In case you haven’t seen it on newsstands yet, The Martha has released her annual publication of Christmas ideas.
And, as I griped a couple months ago, I once again cannot find any mention of said magazine on The Martha’s website, including helpful photos. So here’s the crappy photo of it that I took yesterday:

On the day I bought this magazine, I brought it home and then settled down for some serious, time-consuming research. I was planning to have a lot to say to y’all about what The Martha thinks we should be doing to prepare for the holidays this year. I even had a pen at the ready in case I needed to take notes. I turned page after page containing The Martha’s holiday suggestions. I read carefully. And then suddenly I was at the end of the magazine and I hadn’t taken any notes. None.
Why?
Because this year’s magazine was boring. Nothing stood out as either being worthy of actually baking/crafting/hot gluing and virtually nothing was worthy of my snark. It was almost as if The Martha took a safe middle ground.
I thought that perhaps I was simply not in the right frame of mind to truly discuss The Martha, so I waited a few days.
I went through the magazine again and was utterly bored.
*yawn*
I tried, people, I really tried. But I could find nothing of interest.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. There are a few tidbits I have to share:
- There’s an article in which The Martha shares photos of all the different fake trees in her house. I’m not kidding. There’s a vintage aluminum tree and a vintage feather tree and a sort-of vintage fake tree. Yes, it’s true. The Martha has fake trees (or so she says; I’m not 100% convinced) in various rooms of her house. Frankly, I was expecting her to talk about having an organic Christmas tree farm on her property and how she waters the trees with baby unicorn tears. I was not expecting her to show us some trees that look like they came from Walmart.
- For some reason, The Martha is big on odd color combinations this year — red and Tiffany blue, peach and Tiffany blue, silver and an institutional medium green from the 80’s. Yuck. I’m not saying that everyone should go with the traditional red and green, but The Martha should at least choose colors that don’t either make my eyes hurt or depress me.
- The entire magazine is an unbelievable ad rag. Figuring out what was actual content and what was an advertisement was a constant impediment and didn’t encourage me to want to keep going.
But maybe it’s me. Perhaps — even though all my shopping is done, my gifts are wrapped, and I’m chomping at the bit to start wrapping colored lights on my front porch — I’m just not in the proper holiday spirit quite yet.
Nah. I think it’s just that The Martha toned things back a bit this year.
*yawn*