Pageant Clothes

So do you realize that pageants can be very costly?
Local pageants less so but when you get to the national ones...watch out.

In the Miss IL pageant system for example which leads to Miss America, those girls, the older ones especially, not the teens or preteens, they need to be in perfect shape, skinny, preened perfectly. they buy dresses that are $3000. it really bothers me because it shouldnt be about how much you spend on a dress but how you appear, the grace, elegance and presence. How you talk and walk and represent the organization.

Anyway, we had bought some new pageant gowns, very inexpensively, too big b/c they would be sized down but we need the length... well they cost more to be adjusted then the dress, but they are worth it. Sheridan grew too so we took the shawls that came with them and lengthened the dresses too. the seamstress did a great job. you would not know they were altered. I will post pictures of the clothes after the pageants have gone by. Can't show all our secrets.

Sheridan has two coral dresses and one hot pink. With her tan/olive skin she looks good in coral, brown, hot pink and turquoise.

We also had a gorgeous suit made for $95 and worth every penny!!! in coral and brown. This is really inexpensive, actually. She looks so cute and the woman who made the suit is amazing. The suit is lined and gorgeous. We bought the character shoes too, $40, but Sheridan looks great in them. She likes the cut because instead of cutting across the toes they have a v shape and are more comfortable.

For modeling Sheridan has a great capris outfit with zebra on top and white capris on bottom with shoes and accessories to match. For sports modeling she has a skort, white top, visor and tennis racket, white gym shoes. For her acting competions she has a cool hot pink and zebra pattern rock outfit that go with her "rock" theme for the commercials.

I try to keep expenses down and am sure I do better than most.

She loves the clothes and looks good in most everything. Not a bad problem to have.

Libertyville township meeting

There is a libertyville township meeting this Thursday, but it will be the first meeting I will miss because I am going to a wedding.

I am sure all will go well without me!!

NISP Tea

Sheridan, Cassidy, & Samantha just hanging.

All the queens with their new titles.

Yesterday,Sunday, was our annual tea. A great event where many moms helped put it together as well as various lifetime queens as well.

Everyone brought an appetizer or a dessert. All girls earned an award of somekind and some of the girls received their new crowns. Abbi - Ambassador Queen, Allison - Supreme Hostess Queen, Samantha - Queen of Queens, Kristen - Scholarship Queen, Jaime - Royal Honor Queen and Olivia and Mary are new Lifetime Queens.

Great job for all those girls. They should be proud because the moms and other girls are!!!

NISP coming up soon! Any girl or woman can compete

Do you have a daughter who loves to be on stage? NISP is looking for girls from ages 4-6 Tiny Little Miss and Ages 7-8 Little Miss to compete for their frist crown. Northern IL Scholarship program, a pageant with a purpose, Community Service. We have... no girls competing in these age categories & we want your little ones. This is a natural pageant not a glitz!!! check this site: www.nisprogram.com . It is not too late, Competition is Nov 1, 2009 at Round Lake Beach Civic Center. We do community service anywhere needed but especially Lake County and McHenry County IL. come to as many or few activities throughout the year as you want. Looks good on resujmes for adjults & for college applications for kids. Don't want to compete, become a community ambassador, get crown & sash & be one of the girls, come cheer us on!!! Join in the good deeds of community service & a great mentor for the litte ones & fun too. Ages 4 on up to women, married or single!!! Say Sheridan Referred you too, please!! And tell us you are going to compete or be an ambassador. Learn more on website!!!
www.nisprogram.com

Support from Friends

We are very lucky, Sheridan and I that is. We have a great support group. Tonight especially with our friend Sam. She came over and pushed Sheridan and coached her on her modeling routines to add some bounce and definiteness.

I worked with Sheridan on her walk and reminded her of what Tiffany taught her, how to walk and I also showed her a way to add natural swagger to her step.

Sam also went over her NISP speech. Got her to review it and SLOW DOWN. Remember they always talk faster on stage because they are nervous or excited so practice going slow and slow down. The speech for NISP is the person I most admire. She chose me, her mom again. So sweet but not necessary, but she did that last year too!!!

