{"id":3736,"date":"2015-02-12T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-12T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/?p=3736"},"modified":"2015-02-12T23:10:16","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T04:10:16","slug":"excuse-me-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/excuse-me-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Excuse me, have you seen 2014 around here anywhere?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So…um, this is awkward. I’ve been meaning to write an entry for awhile now and it looks like it’s been more than two months since I last did. Whoops. And here we are not only in 2015, but midway through the second<\/em> month of 2015. Yeah sorry about that.<\/p>\n

I did get around to making a fun infographic summing up my PhoenixFire Designs year-in-review over on TreeofLifePendants.com<\/a>, but…I apparently never got around to doing any kind of recap here, nor any sort of new year post either. So let’s see if I can do a quick drive-by of 2014 and an update of what’s going on now.<\/p>\n

January 2014<\/strong><\/a>
\nHrm, looks like nothing terribly memorable, with perhaps the exception of my now quasi-famous shot of Ginger:
\n

\"My<\/a>
My beautiful little fuzzbutt, Ginger.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Which wound up later in the year being voted as one of the sample images used by iPrintfromHome.com<\/a> calibration pack.<\/p>\n

February 2014<\/strong><\/a>
\nHad some problems with my car on Love’s birthday. It was the start of me eventually having my mechanic disconnect my overdrive gear since it was getting stuck engaged which left my car stalling out as a result.<\/p>\n

March 2014<\/strong>
\nI literally didn’t write a single entry that month apparently. The final weekend of the month I did my first ever stint as a guest vendor at the Bay Area Ren Fest<\/a> though.<\/p>\n

\"PhoenixFire<\/a>
PhoenixFire Designs booth premiering for the first time at the Bay Area Renaissance Festival March 31st, 2014.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

April 2014<\/strong><\/a>
\nLittle FL\u00d6\u00d6F cat, Ginger celebrated her first birthday on April 1st. Aw…my fluffy orange girl.<\/p>\n

I also got invited back to do the final weekend of the Bay Area Ren Fest again:
\n

\"Me!<\/a>
Me! (Miss M. Turner) of PhoenixFire Designs in front of my booth for the second week in a row on the final weekend of the Bay Area Renaissance Festival, April 2014<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

And, I continued to have problems with my car stalling out. (We still hadn’t figured out the source of the problem at this point.)
\n<\/p>\n

May 2014<\/strong><\/a>
\nWell, May is always my birthday month. So I turned 37 on May 16th 2014.<\/p>\n

\"m-may714\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I got my awesome EF-S 17-55 f\/2.8 IS USM lens<\/a> for my birthday. It’s a beast. L-glass quality (even according to Cannon) but without the official designation because they don’t ever officially label crop-body lenses with the “L” designation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

June 2014<\/strong><\/a>
\nGinger’s photo (shown earlier) was a finalist in June and would eventually win one of 8 spots in the iPrintfromHome.com<\/a> sample calibration kit I mentioned.<\/p>\n

I made my first ever tree incorporating genuine diamonds for a custom order<\/a>:
\n

\"Custom<\/a>
Custom Birthstone Tree of Life Pendant and Matching Bird Nest Pendant set in sterling silver and featuring freshwater pearl (birthstone for June), Aquamarine (birthstone for March) and natural rough diamond (birthstone for April.) Bird nest has the same three gemstones. By PhoenixFire Designs<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

July 2014<\/strong>
\nNo blog entries posted this month either.<\/p>\n

I received my custom cut, massive 16mm blue flash natural rainbow moonstones from my supplier:
\n<\/p>\n

Which allowed me to introduce the stunning, LARGE natural rainbow moonstone full moon tree of life pendant<\/a> people had long requested:
\n

\"Stunning<\/a>
Stunning large natural blue flash rainbow moonstone full moon tree of life pendants in your choice of eco-friendly reclaimed and recycled solid Argentium sterling silver or striking black wire. By PhoenixFire Designs and available on etsy.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

August 2014<\/strong><\/a>
\nAugust. Ugh, that was a month. August 1st, Love was in a major accident and our beloved Element was totaled. Love was ok – really battered, bruised and sore – but he walked away.<\/p>\n

