About

Deconstructing Martha is about whether two ordinary girls—decent cooks, relatively crafty, with fairly stylish homes—can tackle the monthly creations of the thoroughly un-average Martha Stewart.  We have full-time jobs, husbands, kids, homes, chores, and various obligations of daily life.  We’re exactly the women Martha Stewart Living targets each month, and we have a decade’s worth of magazines with dog-eared pages of never-attempted crafts, recipes, and other projects to prove it. A lot of these were projects we really wanted to try, but a lack of time and motivation just always seemed to get in the way of inspiration. We are about to rectify that.  We are going into this with the knowledge that some projects will be just too difficult.  We don’t have a workshop stocked with table saws and belt sanders and unfortunately we don’t have a crew to call upon to assist us with our every whim.  If a particular project or recipe doesn’t appeal to us, we’re not going to make those either – but we’ll offer an explanation.  Let’s face it, after decades of putting out a magazine, not every project is going to be a winner.  Also, we’re just too old to have to make and eat things we don’t like.  But, by and large we’re going to work our way through the latest issue of Martha Stewart’s Living Magazine and write about our progress.  It will be kind of a review of the various projects with honest descriptions of how they turned out, how long they took to make, and whether the final product was worth the time and effort.  Hopefully, we’ll not only revamp our dwindling social lives by sharing food and fun with friends, but we’ll also help interested followers save their time for those projects that are truly “good things.” Can two normal women work through the monthly crafts, recipes, patterns, and occasional chicken coop created by the domestic diva and her staff of hundreds?  Perhaps not, but we’re going to have fun trying.

Ali and Jacqui