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.

style for the masses

This is a fine magazine with truly scrumptious recipes if you're into the kitchen/food thing, home ideas that one can actually use (or that will inspire one to do something similar), and exquisite photography, usually quite stark and simple, of ways to enhance the aesthetic beauty of one's life.
One can serve a plain meal of soup and bread, and make it look like a feast, if you get into Martha's way of looking at things, and it does not take a spending spree to have a "Martha Look". Her basic table settings tend to be white china (one can use mix and match white plates from the local thrift store), clear glass, and colorful fabric...add some well shaped twigs in a glass vase for a centerpiece, and voila ! you have a table that could be shown in this lovely magazine; a rule for "The Look" seems to be the absence of clutter.

Of the regular monthly articles, I like "Ask Martha", which solves problems posed by readers, from health issues to how best to clean your eyeglasses, to "How can I get the coating on my chicken to stay in place when I am frying it ?".
"Clip-Art Craft" is another I appreciate, where in the August '04 edition for example, there are attractive templates for postcards, which one can copy onto card stock, glue a 4 x 6 photo to, and send to your friends. It's another grand idea from Martha !
You'll find articles on antiques, pets, gardening, seasonal fruits and vegetables, and much more, and on the last page, the yummy "Cookie of the Month".

Martha Stewart has brought style and good merchandise at affordable prices for those of us who are budget conscious, but like nice things. I have bought her bedding, and her bathroom accessories have graceful shapes and are an excellent value, and this magazine is one of my favorite aspects of the "Martha industry". The Patricians I know are not usually kind to Martha, but Proles & Plebes like me tend to greatly appreciate her.
Martha, we're going to stick by you through thick and thin !

Subscription stopped - account "disappeared"

I love the Martha Stewart Living magazine. I did not receive my July 2004 issue and called customer service to find out why. I had sent them a check for $57 in Oct 2001 extending my subscription for 3 years; it should have expired in Feb 2005. Customer service told me they had no record that I ever had a subscription. I subscribed when I lived in London, when I lived in Rio de Janeiro, and when I lived in Sydney; I received all issues while outside the U.S. I don't keep cancelled checks for 3 years so cannot prove that I really do have a subscription that just "disappeared" from their data base. Not happy about this!!!