If it hasn’t already been made quite obvious by my activities of the last week, Halloween is hands-down my favorite holiday. Maybe because it’s also one of the craftiest. Everyone will take a knife to a pumpkin, get all Project Runway-ed out on their costumes and decide it’s totally okay to hang orange plastic buckets in their trees.

Fully immersed now in this rich abundance of traditional imagery—it’s crazy, really, a holiday where everything from candy to cats to carnage is fair game—I realized I’ve really been missing out on a chance to make Halloween cards. Armed with scissors, office supplies, two shopping bags and a big bottle of Mod Podge, I set out to bring Halloween to life. Er, death. Here, a few favorites.

It’s amazing how a few scraps of paper can be so frightening.

An ode to the greatest candy known to mankind.

All my used tissues from being sick sure did make good ghosts! Oh come on, I’m kidding. Or AM I?

You’d be surprised how difficult it is to construct a convincing witch.

Next year I’m making all my jack-o-lanterns out of paper. The margin for error is much more acceptable.

With Halloween only a week away I decided it was my responsibility to share this ancient, yet authoritative guide to one of the holiday’s most important traditions.

That’s my sister Beth as the host, wearing what was likely a Forenza brand shirt purchased at The Limited, her bangs miraculously levitating high above her forehead. My cousin Matt and brother Luke are the trick-or-treaters, wearing various pieces from Luke’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle collection (we often campaigned, successfully, to wear our costumes year-round). And I have to applaud my cousin Josh for playing both a man and a woman, with improv skills obviously gleaned from watching plenty of Saturday Night Live during the early-90’s heyday. And of course, that’s me behind the Sony Handycam, absorbing it all for a side career in amateur video-making later in life.

Much ado has been made about Shepard Fairey and his Obama propaganda game-changer (check out this incredible site with all the parodies of his “Hope” poster, thanks to Spencer). But before there was Shepard—literally, before he was even born—there was Robbie Conal.

Robbie’s politically-blistering work has been Los Angeles’ urban wallpaper since the 1980s. I’ve always remembered reading this account by my friend David Mayes about going “guerrilla postering” with him in multiple cities, which David wrote back in 2003. Yes, they do get busted, but even the cops laugh at Robbie’s depiction of George Bush as the “father,” W. as the “son,” and Dick Cheney as the “holy ghost.”

Shepard and Robbie (and yes, they have done some late-night wheatpasting together) both talk on today’s show about designing for driving, distracted Los Angeles and how they’re single-handedly wrestling back public space that’s been invaded by advertising. This is especially salient in light of the battle over those new digital billboards. And I do mean light! If you can’t get enough Robbie you can check out a massive retrospective of his work up at Track 16 in Bergamot Station in Santa Monica.

Finally, it’s over to Pasadena and the Gamble House, which turns 100 this year. There are several exhibitions and events through the end of the year celebrating the Arts and Crafts masterpiece, which was designed by the brothers Greene & Greene. But when I went to visit it for the first time last year, I admit the architectural significance took a back seat to one of the most important house cameos of all time. The exteriors were used as Dr. Emmett Brown’s residence in Back to the Future and all I could think of was Christopher Lloyd sprinting through the lawn with the plans for the flux capacitor. Run for it Marty!

Check out the DnA calendar this month, freshly restocked with delicious items. If you know of any design or architecture events in Los Angeles, please send them my way. You can listen to DnA on KCRW live every 3rd Tuesday at 2:30pm PST, by podcasting through iTunes, or by streaming the audio at any time by clicking the little ‘Listen’ button underneath each show’s title on KCRW’s website. And don’t forget the DnA blog, with bonus interviews by host Frances Anderton.

It’s always a great experience when the people behind a company you admire are just as open, smart and enchanting as the products they sell. That’s how I felt when meeting the people behind Artecnica, who opened their first showroom here in LA on October 10. Founders Enrico Bressan and Tahmineh Javanbakht have wrangled the top designers in the world to collaborate on “design with conscience,” pairing them with artisans and manufacturers from third world countries. I went knowing that I’d get to speak with Tahmineh about their new space, but I was blessed with an “extra bonus,” as he might say, when I also got to interview the adorable Tord Boontje about his new product line, Witches’ Kitchen. It was a great party where I was thrilled to see all my favorite people who are engaged in similar do-gooder pursuits. Of course. On ID’s site, there’s a longer interview with Tahmineh, or you can see the video bigger and more beautiful here.

A lot of people have emailed me asking how I make these videos. I have a Flip Ultra I bought in January and I love, love, love it (although there are some newer models now you may want to try). There’s a QuickTime plug-in you have to install on Macs, but otherwise the Flip’s files work great in iMovie, where I do all my editing. The trick to making it look good online is in exporting the file properly for whatever site you’re uploading to, so make sure you hunt around for tutorials and experiment to find out the right settings for you. Now if I could only work on suppressing my own giggles while I’m shooting…

When Steven Heller comes a knockin’, you let him in, give him a beer, make sure he’s comfortable, pull out the best silver, whip up a five-course meal, toast him as the guest of honor, give him all money in your wallet and stick your first born child in his backpack when he leaves. And after that, when Steven Heller, author of eleventy-bajillion books about design, asks you to be in the eleventy-bajillion and first one, you drop everything else you’re doing and write an essay.

Design Disasters: Great Designers, Fabulous Failure, and Lessons Learned is the latest book edited by Steve and features the “flip side of success, bringing insight, solace, and energy to the act of failure.” I’m so honored that the moment he knew this book would be about failure, he immediately thought of me.

And he also thought of a bunch of other awesome peeps, who I’m thrilled to be in the company of: Henry Petroski • Alissa Walker • David Barringer • Allan Chochinov • Peter Blegvad • Ross MacDonald • Robert Grossman • Ina Saltz • Warren Lehrer • Rob Trostle • Ralph Caplan • Richard Saul Wurman • Marian Bantjes • Rick Meyerowitz • Amanda Bowers • David Jury • Veronique Vienne • Francis Levy • Colin Berry • Nick Curry • Debbie Millman

The book hasn’t hit shelves yet but you can pre-order it now and have it by Halloween, adding these design disasters to your repertoire of scary stories told with a flashlight held under your face.