My friend Gregory just tagged me in one of those chain letter-type posts where if you don’t answer 11 questions about yourself and forward it along to 11 more people someone close to you will be severely maimed in a freak photography accident. Oh, wait, it’s not one of those? Okay, well, I’m still going to answer the questions. Better to start the year off on the right foot.

RULES:

• You must post these rules.
• Each person must post 11 things about themselves on their blog.
• Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
• You have to choose 11 people to tag and link them on the post.
• Go to their page and tell them you have linked him or her.
• No tag backs.
• No stuff in the tagging section about ‘you are tagged if you are reading this.’ You legitimately have to tag 11 people.

Seems easy enough. Here are the answers to the questions that Gregory asked me. I just took some NyQuil so this should be extra good.

1.  What is your favorite piece of artwork and why? highly prized by Sister Mary Corita, a serigraph we have hanging in our living room. I wrote an essay about why I love it for the book I Heart Design: Remarkable Graphic Design Selected by Designers, Illustrators, and Critics.

2.  Can you remember the name of your first crush? Scott Fudemberg, kindergarten, Mason Ridge Elementary. Funnily enough, his wedding was featured in a “Vows” column in the New York Times a few years ago. Oh great, now he’s going to think I’m stalking him. My mom sent it to me, Scott! Tell your wife not to worry!

3.  Given the opportunity for super powers, would you like the ability to fly or be invisible? Fly. I can already make myself invisible when I want to be.

4. Where is your dream destination for 2012? Standing on the top of a mountain in Crested Butte, Colorado, getting married to my fiancé Keith Scharwath. And after that, embarking upon a tour di gelati in Italy.

5.  If you could make people see the truth about one thing, what would that truth be? Driving sucks. Riding the bus is fun. Walking is like taking a brief, beautiful vacation in the middle of your day. Okay, that’s three things. But it’s essentially the same truth.

6.  When cleaning, are you someone who cleans and organizes the big things first, or focuses on the details? If it was up to me, I’d focus exclusively on the organizing and someone else could handle the cleaning. Wait, maybe it is up to me.

7.  How many icons are on your desktop at this moment? Counting my toolbar? 29 icons and 10 folders.

8.  Let’s pretend you’re in the witness protection program. You’ve been asked to give yourself a new name. What’s your new identity? Walker Texas Ranger. (They would never suspect I’d use part of my name in the new name, right?)

9.  Shoes on or off inside your home? On. Shoes are a big part of my life.

10.  What’s the longest you’ve gone without saying a word, talking to anyone? That’s a tough one. I guess when I lived by myself and was on deadline that I might have gone a full 24 hours without talking to anyone. But I probably had 15 iChat windows open and sent a dozen text messages during the same period.

11.  What’s your favourite object in your home right now? And please share a photo of it. I love my home and there are too many favorite things in it to list. But each morning I wake up to the view of my closet, which makes me happy every single day. I guess if you aren’t having fun getting dressed then what’s the point really of getting out of bed in the morning. This is a photo of it taken by Justin Sullivan for an awesome interview with me over at LA, I’m Yours.

My 11 questions for 11 people are as follows:

1. What’s the strangest or most surprising thing on your desk right now? (You can take a photo if you want, unless it’s too embarrassing.)
2. What is your earliest memory?
3. How did you come to live in the city where you currently live?
4. What was the last meal you cooked for yourself?
5. Where do you fantasize about visiting?
6. When was the last time you drank too much?
7. Do you feel as if the way you currently earn money is your true calling?
8. What song do you sing to yourself when you need to psych yourself up?
9. How do you manage your to-do list(s)?
10. What new skill would you most like to learn in 2012?
11. What is the view out the nearest window? Take a photo, please.

And I’m tagging these 11 people: Steve Portigal, Marissa Gluck, Colleen Wainwright, Sonja Rasula, Jessi Arrington, Beth Walker, Jen Walker, Mike Nugent, Souris Hong-Poretta, Chris Pouy and Nathan Davidson (and if you don’t have a blog, yes you can answer on your Facebook page using “Notes” function that can be found on your page).

