do something nice for someone. You never know, they might do something nice for someone else, and that person might do something nice again…

What would happen if we were all a little nicer? I don’t know but it would be cool to find out.

What are you going to do different?

What are you going to give up?

What will be your new challenge?

What new thing are you going to start?

What cause will you fight?

What will be the life changing moment?

What bad habit will you break?

What dreams will you make true?

What plans have you been brewing for too long that you will action?

What ever you do, do something. You only have 366 days left.

Tick tock…

Sometimes mistakes happen

Back in the old days we just weren’t as good at administration as we are now. And we did go through a period in the 1980’s where we lost quite a few letters!

Luckily those nice folk at Coca Cola helped us track a few of them down so the boss could respond to them in person.

Here’s the story, I hope you like it.

 

 

 

Marry Christmas

 

Toplius xxx

Need help getting the Kids to bed on Christmas Eve?

I’m really pleased to say that once again Santa has appointed me head of mission control here at the North Pole.  So once again, I will be tweeting Santa’s progress all night as well as sending him a few messages too.

I do hope you follow me and join in the fun.

To make it a little more special I will also tweet your kids on Christmas Eve! All you need to do is ask me.

Simply send me a tweet with:

1.       The Name(s) of your children

2.       The time in GMT that you want your message.

3.       And select one of the 3 tweets below: (Choose A, B or C)

A:  Hi (Kids Names/s) You need to get to bed because Santa is on his way, and he can't deliver your presents if you're awake! @yourtwittername

B:  Hi (Kids Names/s) I hope you’re in bed, because Santa in nearly at your house, and if you’re not asleep he can’t deliver your gifts! @yourtwittername

C: Hi (Kids Names/s) If you don’t get to bed soon, you’ll end up on the naughty list! @yourtwittername

As an example: If you lived in Colorado, your children were called Tom and Katie and you wanted ‘Tweet B’ at 8pm Mountain time you would send me the following message:

@XmasElf Please tweet Tom and Katie Tweet B at 3am GMT

As ever there are some rules, terms and conditions! (Sorry, but there are some weird people out there!)

1.       Please send your tweet to me before 10pm 23^rd December 2011 (If you send it afterwards I will try my best!)

2.       I will only send the tweet to your twitter name (The one you contacted me by) and cannot include any other twitter name in the tweet.

3.       I will acknowledge your request and let you now that it’s scheduled. If you don’t get a reply within 18 hours please let me know (Via twitter)  

4.       There’s only me, if this goes bonkers I may not be able to respond to all requests – I will post an update here.

5.       I can only post 1 message per minute. If you ask for 8pm I may have to post a few minutes before or after.

6.       This is a free service set up by me, I’ll do my best to fulfil every request, if it goes wrong please accept my apologies, but no liability is accepted. By requesting a tweet you are agreeing to these conditions and that we will remain friends :-)

