Ever since last year when I went to the kite festival for the first time, I’ve been looking forward to it again this year as if it were a holiday or some other special occasion! This weekend, it was time to bust out the dragon kite again and bike to the beach for a day of flying kites and hula hooping with friends!

Amy & I  had to recreate this same picture that we did last year! :)

Practice makes perfect, we balance so much better than last year! haha!

I’ve been seriously loving me some Hipstamatic lately! I didn’t even bother to bring my real camera and it resulted in some of my favorite hooping pics ever!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!! Mine was nice. I spent the day with family. I got them drinking wine (my family never drinks so this made things a lot more exciting than our usual get togethers! hehehe!), and I think I played about 20 rounds of Mario Kart! My mom gave me some iPod speakers that I’m super excited about! Now I’ll always have music when I go to the park for hoop practice! :D

Here’s a few pictures that I forgot to post, from earlier in the month when we went to Christmas themed roller disco. We haven’t been to roller disco in a few months and I missed it!  It’s SO much fun! I can’t wait for the next one!

I also wanted to make a quick call for sponsors. If you’re interested in sponsoring Gleeful Things in January, please take a peek at my sponsorship info page to see rates and to read about the benefits of sponsoring. If you have any questions or are interested in sponsoring a giveaway, please email me: gleefulthings@gmail.com. My following kinda blew up this past month (nearly 1200 followers via Facebook now!!) so should you choose to sponsor, you’ll be reaching a lot more readers than ever before!

I hope to be back soon with a year in review type post! :)

So, I turned 29 this past week (yuck!)! I kinda hate admitting my age now (not that I didn’t already) but I guess I should celebrate my last year of being in my 20′s, right?! And celebrate, I did! I had three days of birthday celebrations! My friends made sure I had an amazing time and I heart them for it!

Celebration #1? A hoopy birthday party, of course! I didn’t really plan much since it was a Wednesday. I didn’t think anyone would wanna go out aside from our usual Wednesday night hoop practice. But I was surprised with cupcakes, champagne, and something from my wishlist that I totally didn’t think I’d actually get!!

I’m really curious why my teeth seem to be glowing in this pic!

After nomming some cute cupcakes, we had our little LED hoop jam!

And then we had to pose for more photos because that’s what we do! :P

And then they gave me my surprise! (which I had to read by hoop light). They pooled their money and gave me a gift card to buy a fire hoop!!! My friends are sooo awesome! I totally wasn’t expecting this! I feel so lucky!

I haven’t gotten mine yet but my friend brought her fire hoop for us to play with! I promise you’ll be seeing mine very soon though! I’m so excited to get it!!

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any good pictures of my other two birthday celebrations. For my second celebration, my friend surprised me with tickets to see New Found Glory. I ended up realizing that it was sort of a 10 year anniversary thing because we also saw them for my 19th birthday. It was a total coincidence! Weird, huh?! It was way more fun than I was expecting! For my third celebration, we went out to a gastropub that I totally love! We had yummy beers, fancy food, and even fancier cocktails! Strawberry tequila shots and a drink that I’m calling liquid apple pie. It tasted just like apple pie!

I hope everyone had a fun Halloween! I was really surprised (and bummed out) by how few people were out that night. I assume everyone celebrated over the weekend. I opted to wait until Halloween and kinda wish I hadn’t. Oh well! It was still a fun time!

I carved pumpkins with friends and then we were off on a bike ride, bar crawl! I hadn’t intended to wear a sweater, leggings, or boots. I was planning on wearing striped knee socks and these cute heels that look like saddle shoes. But damn, it was cold! And I wasn’t about to try riding my bike in heels!

Jill is a bat, she has wings tied to her arms. I wish we had gotten a picture of them. She made them out of a pair of jeans at the last minute. It was pretty clever! I’m already looking for a reason to wear my costume again! And I’d also like to make more yarn wigs! It was so fun to make and wear! Can I just be a full time rag doll?!

For me, Halloween would never feel complete without pumpkin carving! I see many pumpkin carving parties in my future! My pumpkin has a gash through the middle of it so I thought it needed to be normal on one side and screwed up on the other! :P

How was your Halloween? Did you dress up?

Friday night, I had the opportunity to hoop at an art show that took place in an abandoned hospital in LA. I love hooping and I love exploring abandoned places so believe me, I was super excited about this!!

We hooped in the courtyard, in front of the band and there were guests and people dancing, and a bar to the right of us.

My friends brought their LED hoops and were nice enough to share with me! I can’t wait to get one of my own!

I have some videos of us hooping but haven’t had a chance to edit and upload them yet so I’ll have to post them later.

We had a little bit of time to go exploring. We were allowed to go wherever we wanted in the hospital but only a small portion of the first floor had lights so the rest was creepy and exciting!

Since most of it was dark, I was walking around, taking pictures of every room I passed (with the flash), and then looking at my camera so I could see what was in there. I loved this hallway that was so dark that you couldn’t even see the end of it (until I took a pic)!

I found this room that was painted pink with little creatures, so we had to go in and pose in front of it! There have been dozens of movies, TV shows, and music videos filmed there so I assume that’s what this room was painted like that for.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the night! I love the light coming through the busted windows behind us!

I’m surprised that I was the brave one in our group. Whenever I watch Ghost Hunters, I always think I’d be super uncomfortable walking through a dark, creepy building like they do. But nope! I was so curious that I was the one trying to convince everyone that we needed to go just a little further down the dark hallway. And I was the one trying to pry open creepy elevators and wanting to find the morgue!

Did I mention we got all of the free wine we wanted?! Unfortunately, wine and hooping don’t mix so well. But exploring at the end of the night + wine = perfect! :D What a fun night! I’m really looking for an opportunity to go back to this place. There was SO much more of it left to explore!