I used to ridicule Martha Stewart, but no more. ALL IS FORGIVEN, MARTHA!
I went to the grocery store today to stock up on frozen pizzas and lard (the weekend's coming, ya know). I was standing in the check-out line boredly perusing the check-out library: the National Enquirer, the Weekly World News, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, People, etc., and I saw this special Halloween issue of "Martha Stewart Living." I'm a sucker for Halloween, so I picked it up and flipped through it, expecting to see the usual crap you see in Halloween craft guides -- stuff that only a professional carpenter/chef/seamstress/metalworker/avant-garde artist with a billion-dollar budget could put together.
Damn, was I surprised.
All my life, I've wanted to do Big Halloween Productions -- haunted houses, fancy Halloween food, neat costumes, cool (and non-Hallmark-cutesy) decorations -- anything to allow me to properly demonstrate my devotion to my favorite holiday. But my lack of artistic expertise, inability to sew, and general clumsiness with a mitre saw doomed any plans more ornate than cutting out construction paper pumpkins.
NO MORE!
I can make "lady fingers" with pretzel dough and red almonds! I can make scary owl silhouette decorations! I can make dried apple shrunken heads! I can make fake blood with corn syrup and food coloring! I can make spooky decorations to hang in the front yard! I can carve a really cool jack-o-lantern! I know they won't look like the pictures in the magazine, I know I can't do the really artistic stuff, I know some of this stuff is too expensive, but I also know that I, a fat, unshaven, beer-drinkin', butt-scratchin' pizza-and-lard-eatin' ex-headbanger, can do all these cool things! Ridicule Martha Stewart?! Why the hell would I do that?! Martha Stewart ROCKS!
Ooo, dried flower arrangements! And tulle! Sign me up for that!
Addendum: Ichiro2k3 says: Her website (http://www.marthastewart.com) also has some of the finest written instructions for knitting and crochet I've seen, if you're into that sorta thing.