mamakay

managing a household of 10 by the grace of God

Stitch Fix #12: Great Alternative for When You Hate Shopping for Clothes!

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It is time for another Stitch Fix box!! Woohoo!! My boxes keep getting better and better! I absolutely love having clothes sent right to my door that fit me and coordinate with the other clothes I have (from past fixes). Did you know that you can specifically request items? For example, my last box had a great pair of black jeans but my daughter kept borrowing them so I asked if they could send another pair and they did! Now we can both have our own pair.

Do you want to see what my stylist picked out for me this time? Here you go:

Stitch Fit Outfit #1

sweater and black jeans from stitch fix
Grey Striped Sweater & Skinny Black Jeans

Outfit #2

knit dress from stitch fix
Soft Grey Knit Dress with Pockets!

Outfit #3

Stitch Fix cardigan and denim shirt
Mustard Cardigan & Denim Shirt (Skinny Jeans from previous Stitch Fix)

I would love to hear what you think in the comments! Have you tried stitch fix yet? They gave me a code to share with you. You can get $25 dollar off your first order. Here it is: StitchFix

MamaKay

Stitch Fix #11

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Do you know why I love Stitch Fix? The more I use it the better the clothes they send me! They also listen to me when I request different items, check my pinterest board for recent pins and choose clothes that go with things they have sent me in the past. And also, I hate clothes shopping! So yes, I spend more money on clothes than I used to, but it is so worth it for me. 

Here is what they sent me this time:

Tan Shirt

This cowl knit sweater is so soft but I’m not sure about the color. What do you all think?

My stylist picked this particular shirt because of similar ones I pinned. It is super soft and comfy and I love the message.

All 3 of these pieces came in my box. Black skinny jeans, the red blouse and my favorite is the black & white sweater cardigan! I love that these pieces all go together and create a complete outfit!

I would love to hear what you think in the comments! Have you tried stitch fix yet? They gave me a code to share with you. You can get $25 dollar off your first order. Here it is: StitchFix

MamaKay

Insurance Alternative

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The December 15th deadline is fast approaching to enroll for insurance. Do you feel like every year the prices go up and what they cover declines? Would you be interested in an alternative?

Our family has had long times issues with insurance coverage and opted out for many years. We are a larger than normal family but we do not have a lot of medical needs on an ongoing basis and when we do we prefer non-traditional care. When Obama Care was forced on us we were not happy! We found ourselves paying over $1200/month with a $5000 deductible. Which meant we were paying as much as our mortgage every month to then turn around and pay for all of medical expenses minus 1 wellness check per person per year. We felt trapped!

Then we discovered Christian Healthcare Ministries. Although it qualifies under Obama Care, it is not regular insurance. It is a medical cost sharing community. You pay a certain amount every month according to the level you choose ($65-$150/unit). Then when you have a medical need you pay the amount you agreed to. For the rest of the bill you submit paperwork to have to it paid and in 6 months you will receive the money to pay the rest if it is approved.

For example, our 8 year old son fell last summer and got a concussion. We took him to the hospital to make sure he didn’t have any internal bleeding. They performed a CT Scan and confirmed that he did have a concussion but thankfully no internal bleeding. We received a bill from the hospital for $2700. The Silver Plan is what we chose for our family. We are responsible for $1000. We submitted our paperwork to CHM and should receive $1700 next month to pay off that bill. In the meantime, we made arrangements with the hospital to make monthly payments for a year to pay off this bill.

For us this is the best of both worlds. We are considered self pay and can choose our own care but if something serious happens we have protection for those bigger amounts. To help make this more doable we also contribute to my husband’s HSA to pay for the regular doctor bills. Even considering paying our occasional doctor bills (including the hospital bill) over the course of this past year we saved over $6000!

If you are looking for a legal alternative to insurance, I would highly recommend you check out Christian Healthcare Ministries. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have about our experience with it.

MamaKay

(If you click on the link to enroll we get a discount on our membership fees. Thank you for your support!)

