time to sparkle


Tonight the Cheerios compete in the City Cheerleading Championships. On Saturday night they came over and had a little tutorial about how to do their hair and makeup. They each packed little kits containing a hair bow, a zip tie to attach it, a school face tattoo, a piece of paper towel, a disposable eyeshadow applicator and the striped socks Saucy found in Calgary. We even dyed one of the girls' hair in the kitchen... it was a madhouse, but these things have to be done.

There was much laughter when videotapes of cheerleading events past in the eighties and nineties were viewed. Most of this laughter was at Saucy's expense. You know, hair was big those days. We liked it that way, girlies.

Today, Saucy packed a giant suitcase with those kits and all of the other necessities:

first aid kit
signs
megaphone
iPod with the music on it
sound system
curling irons
brushes
combs
hairspray
gel
bobby pins
safety pins
eye makeup remover
bottled water
facecloths
paper towel
extra uniform pieces
camera
video recorder
batteries
Tide to Go pen
wipes
kleenex
sharpie markers
extra hair elastics
scissors
sidecutters (for zip ties)
feminine gear
MEDICATION
makeup to distribute:
green eyeshadow,
yellow eyeshadow,
black eyeliner,
green glitter liner,
blush,
lipstick,
and lipgloss.

... did she forget anything?

The cookies! She made the lucky shamrock cookies with a dusting of green sugar and edible gold glitter for the Cheerios to give the senior cheerleaders for a treat. With both teams from our school competing, it could be a very exciting night. The recipe can be found here.

And that's it. We're off. All they have to accomplish tonight is to complete their routine cleanly in under two minutes and thirty seconds to qualify for the provincial championships on March 27th. May the luck of the Irish be with the Cheerios! Happy St. Patrick's Day.

where saucy creates


Today the craft room got a kick start of spring cleaning. It was about time... last spring. Better late than never. Saucy still has quite a few things to do, but in the meantime come in and take a peek at what progress looks like:


Clara is always dressed for company. She wears inspiring vintage jewelry and a sweet dragonfly for luck. If she had ears, those 1940's rhinestone clip-ons would not be on her neckwrap, but that's her cross to bear.


The inspiration board is stuffed with... inspiration. Actually, the contents of that board could be an entire post unto itself.


Buddy Budderson gifted Saucy with this vintage shelf from an automotive supply company. One of the Bowman Brothers was one and the same who Saucy's alma mater was named for. The same high school that Buddy graduated from and Loopy now attends. This old cabinet perfectly holds small Atlas Mason jars sorted with safety pins, brads, eyelets and other bric-a-brac.

About a year ago, Saucy was junking and found a large floor-standing cabinet from the old Bowman Brothers shop, it had a hundred little drawers and was distressed and orange like this unit... prompting her to wonder: if the shop was all orange and navy, why are the school colours green and gold? Did anyone ever put that together?
 

Oh, and there's more glitter than this... the Martha Stewart glitter is on a shelf in the closet.


Under the shelf hangs four buckets filled with gel pens, glitter pens, hot glue sticks and cable ties.


A window box - under the window of course - sorts paint brushes, scissors and all sorts of furry bear friends. You will find bears throughout the craft room. They're great for bouncing ideas off of.




The mural on the wall behind the desk is coming along nicely. There are more things to add, Saucy needs to have a little work bee one night with a Saucy-tini in hand and get at it.


Special gifts and ephemera hang here, including a paper hanging from Little Melfie, and a treasure made by Amy, gifted to Saucy by Karen.


Amy Sedaris, you are one of Saucy's heroes! Look at you, covered in frosting and sprinkles. Saucy wants to pose like that someday. A vintage Victorian twine dispenser hangs here too.


The dresser under the mural holds fabric, felt, packing materials, and Saucy's infamous bikini collection... shhh! She has to hide the evidence somewhere. That little basket is stuffed with greeting cards received over the last year. Saucy saves them all. Some get used in altered art, most get sorted (eventually) into boxes for saving.


In the strange corner where nothing else would fit, rolls of vintage wallpaper are stuffed between the dresser and an armoire. Saucy jammed some old curly willow there for short term storage - two years ago. Now, glittery birds call the branches home. No word on the condition of the wallpaper.


Above the armoire that holds a computer and boxes of sorted photographs (Saucy's not man enough to show you the inside) sit treasures including: vintage cupcake tins, an angel weather vane, more teddies, Dorothy's ruby red shoes (there's no place like home) and a briefcase that belonged to Veto's father.



Sorted: rubber stamps (tin buckets), foam letter stamps (paper baskets) and ribbon scraps (vintage candy jars). Below that (not shown) Atlas Mason jars filled with buttons sorted by colour.


Old magazines tucked neatly away... they need to be labeled: Martha, Martha, Martha.


The ribbon rack... guarded on two sides by Princess Di.


