Puppet Theatre

Soo...this is what i made for Silas' Christmas present:

yes. bad phone photo.

cant find my camera anywhere...

Anyway! Its a doorway puppet theatre, themed around a pirate ship to match his Peter Pan room.

The portholes are open so puppets can go through there as well, and the jellyfish and crab both have little holes for Silas to put his fingers through to be their tentacles & legs.

Not owning LTTS but wanting to participate, had to make it up as i went, so it still needs some tweaking...and I think I'll still add some coral and other details to brighten it up, but for now I'm happy with it.

So much work! And so worth it. Many thanks to Jessica over at A Little Gray for inspiring me to do this! 

Adoption!!

The title pretty much says it all....so lets get to it.
And yes, it has been a year since I updated, but it would be impossible to cover everything thats happened, so I'm just going to forge ahead!

We've decided to adopt.

Hurrah!
I'm extremely excited, as I've seen this decision on the horizon for years, but the time is finally here and I couldn't be happier! Over and over we see God's heart for the orphan, and while I believe that every person of faith is called to care for orphans, there are many ways to do so. Not everyone is called to bring a child into their home, but I feel so blessed that we are able to welcome a child into our forever family.

Our friends Liv and Matt over at Furthermore Creative have designed a Christmas card for us as our first fundraiser. Please take a look and see if you might be able to use it this year! :)

http://www.furthermorecreative.com/2011/11/bolitho-adoption-fundraiser.html


I've also included our fundraising letter below, as a way to remember this day and this decision. How appropriate it comes in this season of Thanksgiving. :)

Hi! We're Ryan, Stacia, and Silas. Believing in Psalm 68:6 “God sets the solitary in families”, we have decided to add to our family through adoption! 

Ryan and I met in San Diego while working for a non-profit called Invisible Children. We married in 2008, moved to small town Colorado and our son Silas was born in September of the following year. Ryan works in computer technology and I am a music & theatre teacher at a private school, where Silas attends pre-school 2 days a week. On his 2nd birthday this year, we began to pray about adding to our family. We know we are being led to adopt, and feel fortunate to be surrounded by a supportive community. While it is a humbling experience to ask for money, we believe in the African proverb "It takes a village to raise a child" so we are asking you, our village, to help us bring our son home.

This adoption will cost around $20,000. We are daunted by this sum, because we will need to have the money up front. However, we know that God is bigger than finances, so we are trusting that He will provide $1 at a time.

The first amount we are hoping to raise is $4,000, to cover the cost of our homestudy. We would be amiss if we didn’t ask for help from those in our extended community who may be willing to donate to get us one step closer to our son – and no amount is too small! Our plan is to apply for as many grants as possible and pray that doors will open for the money to come through.

Please consider helping us bring our son home. Above all, please pray for us during this season. If you are unable to give monetarily, we would greatly appreciate your help by spreading the word about our card through facebook or email.

Thank you,
Ryan, Stacia, and Silas

Christmas Wishlist

Its the holiday season! Being my favorite time of year, i've loved seeing the storefronts slowly transform from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas (Target is officially all decked out Christmas style and i love it).

I was originally going to write a Thanksgiving post, but we'll be attending Thanksgiving at my in-laws so the "ideal menu" post i had in mind would simply taunt me...i think its something do to with being in our own house this year that stirs my desire to host a Thanksgiving feast. 

However, i do still get to make a dessert and have purchased 2 small pie pumpkins to make an actual not-from-a-can pumpkin pie. If anyone has a good recipe for such a pie, let me know! 

In the meantime, i will dive into the Holiday spirit with the every popular Christmas Wishlist:

For Silas:

1. These amazing baby socks:

He has a habit of yanking off his socks as soon as i put them on. Now that its winter, i need a solution other than "oh well" and i think these would do the trick. 

2. This gorgeous embroidered alphabet:

i've had my eye on this since Silas was a newborn. i love educational toys that are still beautiful and fun, and this shop fits the bill. It's incredible. There's beautiful felted numbers, an adorable ladybug mobile, and even a Hebrew alphabet set! The home-school mom in me swoons. 