Happy 2012.

For the last few years I’ve been making dough ornaments to decorate our tree and give out as gifts. (Last year, you may remember, I used a new Williams-Sonoma cookie cutter set to make a Star Wars themed-tree.) The recipe is easy, 1/2 cup salt for every cup of flour, then you add water slowly until it reaches the correct Play-Doh-like consistency. Roll out, cut out, and bake at 250°F for about an hour and a half to two hours. Don’t forget to put a hole in the top before you bake them.

When I started to paint the ornaments this year I realized that the shape looked eerily similar to a new piece of art we’d just hung up in our living room. So with apologies to Alexander Girard (whose beautiful new monograph is actually under our tree), I began painting and decorating the ornaments like his folk art suns, using sequins to add facial features.

If you need a last-minute gift (or a time-consuming activity to keep at-home kids entertained, or something for the elders to do until the cocktails kick in), these are the perfect pre-Christmas project. They only take a few hours to make, and have an adorably charming yet completely professional look to them. And they require no e-commerce transactions, no credit card numbers, and zero negotiations in a mall parking lot.

Now off to bake dozens of “real” cookies. Merry Christmas!

Christmas: The one (and only) time of year when it’s socially acceptable to wear the eye-searing combination of red and green together. Man, I love the holidays.

More festive outfits.

More hints of holidays.

If I had a manifesto, I think it would look something like this. Tips for life and living by the great Jonathan Adler, the designer of one of my favorite possessions. This manifesto was called out in this delightful article by Bennett Stein over at the DnA blog.

Now off to find something red and brown to wear tomorrow…

The one drawback of being involved with 826 LA is that we adults have to sit there and watch, day in and day out, all the exciting things that kids get to do when they arrive at the tutoring center-slash-writing lab-slash-time travel convenience store. And eventually we get damn jealous. Do we get to write a travel guide to the Expo Line stops? Do we get to write letters to the president? Do we get to write stories about the hero’s journey? No. No. And no.

Well, adults, now’s our chance.

On Friday, December 2, 826 LA is staying open late to host an adults-only version of its Storytelling and Bookmaking field trip, by far one of 826′s most popular events. For once, we’ll get to have as much fun as the kids as we create and execute our very own storybook, which we’ll have bound and “published” by the Barnacles, the crusty book editors who run 826′s in-house publishing efforts (I’m serious). Plus, we’ll get one thing the kids aren’t allowed to have: wine.

If you’ve ever been curious about what happens at 826 LA, or if you enjoy drinking while writing (really, what writer doesn’t?), then don’t miss this very special event, and a chance to meet some of the folks who make 826 the magical place that it is.

Update: Thanks to your support, this event is full! Follow @826LA to find out about the next one!

It was maybe one of our best Halloweens of all time. If you don’t know the movie—which turned 10(!) this year—get thee to Netflix.

More scary photos.

Why do we love going to wine country so much?

Is it because it’s the one place where it’s totally socially acceptable to down three flutes of bubbles before noon?

Because you’re wandering fields of wildflowers?

Or surveying infinite rows of grapevines?

Is it because you’re usually with your very best friends?

Ducking into quaint farmhouses.

Sipping from expensive stemware.

And learning a bit of what could only qualify as magic?

Or is it simply because a little wine makes you feel like a kid again?

Whatever it is, that’s my toast to wine country.

More photos from our Napa adventure.

You’d be correct if you think LA feels a bit different today (and not just because of the rare torrential downpour). The massive art-stravaganza known as Pacific Standard Time has begun its reign over LA’s cultural consciousness. Over 60 exhibitions. More than 100 gallery shows. Enough white wine to submerge the Los Angeles basin. All of it taking place for the next six months across that ambiguous locale you might call The Southland, stretching from Santa Barbara to San Diego; Pacific Palisades to Palm Springs.

