Great Honk! It's the Movie Monday Challenge

On the last (or fourth) Monday of each month, a group of bloggers participate in a #MovieMondayChallenge, hosted by C'mon Get Crafty! We decide on a topic, genre, or specific movie to use for inspiration and everyone gets free reign to create something wonderful!

 

This month's challenge was. . . . Fathers! Your Dad's Favorite Film, or just a movie about fatherhood! Everyone was allowed to choose their own favorite film so long as it was inspired by the challenge word.

My father passed away several years ago, and my knowledge of what movies he particularly enjoyed is limited to what he liked before 1980 or so - but the thing he loved was music.  He was career military, but in his heart I believe he wanted to be a musician.

In thinking about that, I was reminded of a movie my husband and I both love (and I'm sure my dad must have, too) - the classic 1962 musical, The Music Man, starring Shirley Jones and Robert Preston.  This is the story of a traveling con artist who comes to small towns, gets them stirred up about creating a boy's band, and sells them the whole package - instruments, uniforms, and music lessons.  One small problem - he doesn't know a thing about music, and strings the wannabe band along with the "Think System" long enough to get the money and leave.

His strategy in each town he goes through is to woo the librarian (as the likely most intelligent person there), create a sense of emergency that a local boy's band would fix ("We got trouble right here in River City!") and flatter everyone else into believing they are talented artistic people whose offspring must surely be musical geniuses.

There are a couple small problems this time - Marian the Librarian is having none of his nonsense, and then he actually falls in love with her, and is touched by her troubled little brother who is blossoming at the idea of being in a band.  Then there is the town council's insistence on seeing his music credentials.  Finally, there is an angry salesman who is tired of him 'skunking the territory' and is intent on seeing him brought to justice.

The characters in this musical are well written exaggerations of small town 'types' and even though it is set around the turn of the 20th century, everyone will recognize the gossipy townswomen, the pragmatic Irish mother of Marian the councilmembers who have been spatting for years, and many others.

My favorites are Mayor Shinn's family - his wife, Eulalie, who regards herself as the natural cultural and social leader of the community and his daughter, Zaneeta who is in love with the town's 'wild kid', Tommy Djilas.

These last two were my inspiration for my project.  

It's become a family joke between my husband and I to exclaim "Ye Gods!" and "Great Honk!", which Zaneeta and Tommy repeat often during the musical.  

Using a book of cross stitch alphabets, I created a pair of pieces highlighting these phrases.

I've had this collection of alphabets on my shelf for twenty years, and selected two fonts that went well together, and selected scraps of white 14ct Aida and a few DMC threads from my stash that coordinated colors that looked like the 'fantasy' band's uniforms.

To center stitched letters, it helps to have either cross stitch graph paper or a cross stitch design app.  How much space to put between each letter and between lines is a matter of eyeballing it to see what looks right, then counting out the width of the letters and the spaces between to get the size of your piece.  I use PCStitch11, but I often revert to graphing on paper when I'm sorting out what I want to do.

Typical for me, I haven't quite finished this project because I didn't fully decide on how I wanted to do it until it was done.  I've ordered a couple of small charms - a pair of drum majorettes to go on each side of Ye Gods, and a trombone to go beneath Great Honk.  I plan to put these into a pair of small deep blue 4x7 frames.

Once I have these completed, I'll post a final picture here!

Now let's see what everyone else was inspired to create for this month's #MovieMondayChallenge!! If you'd like to join our Facebook group, you can request an invite here.

An InLinkz Link-up

Monday Movie Challenge: Peeps S'Mores Tarts

On the last (or fourth) Monday of each month, a group of bloggers participate in a #MovieMondayChallenge, hosted by C'mon Get Crafty! We decide on a topic, genre, or specific movie to use for inspiration and everyone gets free reign to create something wonderful!

 

This month's challenge was. . . . KIDS! Everyone was allowed to choose their own favorite film so long as it was inspired by the challenge word.

For this month's challenge, I chose The Sandlot.

I adore this movie, about a motley group of boys in the early 1960s, and the summer they spent together playing baseball, hanging in their treehouse and getting into trouble at the pool.