What I Learned This Fall 2018

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Emily P. Freeman encouraged me to link up for her quarterly what we learned series.  Instead of waiting for the end of the year she encourages us to reflect on the season as it is winding down and this provides a great opportunity to share! So here is my list for this fall:

  1. I am a Writer! I need to consistently write for my own mental health and then I can share with others as well.
  2. Public School may actually be the right thing for our family this season. This has been such a huge shift for our family and has taken me a lot of time to adjust too. But it has been a good thing for us so far.
  3. Going one more time is such a gift! We went to Yellowstone National Park for a third time in September and it was such a lovely experience. No stress to see all the things, just a bonus to experience the area one more time.
  4. Cancer Sucks! We lost my stepbrother and our family dog to cancer this fall and it is just so terrible!
  5. Stories don’t have to be tied up with a happily ever after to be good stories that we can learn so much from. There is a trend in books right now that is showing vulnerability as a worthwhile endeavor and I am here for it!
  6. Oh how I love paint! It had been so long but it is amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do for your spirit and your feelings about your house. So wonderful!
  7. Plan to Eat has an app for your phone now! I have used the computer version for many years but found out there was an app now and that made it so much more usable for me! (If you hurry their once a year sale for 50% off is still on through December 2.)
  8. Now that my youngest is almost 4, I can actually get up an hour (sometimes more) before the kids get up! Sometimes I sneak a trip into the gym while they are still sleeping or spend some extra time enjoying a warm drink and doing some Bible study.
  9. I am not sure it really qualifies as having learned or not but I have been a mom now for 20 years! It still catches me off guard and I’m not sure how I feel about it but I’ve been doing this a long time and I still have another 14+ years of having children at home. I am in this for the long haul. I’m learning how to do this differently. It is a marathon for sure.
  10. This has been a season of surrender for me. Surrender of my expectations, plans, hopes and even some dreams. It has been refining and it has brought some clarity for me although I am definitely still a work in progress.

I am excited to announce that part of this season has brought clarity about my message and so I have started a new website where I hope to share more with you. I will still blog here occasionally but most of my effort will now be going to:

SeasonalLivingFamily.com

How about you? What have you learned this fall? I would love to hear!

MamaKay

Leaves of Gratitude

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Family traditions are so very important to me. My family of origins pretty much disintegrated soon after I left home for college. So when we started our family we decided to start from scratch. I wanted to be sure that our family had strong traditions we could rely on to tie us together and help us remain strong whatever may come.

We started slowly and have added in many things over the years. For at least the last 14 years as the month of November rolls around we practice giving thanks by creating a Thanksgiving Tree. Each year I draw a tree (even though I am NOT an artist) on a large pieces of paper and we cut out leaves. Each day everyone writes (or dictates) something we are thankful for and then we glue the leaves on the tree. By the end of the month our tree is filled with beautiful leaves and reminders of all the blessings in our lives.

As you can tell, I am not an amazing artist by the greatest stretch of your imagination but part of what makes this tradition so sustainable to us is that it is simple.

This year I created a printable for you so that you can create your own Thanksgiving Tree if you would like to do this with your family! You can print the sheets on colored paper, have the kids color them as they go or just leave them white. Just click on the link below to sign up and I will email the link to you.

MamaKay

Write31Days #4: Hello Mornings

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Ah, mornings. I love the Bible verse in Lamentations 3:22-23 that says “His mercies are new every morning.” Each day we have a new opportunity to start over. To be intentional about how we spend this particular day. I can choose sleep if I had a rough night (and that really might be the best option), I can choose to wake up earlier than my family to have a few moments to myself or I can hit that snooze button just a couple more times and be rushed through my morning. For years I have worked on creating a good morning time routine. Some seasons it has worked better than others (read: babies). I have often been frustrated that even when I have the best plans laid out I get interrupted or I am exhausted and can’t execute them in the way I want.

This past year I was excited to hear about Kat Lee’s new book, Hello Mornings. The by-line is “how to build a grace-filled, life-giving morning routine.” She deep dives into her idea of 3 minute mornings. The concept is that baby steps will help you meet your goals. Start with very small steps and then build on them and on days when time is short you can return to those 3 minutes and it will still bless your day. Her steps are 1. God Time 2. Plan Time 3. Move Time. Doing these 3 things everyday makes such a huge difference.

Since I started following her advice I have been so much more consistent in working these things into my morning! I always want to go big or stay in bed, lol! But following her advice I notice that even when I am only able to do 3 minutes it still makes my day go so much better.

For God Time my one minute is to recite a Bible verse (frequently Psalm 143:8), say a quick prayer and sing a song of praise. My longer version includes journaling in Write the Word the Bible passage for the day, praying (using my prayer journal) and listening to praise music.

For Plan Time my one minute is to look over my calendar for the day. My longer version is to sit down and write out my to do list for the day and assign tasks to certain times of the day as necessary.

For Move Time my one minute is to do a very short yoga routine in which I do Mountain Pose, Forward Fold a couple times and a Downward Dog. My longer version is do a 15 minute yoga routine using the Yoga Studio app on my phone.

Do you have a solid morning routine? What do you do to be consistent at making sure it happens? I would love to hear!

MamaKay


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