Silhouette Giveaway!

To all my crafting friends check out this give away that Tatertots and Jello is doing. I love this blog and want to share with all my friends!

They are giving away a Silhouette machine. It is similar to a cricut but only better! :) They are similar in price but you don't have to buy expensive cartridges. You hook it directly to your computer and can use any image you want or have. How awesome is that?? You can also make vinyl cutouts, etch glass, make your own iron transfers, and so much more! I am so excited and am hoping to own one of these myself!

Christmas season

Hey friends,

It's been one heck of a crazy fall for us so this year. I feel like as soon as I see a break coming something else quickly slides itself into that slot. I have definitely loved the business of this season but I am ready for a nice relaxing stay-cay with my family with nothing on our agenda but play with Maddie. :)

Thanksgiving is coming up quickly and I am so excited to go home for a few days and celebrate with our family. Holidays are always crazy with my mom's side of the family but I love every minute of it. That is one of the many qualities that I get from my mom. She LOVES to entertain not just entertain, I mean pull out all the stops every time she has people over. Sets the table with centerpiece and place settings (the whole nine yards), makes the whole dinner and dessert herself, cleans the entire house in case people want to get snoopy :) , etc. I am just like her in this regard. There is something in me that kicks my brain into becoming a "Martha Stewart" hostess. It will bother me something fierce if I don't make the dinner/dessert from scratch, have the whole table set up and have the whole cleaned.

Anyways, all the to say I can't wait for the craziness of Thanksgiving with my mom and families. It's exhausting but so worth it. Danny and I are looking forward to the Cockrell Thanksgiving this year too! It's been awhile since his family has been able to do something big so we are looking forward to that.

This is going to be a really random and all over the place kind of blog so bare with me.

Danny and I have gotten the opportunity take a trip to Ecuador with Compassion International. For those of you who don't know anything about CI here is a website about them. http://www.compassion.com/

They basically find families all over the world and provide food, shelter, education expenses with the help of people whom have more than enough income to sponsor a child every month. So we are very excited to go on this trip and see first hand just how CI runs and see how they interact with the families that are being sponsored and the families who are in need of being sponsored.

Now moving onto Christmas. This year thanks to our wonderful and sweet friends took our "family pictures". They turned out amazing. Thanks to those awesome pics we can now send out our on and off again Christmas Cards. They usually get ordered too late and sent out the week of Christmas or I plum forget but not this year.

This year I am ordering them early and having them sent out soon after Thanksgiving (fingers crossed) and thanks to my go to place Shutterfly I have already created a few cards that I like. There are soo many different cards to choose from so I must admit that I have spent a little more time than I should have playing around with our Christmas card. Here are couple of my favorites... here, here and here. I am so excited to get ours made and sent off to our friends and family. I highly recommend you check out shutterfly.com for your own Christmas cards if you haven't made them yet. You most certainly won't be disappointed I assure you that! Here are a few of my favorite products they sell.

· Christmas cards to http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-cards

baby shower invitations to http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/baby-shower-invitations

· photo cards to http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery

Potterybarn knock-of

It has been waay too long since I last blogged. It has been quite a year and pretty busy. We absolutely love Vegas and are so blessed to have such awesome friends here.

Anyways, I just wanted to share my newest project. I have been really getting into a "susie homemaker" kick and I'm loving it. :) I recently was flipping through a Pottery Barn Kids catalog and came across the cutest cupcake costume.

http://www.potterybarnkids.com/products/cupcake-costume/popup/more-views.html

I thought this would be the perfect costume for Maddie, until I read the price. $59.00. WHAT??? A costume made completely made of felt. What a rip off.

So I got to thinking that I could totally make this myself. So I borrowed my friend Karyss's sewing machine (she also has her own Etsy shop with lots of cute handmade bows and necklaces. Go check out her website.)

http://www.etsy.com/shop/LoveStitchedBoutique?ga_search_query=lovestitchedboutique&ga_search_type=seller_usernames

So like I was saying, I borrowed her sewing machine and headed over to Joann's fabrics and picked up approximately 7 or 8 yards felt for $13. Awesome. I had enough fabric left over that I was able to make a second costume for my niece.