I made it to the media previews at the Getty before my latest travel stint and was blown away by how proud the whole thing made me to live here. I hope people will to use these next six months to get out and experience their city in a completely different way. I want to know what kind of prizes they’re awarding to the first person to hit all 60 museums. I know I’m going to try my darndest to get to every single one of the shows. Without driving to any of them, of course.

I’ve already written a few pieces to help people make sense of the madness. For a story in last month’s Details I picked five must-see shows, and with the help of Getty curator Andrew Perchuk, created a timeline highlighting LA’s biggest art moments from 1920 to the present. Over at ForYourArt, I’ll be creating guides to each of the “focus weekends,” when PST will be highlighting specific geographic areas. You can check out my first guide to last week’s preview weekend, and stay updated on future pieces by following them at @ForYourArt.

If you can’t get out to a museum today, there’s still plenty to soak up at home. I especially like these PST-produced videos that feature actors paired with artists, talking about Los Angeles.

Here’s Anthony Kiedis and Ed Ruscha driving down the Sunset Strip, talking about type. It’s fascinating to hear from two men whose legacies are intertwined with this stretch of road: Ruscha, of course, documenting it in daylight from a moving car; Kiedis rising to fame in the darkness of its night clubs.

This week, I was absolutely delighted to find another film in the series. Here, Jason Schwartzman is in conversation with John Baldessari, who appears to him as a giant bearded Zeus-like face projected on the side of LACMA. I don’t know about you, but this is exactly how I envision it would be like to actually meet Baldessari.

And while we’re talking videos, it’s worth watching the PST introduction on the homepage that will give you a brief primer on exactly why this exhibition is so groundbreaking. It’s sure to get you excited about the citywide art circus that’s springing up all around you—and it will hopefully spark that same sense of LA pride.

I have typed so many words about this today that my fingernails are about to fall off, but, really, who needs fingernails when you have such great news to share! I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that GOOD Design, the program that I co-founded with Casey Caplowe (and wrote about for the first time on this very blog!) is relaunching with CEOs for Cities as GOOD Ideas for Cities, thanks to a very generous grant from ArtPlace, a fantastic new collaboration between the National Endowment for the Arts and 11 arts and urban development foundations.

GOOD Design has been my non-gelato baby for the last three years, and for me personally, it has taken many forms. It’s an incredible event series that’s engaged and inspired audiences in four cities, a generous group of designers who have donated their time in the name of improving their communities, an intelligent circle of government and civic leaders who have guided some of the solutions towards reality, and a growing family of ideas that are so smart, so clever and so totally do-able that they need to be shared with a larger audience. This grant is going to help make that possible.

I’ve written lots more about GOOD Ideas for Cities over at GOOD and you can also read about ArtPlace’s mission in The New York Times. I could not be more excited to associate myself with the list of 34 incredible ArtPlace-funded projects across the country, including the fact that the other LA grantees are our good friends at the Watts House Project. But the absolute best part about announcing this grant is the fact that you could get one, too: Yes, they’re already accepting applications for the next round of grants.

Since this now feels like an acceptance speechy moment, I’d love to give some huge public thank yous to everyone who helped get us here. To Casey, the best creative collaborator on the planet, for always being the one to say, “But what if we…” and then blowing me away with some wacky idea that we just had to try. To Carol Coletta, the executive director of ArtPlace, who not only encouraged us to apply, she was very poetically the first person to realize the potential of this program while she was director of CEOs for Cities. And to Julia Klaiber, our enthusiastic partner at CEOs for Cities, who was so excited about the idea she said yes to the partnership before I could even finish the sentence.

Finally, to all the designers, city leaders, teachers, students and sponsors who have been a part of all the events throughout the years, I cannot wait to get you even more recognition and exposure for your work. Believe me, you will all be a part of this next chapter. And should you want to see that next chapter in action, please come to our upcoming events in New York City on September 19, and in San Francisco on September 29. I hope to see you there!