If I were to start my own lifestyle brand show, it would look like this.

If I were to start my own lifestyle brand, a weird concept if I’ve ever heard one, but successfully carried out by Martha Stewart and restarted by Martha Stewart after James Comey sent her to prison for what are routine activities for much of Congress, and somewhat less successful in terms of originality and depth of content by countless influencers who have made IKEA their look book either as wellness babe, beige everything, or prairie homesteader, it would look something like this.

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SETTING: 1990s house and kitchen with a Formica countertop, upon which the previous owners, who must have been Philistines, did not use a cutting board and therefore cut up with deep gouges and punctures with what doesn’t always look like kitchen tool marks.

OPENING DIALOGUE: Hello, and welcome to my home! I’ve instructed the cameramen to avoid showing the floors for various reasons. Today we’re going to talk about garden herbs, pizza, and wreaths, three highly useful topics every homemaker or person who is super busy, overwhelmed with the cost of living, and eager to learn useful tips to help in both areas.

[SOFT AND GENTLE MUSIC, WITH THE LIGHT SOUND OF A CAT PUKING IN THE BACKGROUND COINCIDING NICELY WITH THE MINOR FALL BEFORE THE MAJOR LIFT, PANNING ACROSS A WREATH ON THE FRONT DOOR BUT KEEPING THE CAMERA HIGH TO AVOID SHOWING DAMAGED BOTTOM OF SCREEN DOOR.]

SEGMENT ONE, WREATHS: Several years ago, I put a plastic hook on my front door, and since the sun has baked it on in such a way that I can’t remove it, despite its claims at removability, I’ve turned that lemon into the lemonade of seasonal wreaths! Today, we’re going to look at two kinds of wreaths: temporary wreaths for single events, and those more suitable for regular seasonal changes or holidays, or until you realize six months have gone by and it’s Halloween and you are still displaying your Easter wreath.

Let’s start with temporary wreaths meant for individual event decor.

While cleaning branches from the backyard to plant a lilac hedgerow, I discovered, amidst cursing the mosquitoes, that several of the leafy branches would make a stunning wreath. I also wanted to sit down and stop working.

So I made a wreath, as you can see here.

Now this may look a bit haphazard, but trust me, it was.

Nevertheless, after working the flexible branches into a circle shape, I hung this thing on the door. I tied a bit of wilted summer savory herb at the top because I was also working with herbs and summer savory, which grows a bit like a drunkard stumbling around my kitchen herb garden by growing in every direction but smells pretty good.

Except for the wilted summer savory at the top, this wreath, with bits of sweet marjoram tucked in at the bottom, doesn’t look too bad on the door. It stayed this way for about an hour or so, which, as an introvert, I consider the most amount of time a group of humans should ever gather together before getting the heck home and out of my house. By the next day, however, this wreath was in the compost.

It’s August, folks. Very hot. We are all wilting.

It’s important to remember the age-old rule of thumb: alive things wilt and dry in the direction gravity pulls them. This applies to both humans and plants, but is generally seen on a faster timeline with plants.

As noted, this project is ideal for events, particularly short-lived ones, and costs you very little if you have the trees to harvest the branches. If you do not, it could cost you in fines or a misdemeanor, depending on where you cut branches from.

Moving on to the more permanent wreath version, we start with flowers that had been in a bouquet that I had dried upside down above the sink, and a blank wreath I purchased years ago at the craft store, which I use to tuck various decor into its branches.

Gather your dry ingredients. If you’re doing this indoors, verify you have a vacuum handy because boy will you need it later. Then, using the T-LAR method, tuck the flowers and plant material into the wreath.

T-LAR, for those not yet aware, is a complicated system of measuring just about anything using the exacting science of “that looks about right.”

I’m always on the lookout for feathers I find on the ground, despite the USDA’s warnings about bird flu, and will tuck them into the wreaths I make. Some people are afraid of birds, so that helps lighten your visitor numbers nicely and keeps things manageable.

It is worth noting that if you put this wreath on your front door and also have a screen door with glass windows to cover the screen, the wreath might distract the HVAC guy when he comes to fix something else and you get into casual conversation and he notes that some people, can you believe it, don’t vent their front screen doors and it gets so hot it warps and cracks the metal door and you hope to God he doesn’t notice that is exactly what you did and then wonder, if it can get that hot to warp a door, will it also start the dried flowers on fire?

[CUT TO COMMERCIALS, STARTING WITH THE DEBT CONSOLIDATION COMMERCIAL AND THEN THE BUYING GOLD COMMERCIAL.]