Merry Christmas

Toplius Elf

Secrets of Christmas Part 5 - Grandma & Santa Claus

I remember my first Christmas adventure with Grandma. I was just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to visit her on the day my big sister dropped the bomb: "There is no Santa Claus," she jeered. "Even dummies know that!"   My Grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been. I fled to her that day because I knew she would be straight with me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that the truth always went down a whole lot easier when swallowed with one of her "world-famous" cinnamon buns. I knew they were world-famous, because Grandma said so. It had to be true.   Grandma was home, and the buns were still warm. Between bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me. "No Santa Claus?" she snorted...."Ridiculous! Don't believe it. That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes me mad, plain mad!! Now, put on your coat, and let's go."   "Go? Go where, Grandma?" I asked. I hadn't even finished my second world-famous cinnamon bun. "Where" turned out to be Kerby's General Store, the one store in town that had a little bit of just about everything. As we walked through its doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars. That was a bundle in those days. "Take this money," she said, "and buy something for someone who needs it. I'll wait for you in the car." Then she turned and walked out of Kerby's.   I was only eight years old. I'd often gone shopping with my mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself. The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling to finish their Christmas shopping.   For a few moments I just stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for.   I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my neighbors, the kids at school, the people who went to my church.   I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought of Bobby Decker. He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair, and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock's grade-two class. Bobby Decker didn't have a coat. I knew that because he never went out to recess during the winter. His mother always wrote a note, telling the teacher that he had a cough, but all we kids knew that Bobby Decker didn't have a cough; he didn't have a good coat. I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement. I would buy Bobby Decker a coat!   I settled on a red corduroy one that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that.   "Is this a Christmas present for someone?" the lady behind the counter asked kindly, as I laid my ten dollars down. "Yes, ma'am," I replied shyly. "It's for Bobby."   The nice lady smiled at me, as I told her about how Bobby really needed a good winter coat. I didn't get any change, but she put the coat in a bag, smiled again, and wished me a Merry Christmas.   That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat (a little tag fell out of the coat, and Grandma tucked it in her Bible) in Christmas paper and ribbons and wrote, "To Bobby, From Santa Claus" on it.   Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy. Then she drove me over to Bobby Decker's house, explaining as we went that I was now and forever officially, one of Santa's helpers.   Grandma parked down the street from Bobby's house, and she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front walk. Then Grandma gave me a nudge. "All right, Santa Claus," she whispered, "get going."   I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the present down on his step, pounded his door and flew back to the safety of the bushes and Grandma.   Together we waited breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally it did, and there stood Bobby.   Fifty years haven't dimmed the thrill of those moments spent shivering beside my Grandma in Bobby Decker's bushes. That night I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus were just what Grandma said they were -- ridiculous. Santa was alive and well and we were on his team. I still have the Bible with the coat tag tucked inside: $19.95.   And may you always believe in the magic of Santa Claus!  

Secrets of Christmas – Part 4

This week’s question comes from Scott (age 6) from Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

Q: How does Santa fit all the toys for all the boys and girls in the world in his sleigh?

Well Scott, he doesn’t! A long time ago, when Santa first stared delivering toys on Christmas Eve there wasn’t so many people in the world, so back then he could. But these days there are many more children.

Santa uses 262 sacks on Christmas Eve. Which is quite a lot, but there are approximately 2 billion children in the world, when you take off the Children on the naughty list that still leaves 1 ½ billion children.  Most children have more than one present so Santa delivers approximately 9 billion presents. 9 billion is a really big number! It’s over 34 million presents per sack. On average each present is 6 inches square, so in every sack there is enough presents to go around the earth over 5,000 times!

As I’m sure you can imagine this does cause a few problems! So we use a special shrinking machine developed by Wunorse Openslae head of Elf research and development that makes every present tiny. In addition to this each sack is bigger on the inside that it is on the outside. (This is where the writers of Dr Who got their idea for the TARDIS!)

Santa carries 8 sacks on his sleigh so we have 32 Sleigh replenishment centres in different cities around the world. On Christmas Eve Santa stops off at each centre and we have a small team of elves who replace the empty sacks for full ones, whilst other elves look after the reindeer and Santa changes his suit, which can get quite dirty going up and down chimneys!

Preparing to load up a sack, you can see Mrs Claus on the left

We elves load up the sacks as the presents come off the production line, we use forklift trucks and a special SPS (Sack positioning System) even then elves do get lost inside a sack! We deliver the presents to the sleigh replenishment centres throughout the year, starting in Sidney Australia in May.  

When Santa needs a present he uses a present retrieval device also designed by research and development which acts like a magnet and pulls the correct presents out of the sack for each child. Once the present is out of the sack it automatically re-grows back to the correct size.

Well Scott, I hope this answers your question and I wish you a very merry Christmas.

Toplius

Secrets of Christmas – Part 3

Today’s question comes from Greta (age 6 and 1 day) from Ham, Greater London in the UK.

Q. How do Santa’s reindeer fly?

Not all reindeer can fly. Only Santa's reindeer fly. These reindeer are specially chosen after attending reindeer flying school. At the school it is seen which reindeer have the spirit of love and laugher, wonder and adventure, and believe in the impossible when others might give up.