$7 compared to $60. Not bad...not bad at all and I am pretty proud of myself. I hadn't used a sewing maching since 7 grade Home-Economics. Here is the finished product.




What do you think?

I also thought I would post of few pics of Maddie. :)

The BIG 1!!

Well it has definitely been too long since I have posted anything on our blog and a lot has happened.

* Most of you know that we made a journey to Las Vegas, NV almost 3 months ago where Danny now serves as one of the three "Regional Campus Pastors" at Central Christian Church. God definitely made it clear to us that this is where he wants us to serve for now and we couldn't be anymore happier. It was hard to leave our family and hard to come home and leave again around the holidays but God is doing some awesome things our here is Vegas and we are so excited to be a part of it. Everything that we prayed for in a church we got so we are very thankful that the Lord answers prayers!

* Secondly today is Maddie's 1st birthday!!!! I just cannot believe that it has already been a year. Time really has flown by and while it's sad to think of our little baby becoming a toddler, it has been the best year of our life. She brings us more joy than we could ever imagine. I just love every new stage. Every laugh, every cry, every hug, and every kiss!

We got to celebrate her first birthday party last Saturday after Thanksgiving. I am so thankful for all of our friends and family who love Maddie and were able to come and celebrate. We had a great time. She was a little fussy considering the time change and no morning nap but she did pretty good if you ask me. Of course we forgot our camera (the most important item to have) so I'll have to get pictures from my mom and post some.

We also got to see and hang out with Kingston and Theresa a bit. I wish it could have been longer but it was fun to see the two crazy walking babies play together. The last time the were together neither one was walking yet so it was fun to watch them. I think they mostly crawled up and down the stairs the whole time while Kingston "love patted" Maddie's head. They were too funny.

It is so fun to see Maddie's little personality come to life even more. She used to be so much like her daddy and very even keeled but things have changed and she is now like her momma! She is CRAZY and I don't mean like normal 1 yr old crazy, I mean she is a WILD WOMEN! She is sooo busy and into everything and if she doesn't get what she wants she already throws herself a little tantrum. If only I knew where she learned that from! ;) She loves to talk and hates to sit still. What a great combination!!! She would climb up our whole food pantry if I would let her. This girl can destroy our house in less than a minute but she is also the sweetest most lovable little girl I know. She loves giving and blowing kisses, waving to every person she sees, playing with her daddy and scaring him, and snuggling! Snuggling with her just makes everything so much better. I just know she is going to be a daddy's girl and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Maddie is up to 9 words now. She can say momma, daddy, papa, doggie, kitty, pretty, bye bye, baby and hi. Some people may argue but a mom knows what her child is saying. She is also officially on cows milk! YAY! We are still working on drinking out of sippy cups instead of bottles but this process may take a little while. She can also now eat just about everything we eat. Her favorites are peas, chicken nuggets, and any kind of pasta. She loves baby dolls and balls. She gets really excited when we go down the toy section in target and sees a baby. She'll start saying "ooooooh oooooh baby" and point.

Well hopefully I can get some pictures of Vegas and Maddie's first birthday up soon.

I know The Dyer's are much overdue for a new post so I apologize! We have been super busy this summer.

Lets see, in July my sister and sister-in-law both had their baby within four days of each other and Rachel Camp was right in the middle too! That was a pretty hectic few weeks for us all the while interviewing with a church in Las Vegas and getting a job offer from another church in St. Louis. With much prayer we felt that God was leading us to leave our home in Kansas City and move across the country to Fabulous Las Vegas. Now let me tell you that it took the work of the Lord to convince me that we should turn down a perfectly good job that is close to friends and family and accept a job in the dessert! There was no way I was going to move that far away from my family and friends to a place I knew nothing about! God has been so good and faithful to us in this new season of our life. As many of you know Danny did accept the job at awonderful church in Henderson, NV just 15 minutes east of the Las Vegas Strip. We couldn't be more thrilled to be apart of such a Grace filled church. God answered my prayer and we couldn't be more happy. Everything has just worked out perfectly and we know without a doubt this is the right decision.