SEGMENT TWO, PIZZA: Welcome back! All that talk about summer savory made me crave pizza, and who doesn’t like homemade pizza! I’ve dumped some flour, last year’s dried Italian herbs, some oil, some warm water, and some yeast in a bowl. Again, the T-LAR method is going to be your recipe here. T-LAR has been my guiding light in the kitchen, and next to the smoke alarm, I couldn’t cook without it!

Mix the ingredients and knead with your hands. Let it rise in a greased bowl, covered with a wet dish towel, for an hour or so, or until you next remember you were doing something in the kitchen and run in from the backyard to keep the dough from spilling all over the counter.

Give it a good punch down, and repeat.

Form the dough into a flat circle. You can throw it in the air and have some fun but you’ll want clean floors first if you plan on doing that.

I preheated a round pizza stone in the oven, and after brushing oil on both sides of the dough, baked it for about five minutes because that looked about right.

At this point, you can have a lot of fun and find out a little secret I’ve discovered when it comes to homemade pizza: any leftover or weird thing you need to get used up in your fridge can be “gourmet pizza” and no one knows. Yes! Even the sketchy bits!

To accommodate tastes, I like to do a half-half pizza. In this case, I used my homemade pesto on one side and canned marinara/tomato/red stuff on the other side.

From there, I added a variety of unmentionables with expiration dates that are suggestions if we’re honest, baked it, and voila! Delicioso!

Everyone likes pizza, and no one recognizes those tricky leftovers if you cover them with cheese, I guarantee it!

[CUT TO COMMERCIAL. RUN SOMETHING ABOUT BEEF TALLOW AND THEN BUYING GOLD.]

SEGMENT THREE, HERBS: Here we are, at our final segment! I hope you’re having as much fun as I am. We will now move outside to my kitchen herb garden, which was poorly planned and means I, at 5’3”, am now unable to reach the back row because I planted tall stuff up front! Let’s take a look.

Growing herbs is easy enough; I’m a big fan of neglect gardening, in which you shoot water in the general direction and call it good. I do plan one thing, however, and that is that I never plant comfrey or borage in the ground as they enjoy pillaging, conquering, and crossing the Rubicon early in the planting season.

I dry the borage flowers for medicinal uses and the kitchen herbs for tasty uses.

That’s about all I got. I hope all of this was helpful. I’d say more but let’s be honest, even I’m tired of this perfect lifestyle brand BS.

[ROLL CREDITS AND APOLOGIES FOR GENERAL LACK OF INFORMATION THAT CAN BE USED AT HOME IN REAL PEOPLE’S LIVES WHO HAVE REAL SCHEDULES AND BUDGETS AND HOAs THAT DON’T ALLOW THEM TO HOMESTEAD IN THE CITY.]

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When Martha Stewart does her show, we understand it's a heavily produced show. When she bakes cookies and says you save the end of the batch for "lesser snacking" we know we don't live in a realm where tougher rolled-out cookies are going to make a bit of difference for us and ours.

When a random influencer publishes content about their "regular daily life," we don't remember it's heavily produced, too, in its own way.

We know there's a fakeness with influencers. We're not seeing the screaming matches between spouses or kids. We're not seeing how awful the food tastes and that her recipe is bogus but makes a pretty photo. We aren't seeing profit and loss statements.

What frustrates me about lifestyle brands and even some how-to art videos is the perfection level present in their creation and production, both in what's shown and what's created, which somehow leads viewers to disassociate from the content beyond just being a viewer. That is, it's hard to relate to perfection, so we see our role as someone viewing content, not someone learning how to do what we could realistically do. When I make art, it often gets ugly. I don't see that on Instagram. I see hunky guys and waif-like gals doing performance art with perfect paintings in sped-up jump-cut videos instead of the reality of fighting with a canvas to tears.

I don't have a prairie dress, a soft photo filter to view my life through, a tender kitchen with the right appliances and counters. I just have normal stuff to work with, and ideas.

You can have a normal kitchen, mismatched utensils, an old sink, a chaotic herb garden (if you have one at all!), and even a pizza made of leftovers that aren't organic, allergen sensitive, or any current food trend, and still be fine. You don't have to have chickens or bees or gardens to make good food; you can do it with what you get at the store and your human existence still counts. Your home decorations don't have to come from Pinterest, and you can come up with stuff on your own without step-by-step instructions telling you how to do something correctly. You'll know when you're done if it's correct or not, believe me. Best way to learn.

Life is tough enough, without having to live it with a particular branded style.

No one's lifestyle is a true brand, because no one really lives that way off-camera. It has always been my goal with the content I create to be honest and present real life as it is. And I swear, fridge-leftovers pizza is pretty good.