Get a Head

I'm toying with doing my next Charmed Pot segment on parties, and plumbed ol' Martha Stewart's site for ideas. You've very likely seen this before, but it's still such a cool, creepy touch to a party for the "Muggles!"
Head Waiter how-to on Martha Stewart's website.


Oh, and here's to hoping this year's Hallowe'en Handbook from Martha includes a bunch of new projects not recycled from the last ten years of her magazine. I'll have to write another rant like this one, if that's the case! (Martha, don't make me write you another letter! I'm watching you!)

Eighty-Six Days

Yes, folks. Eighty-six days since I heard from Martha's Minions, but who's counting?

No words, yet. I still have hope.

Martha Follow-Up #1: The Auto-Generated Response Note

Hello,
Thank you for contacting Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

We appreciate your interest in the Martha Stewart Omnimedia family of
publications.

We value your feedback. We have shared your message with the Martha
Stewart Omnimedia editorial team.

We have also forwarded your message to Martha Stewart.

Thank you once again for taking a moment to share your thoughts.

Sincerely,

MSLO Customer Relations
marthastewart.com
mslletters@marthastewart.com

O.K. You gotta give them full props for extreme politeness, a quality far too often bypassed in today's society.
 
We shall see if this is the only response I get. I truly do not expect anything else.

Martha, Revisited

I just wanted to let everyone know, I'm sending my note of disappointment in to Martha Stewart on Friday. If you wish to comment on my original post about the latest Halloween edition of Martha Stewart Living, please do so in the next couple of days. I'm hoping a few more of you will post your opinions, either good or bad, before I send off my note, so that maybe next year, we can look forward to an actual new Halloween edition, rather than the recycled drek we've been getting the last few years.

My "I Tilt At Windmills" bumper sticker will be arriving in the mail shortly.

Martha, I am VERY Disappointed in You!

Stewart, casting a "Look! It's Elvis" spell, and taking your money while you're distracted.

During Friday's shopping marathon for my new shop space in Rancho Cordova, I, at last, spied Martha Stewart Living's Halloween Edition. Although I am not an avid follower of Martha Stewart, I eagerly look forward to this edition every year, and have used some of the ideas to good and creepy effect in my haunt.

This year, though, I was warned. Mr. Macabre's post, aptly titled: Nooooooo! Betrayed! I've Been Betrayed! Martha Stewart Living Halloween Handbook Review revealed Stewart's dastardly plan to re-package old ideas in a new cover and call it good. So I took a moment to page through the magazine.

I could have wept, I was so disappointed.

While there were a few (very few) new (to me; they may have been from issues I haven't seen, yet) ideas, about 98% had been regurgitated from Stewart's Halloween archives. If I were to be charitable, I would say that the magazine was aimed at catching new readers who had never seen the old issues. The fact that she completely abandoned us, the Halloween aficionados and her Halloween followers, makes me feel used and abandoned. And angry. After all, we know she has minions to search the web to rip our ideas off the boards and blogs, so what gives?

Generally, when I get angry, I rant at Mr. ShellHawk for awhile, and he either offers suggestions or (wisely) makes sympathetic noises and nods in the appropriate places. This time, I've decided to take action.

I would like ALL of my readers who are familiar with past issues of Stewart's Halloween Magazine (and as someone once said to me, "All means ALL, that's all all means!") both followers and lurkers alike to go out and look at this magazine on the rack. Leaf through it, and make up your own mind.

If you agree that the bulk of this edition is recycled content from old issues, I want you to do four things:

1) Leave a comment expressing your disappointment in the Halloween issue on this post. Please, keep it classy and only about the Halloween issue! I intend to write a letter in a week or so and include the link to this post. I would like Martha's minions to see a lot of comments! Hundreds would be good. Seriously. It only takes a minute, and you can leave your comment anonymously.

2) If you have a blog of your own, please blog about your disappointment and leave a link to that post here in my comments section. Please let your readers know about this post and include a link for them to follow, so they can join in and comment, too. Make sure to tag your post with Martha Stewart and The Best of Martha Stewart Halloween Handbook, as well as any other useful tags so that if others do a search, they'll see your post and not waste their money. I'll include a list of blogs in the letter I intend to write to Martha.

3) "Digg," Tweet, Buzz up or otherwise promote this post, so it starts to create a buzz.

4) Write a letter to Martha, expressing your disappointment and letting her know that we will not have the wool pulled over our eyes. Again, keep it articulate and classy. (No, "Martha! You suck!" Okay?) Use your spellcheck and grammar check, so we all look intelligent! ;o) Here's the email page link: http://www.marthastewart.com/askmartha

Yes, I am aware there are more important issues in the world to be upset about, and I'll post about one of those very soon.

Humor me, anyway!

Head Waiter

You may remember I'm not a huge fan of Martha Stewart. However, her minions know how to find and invent cool stuff for Halloween. This "Head Waiter" tray qualifies as cool, I think. It will certainly impress your in-laws the next time they come by for dinner. Unnanounced. Again.

With that horrid little nephew who keeps destroying everything in sight. Maybe you could use his head as a base-wait! I didn't say that!

Martha Stewart Halloween or, Just Your Basic Egg Sac

You've seen the title of this blog. It has the words, "Martha Stewart," in it. I want to make one thing perfectly clear:

I don't approve of Martha Stewart. I think she makes the rest of us look bad.

We ordinary men and women, schedules crazed by work and home commitments, don't usually have an army of minions to do our crafts for us. The one or two minions we have access to may even, when asked to help with a project, roll their eyes at us and huff, "Okay. But just for a minute," and do it wrong anyway. So they won't get asked again. And then, they'll ask, "Well, why do you have to do it that way? Wouldn't it be easier to..." And go into a "helpful" explanation that will almost certainly make the project look like it was made in China. By a blind person. With a multiple-personality disorder. And none of the personalities have an I.Q. above, say, 30.

Most of us don't have advertisers funding our projects. Most of us don't have residuals to fatten our bank accounts. (I have to say I was amused to find that the prisoners beat her in a decorating competition. So gratifying.)

This is why I don't approve.

But, sometimes that freakin' overachieving housewife comes up with something kinda cool. Like spider egg sacs.

I have been schlepping around the October 2003 edition of Martha Stewart Living for, um, well, six years. Last year, I tore out the stuff I wanted and pitched the ads. This project caught my eye and looked like it would go pretty quick.

Unfortunately, the website doesn't have the project specs any more, but I do!

Grab your trusty glue gun and your bags of spiders. You need small and medium spiders. Also, go to the Dollar Store or someplace like that and pick up either white stockings (cut off the legs) or white knee-highs. Since Easter is only a couple of months away, there will be styrofoam eggs aplenty available, so pick up a gob of them. You can also use varying sizes of styrofoam balls. Lastly, pick up some white batting from a craft or sewing store.

Take your foam ball or egg and wrap it in the white batting. Pull the stocking leg or knee high over the ball.

Grab your baby spiders and position them inside between the stocking and the batting. Hot glue a bunch of them around the outside. Mix in the large spiders, too. Hang them from the ceiling of your porch with push pins or self-stick hangers.

I did this for my porch last year and hung them up a few days before Halloween. Neighbor V came by to drop off a couple of things for our party. She told me she was startled by the egg sacs at first, then completely creeped out every time she had to go by them. They looked really good at night.

You can see the other parts of the projects here.

Search results for Martha Stewart's Halloween projects here.

For the antidote, go to Gothic Martha Stewart.