Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Great pictures but impractical for "real" people
I subscribed to MSL for about 3 years but finally canceled my subscription. I loved the high-quality printing and beautiful pictures, but everything else just led me to believe that Martha is a snob. The decorating articles frequently feature rooms from one of Martha's many homes (not that that's bad in and of itself, but it would be nice to see a little more variety in styles), and the cooking and craft ideas she gives take way too much time and money to complete. For those of you with career, family, and little time to spare (like me), check out Real Simple instead. It doesn't make you feel inadequate just by reading a magazine.
Rating: - Well-presented, Unique, Helpful, Tasteful
Martha Stewart Living magazine--one of many of Martha's current projects--is a magazine that traverses all levels of domestic life, attempting to ameliorate household problems and enhance every day urban and suburban living. In its glossy pages, helpful ideas, recipes, tips, and steps for everything from upholstering furniture to planting those trees you never seem to have the time to plant, abound. Special features like "Ask Martha" cover ideas and topics the magazine would never have time to cover through its highly structured articles. While, many of these articles feature things we'd never attempt to complete, "The Guide" offers ways to procure the various elements and ingredients required to accomplish these creations and feats of ingenuity. "Special" themed issues, focus on everything from gardening to decorating, and are great reference sources when remodeling your house or planting a burgeoning bush of roses.Still, Martha Stewart Living is not without its faults. Copious amounts of advertisements abound, and easily annoy when trying to locate a certain article or feature. Martha's pretentious style and language, which seems to transcend her television show, subtracts and adds to the content of the articles, depending on the subject matter. But the greatest foible of this magazine is the fact that Martha has very little hand in the writing, composition, and photography of the articles. Perhaps her three television shows, commitment to her stock on the New York Stock Exchange, her other magazines (including "Baby," "Kids," and "Weddings"), books, and various K-mart "Everyday" lines take away a majority of Martha's time, but one would think that she'd attempt to include more self-penned articles than simply "A Letter from Martha" and "Remembering" features within the magazine, considering she slaps her name almost everywhere else in the magazine. To compound matters, Martha has over-saturated the market, causing less time to be spent on the magazine, and consequent quality irregularities and size differences (ranging from one hundred and fifty pages to three hundred pages per issue) within the magazine. Despite some glaring negative points of the magazine, one cannot help but indulge in a subscription and the brief peek into the life of the social elite and well-connected, even just for a few pages.
Rating: - What happened Martha?
I have been subscribing to Martha Stewart for ages. I love her TV show...and while I think she is a mildly obsessed person to take on all her tasks, I have learned many valuable tips from her magazines. I consider myself a pretty crafty person and I owe alot of great ideas to the Great One.
These past two years however, I have noticed a huge change in the quality of her magazine subscription. In the beginning, she devoted many pages to crafting and collecting, a few pages to great recipes and gardening...but now all I see anymore are expensive ads. Literally, her magazine has grown into a very hefty 40% ad content. I give her credit for choosing elegant and high style ads as sponsers, but as I flip through the pages ALL I notice now are designer, perfume, clothing, and bedding ads. I sometimes wonder if amidst all the new crafty and quickly blooming Martha-style versions of her own creation, if she needs more and more money from these sponsers to support the turn-out of her subscriptions. And yes, I have begun to leaf through some of these new "good things" take-offs. Many are great and do not have all the clutter of unwanted ads. I think, for myself, this might be my last year with Martha...it's time to try something new(and a lot less expensive). As a true fan though, I still highly recommend her fabulous TV show and her published books on cooking, gardening, and crafting. You will find no annoying fillers in her beautiful, harcover books.
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