Sheridan is a great kid and she will be really ready and spunky by Nov !. Guaranteed.

Sheridan's Rock outfit

Last night, while Sheridan was at play practice I went to our local Justice store to find Sheridan her "rock" outfit for her two coed commercials on "rock the vote" and "kid rock".

I put the clothes on hold and then after play practice I grabbed her and took her to the store b/f it closed.

She liked what I picked out and we get a decent deal at 40% off the price of the clothing.

Now she just needs to work on memorizing the new commercials.

Seamstress and Suits

Met with Suzy Madrigal today, a seamstress in Chicago. She is amazing. She was referred to my by Jennifer Long Hyman, recently married, yeah Jennifer.

Suzy is going to fix 3 of sheridan's pageant dresses, take them in and lengthen them. They will be gorgeous but expensive at $45 for each one, I paid less than that for two of the 3 b/c they were on sale b/c the store was closing UGH.

Awesome suit will be $95. She better wear it A LOT!

Thanks to Sam she is also designing a suit for us, based on Sam's drawing. Coral suit with brown accents. It will look amazing. Now i have to awit the email with the costs...ugh.

I have to buy sheridan's taupe character shoes too, another $35 more ughs.

We then went to Jennifer's great house and we went over the giveaway items. She gave us our 1/2 of the giveaways. The bracelets are great and we took one poster of Chicago with the lights for the olympics in the skyline buildings, so cool.

We need to order our buttons and business cards this weekend.
Pageants coming up quickly, wish Sheridan luck!

Coed Weekend meeting with Director from IL

We met with Michael Galanes from Little Miss Perfect fame, he hosts the show, is the IL American Coed pageant director. He is soooo great. So kind, talented and smart and so young looking.

All the IL contestants for nationals met Saturday for a two hour meeting. We have a total of 12 girls competing. Two for Victory the sister pageant to American Coed and 10 for Americna Coed. The meeting was great. We talked about how the optionals and the queens part of the pageant. The same judges judging optionals judge the victory queens pageant. A different set of judges judge the American Coed Queens part of the pageant.

The American Coed Queen pageant consists of 5 girls at a time going into a room in front of 5 judges, they each introduce themselves and model their interview suit and then submit to the judges in individual interviews and rotate. Sheridan has to get a new suit and taupe shoes. We are meeting with a Seamstress/dressmaker tomorrow to have a nice suit of brown and coral - her colors be made. We are also having her dresses all adjusted, she grew since we bought them and they need to be floor length so they need to be lengthened and taken in too.

For optionals the judges are on the left of the stage when on the stage and for the queens part they are on the right of the stage.

On Sunday we had a coaching/private meeting with Michael and Krystal Williams - his assistant and the person who may take over as director of IL pageant. She knows Coed because she competed in prior years.

We came prepared but learned a lot. Michael gave us two new actress routines to learn, a new speech for optionals as well and a new intro for the interview portion. Sheridan was like, Oh My God, how am i going to learn all of this, but she is already on her way. She has a great knack for learning and memorizing and will then make it her own.

I have to get her a new outfit for actress. She has a "rock" theme in her two routines so we are creating a rockers outfit.

So much to do, so little time. We still need more sponsors too but I havent made calls lately. Picked up $25 from Jamaican Gardens in Libertyville, our latest sponsor.

We also picked out a new photo to submit for photgenic - need to send that in and swap it out for the old one.

That about sums most of it up.
Need to have a suit made and buy taupe shoes.
Need to have dresses taken in and lengthened
Need to learn new intro
need to learn new speech
need to learn two new actress routines.

But we are still having fun, I think.

Missing Man in Mundelein Found

Just received an updated that Brandon Weinfurteris safe at home. No details, but the family sends their thanks for all of the help, searches and prayers.