The main character, Scotty Smalls ("You're killin' me, Smalls!), is new to the neighborhood, and struggling to bond with his new stepfather - in an effort to connect with his new friends, he grabs his stepfather's display baseball to finish out a game after the ball they were using goes over a fence.

The problem is, this is a prized ball signed by Babe Ruth, and when it, too, goes over the same fence, the boys have a real problem: they need to get that ball back, and on the other side of the fence is The Beast, a huge terrifying dog that eats baseballs - and, according to legend, kids that try to get them back.

What follows is a hilarious round of Wile E. Coyote-like schemes to recover the ball, with one ingenious intricate plan after another.

Along the way, we're treated to a delightful coming of age tale that is about the love of friends, family and baseball, told from the perspective of the now-adult Smalls looking back at this pivotal summer, and for me, it really captured how kids think and interact (warning: plenty of salty language when they're not around adults).

In thinking about what I wanted to do for this one, I had a couple craft ideas I knew I wouldn't have time to accomplish (we are still very newly moved and still dealing with boxes and mayhem), so I decided to focus on a recipe.

Except, there isn't a lot of food inspiration in this movie, except for one iconic scene where they make s'mores up in the treehouse, toasting the marshmallows by candlelight, which even helpfully includes the recipe.

So, I decided to do a S'moreslike dish (although, in my opinion, nothing beats the original campfire treat), and since it's nearly Easter, I decided to use Peeps as the marshmallow, and use mini-graham cracker crusts to make fudgy Peeps tarts.

This is definitely not something we'd eat regularly (they are ridiculously rich and sweet), but it was a fun experiment!  There was leftover fudge filling that I turned into a separate dish to chill.

Here's the problem - my fudge didn't set the way I'd like (it's a really, super rich, thick fudge sauce instead), so I'm not going to bother sharing the failed fudge recipe with you. 

If you make these, use your own preferred fudge recipe, or even go simple (as I wish I had) and just throw some squares of Hershey's chocolate into the base of the crust.

Peeps S'Mores Tarts

(makes 6)

1 pkg graham cracker crusts

1 recipe chocolate fudge OR 3 Hershey's bars, broken up (see note above)

12 Peeps

Put the chocolate filling into the crusts and top with 2 Peeps chicks.  If making fudge, put these in the refrigerator to chill and set a few hours.

Put under broiler for a couple minutes until marshmallow is as toasted as you'd like.

Scarf!

Now let's see what everyone else was inspired to create for this month's #MovieMondayChallenge!! If you'd like to join our Facebook group, you can request an invite here.

An InLinkz Link-up

Got Luck? It Could Happen to You! #MovieMondayChallenge

On the last (or fourth) Monday of each month, a group of bloggers participate in a #MovieMondayChallenge, hosted by C'mon Get Crafty! We decide on a topic, genre, or specific movie to use for inspiration and everyone gets free reign to create something wonderful!

 

This month's challenge was. . . . "LUCK! Everyone was allowed to choose their own favorite film so long as it was inspired by the challenge word.

I knew as soon as I saw the word 'Luck' which movie I wanted to work with - 'It Could Happen to You', the 1994  romantic comedy set in New York City that opens with the narrator, Angel, introducing the main characters as Frank Sinatra reminds us that 'fairy tales can come true, if you're young at heart'.

The short summary of this movie - which is very much a fairy tale - is this: Charlie Lang (Nicolas Cage) is a good cop who lives a simple yet satisfying life with his wife Muriel (the hilarious Rosie Perez) - who may be leading the same life but is experiencing it very differently. Where he sees cause for contentment, she sees not enough and she resents him for his lack of ambition for more.  Muriel dreams of more, and she fully believes she deserves more.

Muriel tells Charlie to buy a lottery ticket, which he does.  This is where it gets complicated (well... complicated by feel good rom-com standards) - at a coffee shop, he and his partner get lunch and Charlie realizes he doesn't have enough cash to leave a tip.