To make them fly all of Santa’s reindeer are fed on special lichen that is grown with a very special magical fertiliser that is made by Santa and Mrs Claus from Christmas happiness. Lichen itself is a very special plant because it’s actually a mixture of 2 different things, Fungus and alga they work together as friends to make it grow. The magic lichen makes the reindeer lighter than air, on non flying days they have to wear heavy reindeer bracelets keep them on the ground!

Magic reindeer lichen

Rudolph doesn’t actually like Lichen, but he knows it’s good for him, so he eats it anyway, which is a really grown up thing to do! The reindeer eat over 2 tonnes of lichen every year which is why Rudolph really loves the carrots he gets when he’s delivering presents!

I hope that answers your question Greta, and I also hope that you had a lovely birthday and wish you all a happy Christmas.

Secrets of Christmas – Part 2

This week’s question comes from Carol (ages 5 2/3) in Perio, Illinois USA.

Q: Why does Santa give out gifts every Christmas?

Hi Carol, that’s a really BIG question and it’s something all Elves learn in school.

It all started a VERY long time ago when Santa was a normal person; he lived in Turkey which is a very long way away from Illinois! His name was Nicholas, and he was a bishop. But being a bishop 1,600 years ago had rules, and one of them was that he was not allowed to marry and have children of his own.  This made Santa really sad, because he loved children, but as he was a Bishop, he was very rich, generous and loving toward children. Often he gave joy to poor children by throwing gifts in through their windows; sometimes he put coins in their shoes whilst they slept. He always did it without anyone knowing because he found it fun to think about the children wondering where the gifts came from.

When he was about to die, something really amazing happened, in a flash of light he found himself transported to our elf village in Lapland in northern Europe, younger and more jolly than ever.

A very old picture of Santa from when he was a normal person:

As Santa was no longer a bishop, he realised he didn’t have to follow the rules about not marrying any more, and he met his wife Mary. Shortly after they had their son, who they named Arthur after the King of England.

Right then to celebrate his good fortune he decided to give presents to as many children as he could every Christmas. Over the years he got better and better at this and asked for our help, all the elves thought this was a great idea and we built our first workshop in a secret location near the North Pole.

Santa, Mary and Arthur are not normal people, and they don’t age, so it looks like he will deliver presents forever.

I hope this answers your question.

Merry Christmas Carol! (See what I did there)

Secrets of Christmas – Part 1

You know lots of boys and girls ask me questions about how we make all the toys and deliver them in one night. So I decided to write a few blog posts to try to answer them.

 

The first question is about the North Pole post office, and was asked by George from Buckingham in the UK.

 

Q: how do you make the toys all year when you get most of your wish lists in December?

Well George that’s a great question, we actually start making toys for Christmas on the first Monday after January 7th which is Christmas day in Russia. So this year we started on Monday January

10th!

But no one writes to Santa that early, so what happens is when the letters start to arrive, Gluggagaegir the Elf Master General and his team use a special machine developed by Wunorse Openslae  head of Elf Research and development (He also designed Santa’s sleigh) to send the letters back in time so that we can make toys all year.

I asked Wunorse how it works, but it was far too complicated for me to understand, he did use the word quantum quite a lot! I do know that once you have written your letter it’s important not to change your mind as it gives Wunorse a real headache!

I hope this helps George

 

Merry Christmas

Toplius

Oh look it’s 2011

This year I’m going to do something nice for someone. You never know, they might do something nice for someone else, and that person might do something nice again…

What would happen if we were all a little nicer?

I don’t know but it would be cool to find out.

What are you going to do different?

What are you going to give up?

What will be your new challenge?

What new thing are you going to start?

What cause will you fight?

What will be the life changing moment?

What bad habit will you break?

What dreams will you make true?

What plans have you been brewing for too long that you will action?

What ever you do, do something.

You only have 361 days left.

Tick tock…