Man Missing in Mundelein

There is a man missing in Mundelein, if you see him please contact police.
http://www.pioneerlocal.com/mundelein/news/1816548,mu-missing-mundelein-man-100909-s1.article

Police in Mundelein are asking for help in finding a missing man whose family is concerned about his well being.
Brandon J. Kirchner-Wenfurter was reported missing just after midnight Friday by family members, according to a release from the Lake County Sheriff's Office. Kirchner-Wenfurter, 20, left Libertyville Acura, where he works, at 9:30 a.m. Thursday and has not been in contact with family since, the release said.He was last seen wearing dark blue pants and a light blue shirt with his name tag. He is 5-foot-9, 135 pounds and has brown eyes and brown hair. He was last seen driving a 2002 black Acura MDX with a plate number of X308 403. Libertyville Acura is located at 1620 S Milwaukee Ave. in Libertyville, but Kirchner-Wenfurter resides in Mundelein. Anyone with information regarding Kirchner-Wenfurter's whereabouts is asked to contact Det. Bob Devee at (847) 377-4147 or (847) 549-5200.
- Sun-Times News Group

libertyville township meeting

Last night was an excellent Libertyville Township Meeting. The assessor, Peggy Freese, was asked by the supervisor to come and do a presentation about her job, her department and what they do and how they do or don't effect the tax rates.

She did a great presentation, very thorough. You could see how knowledgeable she was about her job, how much she enjoyed it and wanted to do a good job and is more than willing to field questions. I was very impressed and appreciative of her job and what she does.

The rest of the meeting was a typical meetingk, approving last meeting's minutes, approving the bills, hearing about the # of families our food pantry helped this month, it was 238 or so and over 700 families.

I won't be at the next meeting in two weeks because we are going out of town.

It would be great if more of the community would come and see what we do and ask questions and be involved.

Donations/Giveaways/Sponsors

Sheridan and I have worked really hard to get giveaways, sponsors and donations to help get money for the National Coed pageant.

Last week I called the Chicago Mayor's events office and they referred us to the Olympic office b/c I was inquiring about pins they donated last year to Amanda Luther Miss Chicago IL Junior Teen. Jennifer Long, her mom, told us what she did and I agreed to call for both our girls and then Jennifer would pick up something if we got it.

The Chicago Olympic 2016 office said they would donate about 100 bracelets and we were hoping for about 150 - 75 per kid. Now that the olympics did not pan out we definitely were hoping for more. Jennifer went Tuesday to pick up the donations. They gave her 150 + bracelets, 4 Olympic Skyline Chicago Posters and two Michael Phelps posters.

I am suggesting we sell the Phelps posters and two of the Olympic skyline posters on Ebay and split the proceeds for pageant fundraising money. Then we use the bracelets as our giveaways as planned. That is why they donated this stuff.

Sheridan and I also got the following donations; Gift certificates or gift cards from Buffalo Wild Wings, Famous Daves, Corner Bakery, Dover Straits, Taylor Street Pizza, Pizza Hut-Mundelein, Ruby Tuesday, Arbys, Mickey Finns, The Silo, Baker's Square, Culvers-Libertyville, TGI Fridays, Zanies and Bill's Pizza Pub.

We received sponsorship from IHope-Vernon Hills, Serendipity, The Present Moment, Berry Tires, and Jamaica Gardens, so far.

We sold raffle tickets to Shepard Chevrolet, Mario Soria, and AlMart.

We did 5 fundraisers, a Libby Liu event, 3 bake sales and selling glow sticks. We raised about $340.

Last Bake Sale at Prairie Crossing

Well it was very chlly today, VERY chilly, but a better week in sales than last week.
We brought homemade brownies, rice krispy treats and chocolate cookies, all available for $1. We also brought homemade hot chocolate mmmm. from milk, hot cocoa and sugar. Sheridan got the exact recipe for me off the internet b/c my two containers of hot cocoa didnt have it. I usually guestimate but because I was making a big container full I wanted exact measurements.

We sold about 8 cups, so that was good I brought it too.

We made about $32 today. Some people buy, some people donate, but all people are generous. It was a cold day at the farmers market but it was quite a success.

Still trying to sell a few more ads to get to the fourth page and get the pink sash and crown with pink stones. We still have a number of gift certificates for sale too. All at 10% off, a great discount off face value, I think.

Tonight Sheridan and I worked on her community service poster for NISP. I need to take a photo and post it and also worked on the scrapbook for the national contest of American Coed. It was a rocky start and then we got busy. Fun but still have more to do.