Marianne Sunshine

I was hanging out yesterday with Marianne. This girl is a total sunshine, now look at her:

Recently we had a hoop jam in Helsinki for the World Hoop Day and recorded a video of us all doing "the official" WHD choreography. You can check it out here. I think it was Marianne's idea to bring the beautiful yellow leaves to our hooping spot. I don't know who took the above photo but the following ones from the park were taken by Noora or some other hooper there, I forget. Credit where the credit is due :)

And here's the whole crew:

This is how it's done yeah!

I made her a new hoop and she gave me these pink and colorful dreads that she made herself. Aren't they cute?!?

Ok everybody, have a great weekend! I have some exciting plans for tonight, will tell you guys later what happened :)

PS. Marianne has a blog at www.mariannesisko.blogspot.com, but it's in Finnish so you non-fairy-Finnish-speakers can check out the photos :D

How to Make Incense Really Quick

What you need:

• a  prairie
• a few yards/meters of thread
• sunshine

You don’t really need scissors, but if they happen to match your skirt, go for it. Now, collect branches of sage - sage grows all over any prairie pretty much.

Try to find the thicker ones with more leaves for your optimum incensical results. 

Divide them in small bunches and tie with thin thread, tightly. Make many layers on the bottom so the bunch won’t open up there.

Then go around the whole bunch with the thread, spiral up, and then down to the base. Make a few extra rounds there so that the thread won’t come loose. (Yep, my nails need some attention.)

Place the ready bunches in the sun. Generally they’ll be burnable after drying for a few days. If you’re in northern Europe, however, like I know many of you are :) then this process is more likely to take a couple of weeks - first you will have to wait for the sun to appear, and then you’ll have to pray to Surya (the sun god) to shine a little harder on them.

After my sage dries, I'll offer the first burn to Krishna on our little altar. Man I love sage!!!! I made 22 bunches today. By the way, the bushes behind me in these pics happen to be *ta-dah* sage! I ran into some fascinating wildlife while collecting the goods this morning, meet Mr & Mrs The Most Psychedelic Grasshopper You've Ever Seen.

The locals here in Salt Lake City think I'm nuts with my obsession, little do they know...how good it smells :) What's your favorite smell?