Sunday 17 April 2011

Poor old Martha Stewart

She must be exhausted . So far this month she's planted a forest, made all her own soap , appliqued a squillion eggs, hand carved her own herb labels and by page 120 she's held an Easter egg hunt for a bunch of kids dressed in linen suits. It's called a " casual Easter brunch ' , so casual in fact that all of the grown-ups have clearly been instructed to wear yellow whilst sipping champagne ( presumably from her own hand planted vineyard ) before helping the kids decorate their goose eggs at the craft table ( don't think little Johnny's felt penned mess is going to cut the mustard with Martha ) . I'm exhausted already and I haven't even ventured on to page 158 where she tackles cleaning her oven , which includes a step by step tutorial on how to unblock your fuel ports with a paper clip. And how come her duck egg blue apron is spotless ?
Just out of shot are the crew of 100 who doubtless actually do the unblocking for her.

It's easy to have a pop at Martha but it's such fun and that may account for why I shell out £3.90 for her monthly mag , it's the best laugh I've had since watching Michael Mackintyre judge Britain's Got Talent last night on telly.

Flipping through to end of the mag I found a section on how to look bloody marvellous too. Not content with laying your own eggs and crafting your own rugs, she's now telling us how we should dress. Strange though , everyone's upside down , maybe its for the Australian market ? No you have to turn it the other way round apparently and start from the other end to make it look like a whole new mag. What will those clever marketing chappies think of next ?

Incidentally my Easter egg hunts normally get rained off and involve an indoor version with a  handful of the lurid foil wrapped cream egg variety squished behind sofas and hard to find places which , unfound, turn up months later -  a real bonus when you're clean out of chocolate sometime in July and have a desperate urge to stuff your face with something from Cadburys.

I'm currently also reading , as if a glutton for punishment, a book about simplifying your life. I usually have at least one of these on the go on my Kindle at any one time. They're usually another source of guffaws. This one tells me I need to eliminate and simplify . So that's how you do it ? And here's me been cluttering and complicating my life for years with unnecessary burdens. So this morning I'm going to simplify my life by eliminating the ironing and I plan to go out for breakfast and let someone else do the washing up. Actually there are a few gems in the book which I plan to put to the test so if some of you don't hear from me in the next few months it may be because I've eliminated you from my email list. Apparently email and the internet is the scourge of 21st century living ( an element of truth) and we spend 30% of our lives attending to it . So , switching off now so that I don't get lured into the den of the internet iniquity known as the shopping cart. but not before I've checked out Martha's online clip art page which will show me how to print my own rhubarb compote labels.. trouble is I was supposed to plant the ruddy rhubarb plants last year and I clean forgot. Too busy scrubbing down my garden statue collection with baking soda no doubt ( p132 ) .

4 comments:

  1. Absolutely love this post! Brilliant. Aren't you please Martha isn't your best friend, imagine the pressure of trying to keep up!

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  2. Great post Claire, really made me laugh and made me thankful for decided to make a wise choice and eliminate housework from my life :)

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  3. I have chuckled my way through this - if you needed the aggravation I'd suggest you have a real talent for writing, and should do more of it. However, since you've decided to simplify maybe I should be advising you to give it up instead???

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  4. Your post is excellent reading....the antidote to all us lesser mortals than Ms Stewart!!

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