I have not made a hula hoop related post since November! What is that about?! I swear I still hoop all the time, I usually just don’t bother to post videos or pictures unless they’re taken somewhere pretty. Such as my very favorite beach spot! It has not been warm here lately. It’s been like 50-60 something (yes, to us spoiled Southern Californians that is SO cold!), so when suddenly it was 80 something this weekend, I knew a hoop at the beach day was in order!

I don’t really do doubles very often, but I’ve been trying to learn more moves with them. It is really not easy to have two of them on your body at once. Too much to think about! I don’t really know how people do it but I’m gonna figure it out!

Oh, and I think this is the first time I’ve shown both of my LED hoops here! I haven’t had them long. They’re great though! If you’re interested in buying one, they’re the Starfish & Fire Strobe styles from CitivaCreationz on Etsy. I love her hoops and recommend them to everyone! If you use my name “julieking” as the coupon code, you can get 10% off! :)

I found the most perfect spot to have day time hoop practice, right on the ocean! It’s so beautiful and peaceful! I’ve been all about fire hooping for the past few months so my regular hooping has kinda suffered. It was so nice to have a day to get back to regular hooping, learning new tricks, practicing flow, and enjoying the view!

That’s my new(ish) LED hoop on the left! I need to post more pictures of it soon because I love it!! :D

I realized it’s been a year since I made a non-fire video so here are two! These get a little repetitive, but I hope you’ll like em anyway! I feel like I left out sooo many tricks because I’ve gotten used to doing only fire friendly stuff (there’s a lot of tricks that you can’t do with fire). I’m excited for more regular hooping practice and getting my tricks back!

Life lately has been filled with beautiful beach days, bikes rides, sunsets, friends, listening to the Bouncing Souls, and sipping yummy drinks at waterfront bars. I tried a Caipirinha for the first time and had my first ever Philly cheesesteak (how have I gone 29 years never having one?!). We’ve been having a terrible heatwave for what seemed like the entire month of August that really made me want to do anything but be out in the sun! But days like these make it so worth it!

You can follow me on Instagram if you want, @oolie. :)

As far as crafty stuff goes, I’ve been working on some jar projects that I can’t wait to show you! I finally made a set of faux Moroccan lanterns. I also made something for Halloween! Oh! And I sewed a new dress! I don’t want to talk too much about these things because I’ll be posting them soon. Right now, I’m very focused on finishing the star bag pattern. I’m really sorry that it’s taking so long. It’s important to me though, to make sure it’s as awesome as it can be. I don’t want to rush it and have it be anything less than awesome. I hope you understand!

My cousin’s month long visit has ended, she flew home on Wednesday. But I’m still catching up on posting pictures of all the fun things we did while she was here!

On this day, we went to Venice Beach. Venice is like no place else. SO full of personality! It’s one of those places that I will always insist that anyone visiting California needs to visit! The boardwalk is lined with shops and booths, people selling all sorts of things. Sometimes handmade, sometimes cheap crap. There are artists of all sorts, crafters, street performers, weirdos, and homeless people. It also happens to be the ideal place to go for heart shaped sunglasses (or beer or boob shaped – whatever you’re into!), with at least a dozen different places selling them.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to capture the awesomeness of Venice on camera, unless you have a stack of dollar bills to hand out as you walk along. Just about every shop and booth has a sign up saying, “no free photos”.  So please forgive me for all of these weird angle / far away photos. I had to be sneaky!

Sunnies galore!

Hula hoops!

Crochet goodies!

The prettiest part of Venice is the canals. Picture several blocks of big, fancy, expensive houses with canals outside rather than streets. Most have their own little dock and a small boat of some sort.

My mom and cousin.

Best fence ever?! :)

There were also leopards, unicorns, and other mythical creatures in this yard.

I hope you like squirrels! Because I do! And I took a ton of squirrel photos! ;)

As I mentioned in my last tide pooling post, I really wanted to take my cousin to the squirrel spot before she left. There were so many squirrels! We fed them peanuts and I got crazy excited and nearly died of cute overload.

I tried to capture a picture that showed how many there were around us but this is the most I was able to get in one photo. There were so many more!

When we ran out of peanuts, several of them insisted on checking to make sure the bag was really empty! So cute!

In case you’re wondering what squirrels have to do with tide pools, there’s a park atop the cliff above the tide pools and it’s totally infested with squirrels. This particular spot has never been very impressive compared to my other tide pooling spot, so every visit here is usually more about squirrels. Which is totally fine by me! :P

The view from above (click the panorama to see it bigger). I remembered to take a panorama this time! woo! It was a total June gloom kinda day!

Can you see the face?! I didn’t notice it until I got home and saw the picture!