Vintage perfume bottles among the spools of ribbon, new and vintage too.


A shoe-shaped tuffet to display hatpins. The wooden boxes sort yarn, supplies and embellishments by season.



What lies behind the closet door? At the risk of ruining the ambience, Saucy will open the door and show you.


The real storage: Rubbermaid drawers. A place for everything and everything in its place. At least once a year. To the left is a work station with a cutting board, cutting mat, and racks to hold spools of thread.




Sentimental treasures to keep Saucy amused.



Yes, that is a heavy layer of dust. Saucy would like to say that it isn't, but it is. 

She'll get to that another day.


Saucy was misdiagnosed with Lou Gherig's Disease in 2002. Today he watches over her desk to remind her that she is the luckiest girl alive.



More drawers to the right, holding work clothes, paint, jewelry making supplies.


Under the desk: scraps of paper sorted... solids, prints and recycling.


Two stools: one for Saucy, one for Loopy. One has a back and the other can be stashed under the desk when only one person is working in the room.


And to think, not too long ago, the floor wasn't visible in this room. And the top of the desk. That's how it is in creative spaces... but Saucy still has to do some dusting, don't you think?

they're magically delicious


Saucy had a thought to post a sort of green velvet cupcake before Bakerella beat her to the punch last week. At any rate, with the Cheerios coming over on the weekend, green cupcakes with gold frosting were in order. Saucy set aside the last few cakes... and with a little luck... and some Lucky Charms... she made some magically delicious cupcakes for St. Patrick's Day.


Kids of all ages enjoy marshmallow pink hearts, yellow moons, shamrock hats and rainbows. Saucy picked out the hats and rainbows for the cupcakes, mostly because Loopy had been there first and swiped the pink hearts. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Edible gold glitter, available at baking suppliers.


The key to this green shade is starting with the right cake mix. Saucy grabbed a Betty Crocker Super Moist white mix out of the pantry. Since she knew she'd be throwing all that green food colour into the batter, she went ahead and added 3 whole eggs to the mix, instead of the 3 egg whites... figuring that the egg yolks couldn't hurt and would only make the cake a little more dense, yellow and pound-cake like. She was right. Other than that, she simply followed her regular altered cake mix cupcake recipe.

If you choose to dye your batter with a readily available food colour from the grocery store (the liquid kind), Saucy would caution you that you will need quite a bit of it to achieve this shade of green... in fact, an entire one of those teeny-tiny bottles that you get four shades in (red, yellow, blue and green) won't be enough - so get a large bottle of green and figure that into your one cup of liquid.

Otherwise, proceed as Saucy did - with Wilton Kelly Green food colour paste. Paste colour is infinitely easier to use because it doesn't muck with the liquid amounts or consistency of frostings and batters. Remember when using professional-grade food dyes like Wilton, the intensity of the colour increases after baking, or in the case of frosting, after setting.

May the Luck 'O the Irish be with you this week - and also with the Cheerios... who have their first competition on Wednesday night. It must be a good sign that they will be wearing green, don't you think?

fifteen hair bows - a tutorial


Oversized hair bows are all the rage right now for cheerleading, baton and dance. Of course Saucy wanted to get her hands on some for the Cheerios and did a little investigation on the internet. She found a great site called Tie a Yella Ribbon... get it? Yella Ribbon. Cute. But expensive...


So this frugal Saucy set off to Wal Mart and the dollar store for some supplies to make fifteen flouncy, oversized bows. But she knew they had to be sturdy. They need to survive jumping, stunting and tumbling.

The supplies:



For the basic bow:


For the center part of the bow where it is cinched in the middle:


Saucy decided that good old scrapbooking double-faced tape from the dollar store would adhere the striping ribbon to the wide ribbon - it did the trick.




Saucy's no math whiz and Loopy was at school for the afternoon so she simply "guesstimated" and folded the long strips into threes and cut them like that into equal pieces. It worked out well. Besides, these are hair bows, it's not, like, an exact science.






Tip: don't over-tighten the zip tie at this point. Grab another zip tie and ensure that it can still slip under the tightened tie you attached to the bow... we will be using the same zip ties to attach these to the ponytails... it's a fail proof way to secure them and they will not fall out during the routine.





Don't forget to use something along the tails of the bow such as Fray-Check or, if you have some on hand, clear nail polish works wonders.

You can also dab hot glue on the inside of the bow, underside or wherever you would like to secure it into a nice shape. 


So Saucy was thinking that next week at the City Championships, the Cheerios would wear them with the long tails like in the "layout" look. They might loop the tails under for Provincials the following weekend and then finally cut them short for the "fulldown" look when it is time for team photos... three looks in one bow!

And the best part? All fifteen bows cost about the same as one bow at retail price. No kidding. Saucy should start making cheer and dance bows on Etsy. Or, her readers could just use this tutorial.

You're welcome.