3. A play kitchen, like this one: 

Looove this b/c its small and very quirky. It looks like a kids imaginary kitchen come to life.

No matter what, he'll eventually have a play kitchen...i have big plans for our short entertainment center once we get the tv mounted on the wall. 

Also, if you've never explored the world of felted/wooden food, i suggest you look in to it. so much fun. 

For Mona and Amadeus:

our mini-daschund and *great dane

*in a moment of pure insanity i decided to give him to Ryan as our anniversary present. 

i will, however, never be insane enough to be one of those people with a "I heart my Great Dane" sticker on their rear windshield. Just wanted to clear that up. 

This cute bed for Mona, minus the cat of course. 

2. A dog bed for Amadeus, with some sort of music note motif. 

3. The biggest bone i can find.  

Next time: me and my lovas lists. 

On my mind.

Every time i find myself losing time browsing the endless number of crafty blogs out there i wind up coming back to this one thought:

Creativity is not discovered in reading about someone elses creativity. It is found by DOING.

so im going to go do.

Back in action!

So heres whats been up:

First off, i am almost positive i have the best little traveling baby. We have been on 3 vacations this summer and every time he's done amazing. 

No screaming fits on the plane, putting up with new people and places for days on end, having to travel in his carseat for 3 hour trips to Maine, Denver and back, etc. 

Hes such a champ. 

Heres where we went on those vacations:

NYC for the Tony Awards. 

Amazing. Incredible. 

The whole little family went, were there for 4 days, and stayed at the classically beautiful Intercontinental Barclay on a top floor 2 room suite. The room had a fireplace people. I kept all the windows open the entire time so we could enjoy the beautiful sounds of the city, and thus found if you leaned out the bathroom window (which of course i did about 5 seconds in) you could see the entrance to the Waldorf Astoria! 

 family on the hotel bed. their first time in NYC! 

Sidenote: see how the yellow of babys shirt matches the yellow of my sweater? im officially THAT parent. On special occasions, his outfit always indicates towards mine....

We spent our days wandering and seeing the sights of the city. Ry had no real interest in doing the overly touristy things like going up in the Empire State Building or going to see the Statue of Liberty b/c Silas is still so young and waiting in lines all day is not our idea of a good time, so we skipped those. Instead we got real Italian in little Italy, marveled at the open air fish markets in Chinatown, walked around Times Square at night, visited with friends, saw Billy Elliot (for free thanks to the Broadway League!), rubbed elbows with Broadway stars, ate hot dogs from a cart in Central Park, & put Silas on a bunch of oversized stuffed animals at FAO Schwarz:

jungle baby. 

The trip was full of amazing, surreal moments. i especially loved saying "i'm here to pick up tickets from the Tony Awards and the Broadway League" and having the concierge study me for a moment. As we were staying at the hotel sponsoring the Tonys, i like to tell myself he was checking to see if he recognized me from a show :)  

After that, we drove up to Maine for my aunts funeral. She passed away after a long and painful battle with cancer, but is now in the arms of her Savior, which makes all the difference for those of us still here. 

here she is doing emergency surgery on my wedding cake, 

after it slid halfway off the base and semi-collapsed while being transported to the reception site.

It was henceforth known as "the pisa cake".

A full, emotional week - but wonderful to spend with family. We traveled as a pack that week, laughing and crying all together. We picked strawberries, celebrated Ryans birthday, made donuts (ScareList check), saw the house my mother grew up in, made a New England clambake with 5 lobsters and 7 pounds of clams (ScareList check), went to aunt Paulies for a 4th of July cookout, & went out to great uncle Pauls farm where Silas saw horses and chickens for the first time: 

A few weeks later Ryan went on a business cruise while i was back in New England for the wedding of my cousin Sean and his beautiful bride Kim:

Lovebirds. 

sleepy baby at the wedding, 

and further proof of "that parent" syndrome. 

another first. 

The final trip of the summer was to Florida for my best friends wedding and THAT glorious occasion gets a post all its own. Stay tuned!