Bella Notte Unique Gifts is hosting 3 doll parties! If you are in need of a unique gift for a friend or are looking for children’s toys or clothes this is the place to shop. They have items available from local artists as well. They are located in the heart of cute downtown Golden, Colorado and will be hosting gatherings on the next two ”First Friday’s“ from 5-8pm and all day on Saturday, May 15th!
We’ll have decorating supplies and ragdolls available so bring your creativity! The cost is $20 per doll, the money will go to cover dolls, decorating supplies and soccer balls for the boys. After the party your doll will be traveling around the world to children living in poverty. The next destination is Egypt and Jordan and some of the dolls will be traveling to Haiti in the fall.
If you’d like to see photos of some of our happy decorators or recipients please visit our Flickr site.
We have a flyer available for download. If you’d like to post one for us we’d appreciate it.
Hope to see you there!
Since Lonely Planet has better writers, I hope they don’t mind me borrowing their intro to Romania: “Traveling in Romania, the EU’s newest member, is like being somewhere between an eternal Halloween and the Led Zeppelin IV cover that features a twig-carrying farmer. Even in cities where Audis zoom across highways under video-camera speed traps, Romanian life is defined by its sweet country heart. Most anywhere, you’ll spot horse-drawn buggies crossing the (often cratered) paved roads – up green mountains, past cone-shaped haystacks and herds of sheep – which bounce along as if the roads themselves are aliens to the land. And then there’s that Dracula thing. Many visitors, lured by bloodcurdling tales, make full trips out of Transylvania’s castles and lovely medieval Saxon towns like Sighişoara, where the ‘real Dracula’ (Vlad Ţepeş) first grew his teeth. But travelers limiting themselves to chasing vampires will miss so much.”
Unfortunately, we only had 5 days so we limited ourselves to Transylvania. We had decided to take Tracy’s mom on our next doll delivery trip (more here) and thought Romania would be a great choice in a few ways. One, the problems of their institutionalized orphans has been well-documented. Two, we read about the scenic countryside, and three, we love mountains and Romania is blessed with lots of them.
We’re not much for big cities so as soon as we landed in Bucharest, we picked up our rental car and headed for Brasov, a small city in the middle of Transylvania. Brasov made a real nice hub from which we branched out each day. The nice thing about renting a car is you can explore the countryside and find those off-the-beaten path areas that we love. And Romania, or specifically, Transylvania did not disappoint us. It definitely lives up to Lonely Planet’s description. Fortified churches, medieval castles, Saxon villages, horse-drawn wagons, beautiful mountains and farm fields, cone-shaped haystacks… We saw it all. It’s what we imagined Europe to be like 40 years ago. It’s quaint and charming yet still has most of the comforts of modern life and is definitely not overrun with tourists. The only thing that was somewhat disappointing was the food. Of course, we travel on a limited budget so we don’t always try the best of food, but we did get tired of the ubiquitous pizza on every Romanian menu. It seems to be a post-Communism rage there. I don’t know if this phenomenon is in any way related to the fact that the Romanian language sounds a lot like Italian.
We left thinking we’d love to go back someday and spend more time. Of course, we also want to explore so many other places that we haven’t already been so we’ll just have to see.
We had been in Siem Reap for nearly a week and were leaving Cambodia in another day. We had gotten a few suggestions of places to deliver the dolls but none of them quite felt right. On our tour around Angkor Wat Ed had noticed a sign for an orphanage, but we didn’t know exactly where it was. So we hired our favorite tuk-tuk driver to take us there. We somehow got the idea across to him of what we were looking for and he acted like he knew what we meant. “Sign language” is a beautiful way to communicate. But, when we got to where we thought it was he kept driving. We started to get anxious but stayed patient and waited. Several minutes later he pulled up in front of a rustic building. We walked up, and sure enough, it was an orphanage for about 50 kids. There was a young Cambodian man who came out to greet us. In perfect English he explained to us that he grew up an orphan himself and now lived here helping to raise these kids. The COSO orphanage had been started a few years earlier to help take care of orphans and other children whose families are just too poor to raise them. The need in Cambodia is great and the government just doesn’t have the resources.
The young man took us on a tour of the two-room building, complete with outdoor kitchen. The ones old enough all go to school and take English and other lessons right there. The kids bathe in the lake across the street. They don’t have much, but it is more than what they had before. We wished we had had enough dolls for all of them to get one of their own, but judging by the room they all slept in, we could tell that they were used to sharing. We had barely given out all the dolls before the girls, and boys, were already taking off the dolls’ clothes and swapping them, redoing their hair and having a ball. We knew we had found the right place. It’s a great feeling when it all comes together.
Chiang Mai is a crazy place around the Thai New Year, Songkran, and we arrived right in the middle of it. Picture giant water fights, people driving around in pickups with 55 gallon drums of water and buckets, more super soakers than you’ve ever laid eyes on. And it lasts 3 days! When the mayhem settled down, and we had done some sightseeing we knew it was time to find a place to deliver the handmade dolls we had brought with us from the States. It was Ed’s first trip to deliver dolls so he was a bit nervous and not quite sure what to expect. The woman at our hotel wrote down the name and address of an orphanage right in town so we hired a driver to take us there. Some of the kids were out playing in the yard. We were greeted by a nun who worked there and we told her why we had come. She took the dolls and said they would put them in the girls’ rooms for later. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to see the reactions of the kids, but our experience in Cambodia a week later more than made up for our disappointment. They did, however, invite us to stay and play with the kids outside. Tracy had told Ed that it might take a while for the kids to warm up to us and she went over to a group of them to try and play. Well, a short while later she turned around and to her surprise she saw Ed giving an “airplane ride” to one of the little ones. And, there were more chasing him to get their turn. Before long it was time for the kids to go inside for a nap and we took our leave. Things don’t always turn out the way we hope, but at least we were able to spend some time with the kids and let them know that someone cares.
Rosio, 4 year old daughter of the family I stayed with in Peru. Her kindergarten class received dolls.
June of 2007 I went on a GAP Adventure trip to Peru. I had just gotten divorced and wanted to travel but was nervous about going by myself. GAP was perfect. We hiked the Inca trail 5 days and ended up at Choquequirao ruins, volunteered at a children’s center in Cusco, visited Machu Picchu and helped out in a mountain village for several days. We stayed in locals homes and I volunteered at the school.
The kindergardeners had so much fun with the dolls. The boys played “army men” with them and the girls tied them up in sweaters on their backs. Later in the day we saw a woman with a baby on her back and one of my students was walking with her and had her doll on her back. Cute!
