2023 was a definite DREAM come true year for Kenny & I…both personally and in our business. We continually felt the Lord’s presence throughout the year and we know that every good and perfect thing comes from HIM🩵🩵 and we are so grateful for each and every one of His blessings and even His tough lessons.
Let’s start with our biggest blessing of 2023…we welcomed another sweet and precious grandson to our family…Cayden Michael 🩵 He has already brought so much joy to our family and we love him so much 🩵
2023 brought restored relationships that we’d been praying for and we are so thankful for answered prayers. Family is everything to us and we were able to celebrate the holidays all together with my Mom this year. What a true blessing💕
My word of the year for 2023 as many of you already know was DREAM. That’s something I knew I wanted to try to work on within myself and to learn that we can dream and set goals for ourselves. I needed to learn that even if these dreams and goals never come to fruition, don’t consider it as a failure…use that to fuel my passion even more.
So the first of many dreams coming to fruition was that of my first paid subscription private group. We started it on January 1st. I seriously thought I would maybe have 20-30 people sign up and I would have been thrilled with that too.
Knowing that DREAM was my theme word of the year, Kenny had asked me “If you were to have a dream number of members sign up, what would it be? Again…I wasn’t a dreamer at that point (I was a definite work in progress) and I told him don’t be silly…I wasn’t going to choose a number because I’d be happy with however many signed up. He kept “nagging”🤣 me to choose a number so I just shouted out 200…doubting it would happen the whole time. 🤪 It seemed so silly to even think that many ladies would join our group. Well…you all…I kid you not…we had exactly 200 join during open season with midnight being the deadline…our 200th member came through the website at 11:59 pm😳🤪 If that isn’t God showing out…I don’t know what is!! This group has blessed us so much in so many ways. We laugh a lot, cry a little, talk about the craziest things, but most importantly…it has grown into a family…a true sisterhood with one guy🤣🤣 We love it so much🩵
As wonderful and unbelievable as that was…more importantly…it opened my eyes to see that dreams can and do come true. It fueled my desire to continue setting goals and dreams because hey…it worked.
Dream #2…my very first Live in person crafting event. From the time I attended my first in person event in Nashville, TN with Brooke Riley…I always thought how amazing it would be to host something like that. At that time, I didn’t even have a business page and DBD didn’t even exist.🤣 It’s funny how God works…He placed me in that event knowing He was going to bless me with my own some day.
Five years later…He made it happen. It was absolutely perfect and amazing…50 tickets sold out in 4 hours even though I doubted we would sell them all.🤦🏻♀️ I was able to share that experience with some of my dearest friends and some of my family who took the time out of their busy lives to help me. My heart was so completely FULL…another goal…another DREAM come true🩵 for sure.
We even held another retreat in November for only our private group members and that was just as special to us.🩵
The growth of our page and community was more than I could ever have dreamed. One viral 5-6 minute video of me decoupaging a napkin onto a pumpkin hit 1.1 million views and that was the start of the steady growth. I’m still amazed at that🩵 I could go on and on about all the dreams that came true for us this past year, but this post would end up being a novel.🤣🤣
2023 also brought some difficult times and heartache. Life isn’t always easy…sometimes people disappoint you and you learn who you can trust with your heart and who you can’t. There’s no bitterness, just disappointment. Sometimes people are placed in your life for just a season…as difficult as that is to understand. Even through the difficult times and tough business decisions made…I felt God’s presence. I felt His comfort and I felt His LOVE ❤️ for me. He gave me clarity to see things that my heart was blinded to. Friendships were lost, but true lasting friendships were also made in 2023 that I’m so grateful for.
I write all of this to say…life doesn’t always go as planned. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. However, never let that keep you from dreaming and setting goals…in business or in life. Trust God…Work hard…Love with all of your heart and don’t be afraid to DREAM big…they may just come true 🩵
Blessings…
~Dina