So for the two weeks we have been up early and working late into the night. Word of advice, don't buy a fixer upper if you can't afford to pay someone to do some of the work :) (unless you are the Camp's and can do anything)! We have worked so hard and all of our work has clearly payed off. Our Realtors were pretty impressed with the amount of work we got done in such a short time but we can't take all the credit. Our family has been such a wonderful help! They have worked so hard helping us get our house together. We could not have done any of it without them! Thanks guys for all your work.

Now with a finished, clean and clutter free house we are kind of enjoying it! Isn't that how it always goes...lol! We have been working on our house for 4 years and now it's finally done just in time to sell. Oh well, I'm happy to let someone else love and enjoy this house. I really am going to miss this house. This was the first house me and Danny lived in together and it was Maddie's first house too! So it's a bittersweet feeling but most sweet! ;)

It is pretty nerve racking to have your house on the market! The house we made our home will be critiqued by other people. What if they don't like the house? What if they don't like our style? What if no one buys it? There are just so many things that go through your mind. I'm just ready to be done with it but I'm trying to savor as many last memories as I can.

Goodbyes are hard and it seems like we have been doing a lot of that lately and will be doing more in a couple weeks! We had to say goodbye to our dog Lulu (and we still miss her a lot), said bye to a lot of childhood stuff that we had no need for, my first car, and soon to our friends and family! I'm not looking forward to doing the last one! I hate saying bye because I hate crying in front of people. It doesn't to be an emotional person that cries at just about anything.

Even though we are very sad to leave our friends and family we are so excited to venture as a family and do life together with great people at Central Christian Church. God has lead us to Vegas and we intend to faithfully follow!

Now on to the nest subject: Maddie

Maddie is now 9 months old! I can't believe it. She is just growing and getting such a fun little personality. She is always smiling and talking away (screaming is more like it--sorry Kingston!). She even does this cute little thing when she is playing with something and it sounds like she is whispering to it! Now when do little girls get attitudes because I'm pretty sure mine was born with one, but that's part of the adventure i guess.

She is crawling now and is super fast. She loves the stairs (yikes) and the kitchen cabinets! She loves to pull up on anything she can just so she can stand up and walk. She must think she is a big girl already but I'm not ready for that just yet. We are just loving each new stage and having such a blast with our cuddly girl. We couldn't be more happy!!

I know this was a long post and probably had quite a few grammatical errors. Danny wasn't here to edit so I apologize to all those grammar fanatics out there who are cringing at my post, Danny included!

Our crazy dog Lulu!

So I just had to post these pictures of our dog Lulu. If any of you know her, you know that she is the thorn in my side! Anyways, a couple days ago our sump pump backed up and flooded our basement so we had opened all the basement windows to air out the yucky smell and we forgot to close them. I guess that Lulu thought that since I wouldn't let her inside through the sliding door that she would find an alternative way in. So our annoying bloodhound decided to climb through the small opening one of the basement windows onto the top of a refrigerator that just happens to sit underneath that window.

I kept hearing weird noises in our basement and outside and I kept looking for Lulu in the back and couldn't find her. ( I just knew she was up to something) So I go outside in the backyard and find her sitting on top of the fridge inside staring at me. I seriously just stood there for a few seconds wondering how in the world it was even possible for a 90 lb dog to climb through that small opening without breaking it. As much as she annoys me, I have to admit that I found this pretty funny and couldn't resist taking pictures of her. The fridge was too high and she was too scared to climb done so she had to wait there for about 20 minutes for Danny to come home and rescue her!

My sleeping beauty!

I have been waiting for this moment since the day she came home from the hospital and I put her in her swing for the first time. I finally have a picture of Maddie asleep slouched over in her swing. I don't know why but I have always wanted a picture of this. I just think it is so funny that she fell asleep like this. It looks so uncomfortable but apparently not to her. She had been rubbing her eyes while she was eating her dinner so after we played for a bit I put her in her swing and wha-la we have a sleeping baby!