\"Our<\/a>
Our beloved 2003 Honda Element in Galapagos Green was in an accident and totaled.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We had to search and search because we needed an SUV for me to carry stuff for my shows like my tent, tables, etc. And we eventually settled on a 2011 Nissan Rogue:
\n\"rogue1b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

September 2014<\/strong><\/a>
\nGinger’s winning photo was put on display in a gallery opening by iPrintfromHome.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Love’s PS3 gave up the ghost, leaving us with a couple dozen games and no console system. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

We celebrated our 16th anniversary by a wonderful dinner at Capital Grille.<\/p>\n

October 2014<\/strong><\/a>
\nGinger helped celebrate Halloween by being festive:
\n\"ginger-hat3a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I dressed up in my Steampunk costume and handed out candy at my Mom’s again this year:
\n<\/p>\n

And I premiered my glow in the dark full moon tree of life pendant<\/a>:
\n

\"Glow<\/a>
Glow in the dark tree of life pendant, wire wrapped pendant handmade by PhoenixFire Designs on etsy.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

\"glow-in-the-dark4b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

November 2014<\/strong>
\nNovember was SUPER busy so I didn’t write any blog entries.<\/p>\n

But we packed up the Rogue for the first time for a show and everything went in so easily:
\n<\/p>\n

PhoenixFire Designs<\/a> did Crafts & Drafts show November 15th:
\n<\/p>\n

PhoenixFire Designs<\/a> did Shopapalooza November 22nd:
\n<\/p>\n

Love and I celebrated Thanksgiving just the two of us (having missed his family’s event which took place the day of Crafts & Drafts!) and we made a turkey:
\n<\/p>\n

December 2014<\/strong><\/a>
\nPhoenixFire Designs<\/a> did the Westchase Holiday Market on December 7th:
\n<\/p>\n

And I had a whopping 117 orders in my etsy shop for the month of December!<\/a><\/p>\n

Including the one that made me reach 2,000 sales in my etsy shop!!
\n<\/p>\n

Ginger made best friends with the Christmas tree and spent all of December underneath it:
\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Love and I enjoyed some seasonal fun at the Magic Kingdom:
\n<\/p>\n

Love and I had a lovely Christmas:
\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And I made gluten free sugar cookie for my Mom who was diagnosed with Celiac Disease earlier in the year:
\n<\/p>\n

And the cats helped us celebrate a simple New Year’s Eve at home:
\n<\/p>\n

So there you go! A brief look at 2014. Maybe I’ll get around to writing an entry for 2015 at some point. But…not right now. Because now I need to feed the kitties then ourselves. But soon. Look, I brushed the dust off and wrote this, right? \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So…um, this is awkward. I’ve been meaning to write an entry for awhile now and it looks like it’s been more than two months since I last did. Whoops. And here we are not only in 2015, but midway through the second month of 2015. Yeah sorry about that. I did get around to making…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,20,18,24,1,25,11,218,6,14,15,34,7,21],"tags":[2042,2002,28,121,1795,1179,132,499,2332,983,2044,106,267,105,104,107,42,2043,112,131,339,502,118,117,1635],"class_list":["post-3736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-car","category-entertainment","category-family","category-general","category-holidays","category-kitties","category-love","category-birthday","category-phoenixfire-designs","category-photography-and-pics","category-recipes-food","category-health","category-wdw","tag-2042","tag-car-accident","tag-christmas","tag-gem-tree","tag-ginger","tag-gracie","tag-handmade","tag-honda-element","tag-love","tag-mika","tag-new-car","tag-phoenix-fire-designs","tag-phoenixfire-designs-2","tag-phoenixfiredesigns","tag-phoenixfiredesigns-com","tag-phoenixfiredesigns-etsy-com","tag-photos","tag-rogue","tag-tree-of-life","tag-tree-of-life-pendant","tag-walt-disney-world","tag-wdw-2","tag-wire-wrapped","tag-wire-wrapping","tag-year-in-review"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3736"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3744,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736\/revisions\/3744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/giveneyestosee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}