He tells the waitress, Yvonne (Bridget Fonda) that if he wins the lottery, she can have half.  For obvious reasons, she figures she'll never see that tip - even further confirmed by a series of terrible events that had already happened to her that day, including a leech of an ex who has drained her account, forcing her to declare bankruptcy.

So of course you know what happens next, right?

Charlie wins the lottery for $4 million and gives her half!  Of course, Muriel isn't at all happy about that turn of events - she was busy freaking out about needing to share the money with other winners before she'd even had a moment to enjoy having won - when she learns he gave away half, she is livid and before long, she demands a divorce. And all the money.

Meanwhile, Charlie and Yvonne slowly develop a relationship with each other as they share their new wealth with their community in NYC, and deal with the conniving Muriel trying to get all of the money in the divorce.

Seems clear the connection to luck, doesn't it?  Except it isn't so much about the lottery, even if that is a catalyst for the plot. Each character has a different idea of what luck is and how it relates to them.

Charlie begins the movie from a place of contentment. He believes he has enough and enjoys doing things for others and spending time with the kids in the neighborhood.  As the movie goes on, we see the money mainly disrupting that contentment until he figures out how to use it to fulfill the dreams of people around him, in large and small ways.  Charlie truly enjoys making luck for others.  

Muriel is the opposite.  Muriel wants more... of everything.  She believes it is her destiny to be very wealthy and as soon as the money comes in and Charlie starts giving it away, she ditches him and starts campaigning to keep it all.  Muriel believes in luck - and she believes she's owed a lot of it.  In reality, we only ever see her happy in brief spurts when she's shopping or rubbing shoulders with other wealthy people, and that happiness is fleeting because there is always more she doesn't yet have.

Yvonne has yet a different idea about luck - she believes she has terrible luck (and to be sure, a lot of unpleasantness has happened), and is convinced she doesn't deserve anything good to come her way.  Tellingly, while Charlie was giving money away and Muriel was spending it as quickly as possible, her first act after receiving $2 million was to treat herself to a jar of macadamia nuts.  She's definitely not thinking 'big', but she has a deep understanding of the value of small comforts.

Meanwhile, in spite of her belief that she not only has bad luck, but in fact is bad luck, she buys the coffee shop and keeps working there, welcoming customers on the margins of society. She make a regular customer, a man with AIDS, feel welcome and cared for, and sets up a table in Charlie's name, where anyone can get a meal for free if they can't afford it.

Without sharing the entire plot - at the end, each of these characters return more or less to the financial state where they began - no one permanently joined the ranks of the very wealthy.

But there were happy endings for Charlie and Yvonne and not so happy endings for Muriel and Yvonne's ex, Eddie.  Not because of money, but because generosity and kindness make Charlie and Yvonne feel as if they have everything they need, and so for them,  a return to a normal life of connectedness to their community and each other is, truly, lucky.

Maybe luck, good or bad, is a way of seeing what happens to you and how you respond to things beyond your control.

So, I had several ideas for this one including making a menu board inspired by Yvonne's coffee shop, or even trying to make some homemade scratchers that could be tucked into a card.

But - in our own turn of events - after I signed up to participate, my husband and I decided to look for a larger apartment, and we found the right one - but it meant needing to move soon instead of mid-summer as we'd thought we would.

So we've been decluttering, and I truly have neither the time or space to do anything crafty right now.  But what I did have was this fun  little cross stitch piece I'd finished that I'd been meaning to put into a frame - Plum Street Samplers' free chart, Got Luck?  This is a fast stitch, suitable for beginners and can add a sweet little touch to your March decor.

I tucked it into 4" x 6" IKEA Ribba frame that I hope to paint as soon as I'm able. (I also need to take it out and iron it before it goes into the frame permanently)

I bought a bunch of these IKEA frames, in varying sizes, a year or so ago when they were on sale - they're very handy for quickly framing needlework, and the thick sides means they can stand freely, making them very versatile.

Now let's see what everyone else was inspired to create for this month's #MovieMondayChallenge!! If you'd like to join our Facebook group, you can request an invite here.

An InLinkz Link-up