Thanks for the votes in the 2008 CBA's!

(Brendan)

The 2008 Catholic Blog Awards have concluded, despite being a low post-volume blog I think we did well. It's great just to be nominated and get new readers visiting the blog. Here's the buttons that appear now at the bottom of our sidebar at the right...

We did the best in the "Best New Catholic Blog" category, where out of 87 nominees, we came in tied for 33rd.

Thanks for the nominations!

(Brendan)

We've been officially nominated for no less than 4 categories at the 2008 Catholic Blog Awards! Thank you to the readers who graciously nominated us. Voting is now open at the CBA's, and we are up for the following awards:

Best Designed Catholic Blog
Best New Catholic Blog
Best Written Catholic Blog
Most Informative and Insightful Blog

Head on over to the CBA site and vote for us, especially if you already registered previously. You only get to vote once!

And check out the dozens of other wonderful Catholic blogs that are up for nominations.

Last day to nominate us for the 2008 CBA's!

(Brendan)

TODAY IS THE LAST DAY to nominate for the Catholic Blog Awards! The CBA site has posted a LONG list of blogs (over 2,000) that have been nominated, and sadly to say :-( we have not been nominated for anything (as of early yesterday anyway... *sniffle*). Now, I know there are people out there who intended to do so and just haven't gotten around to doing it, so now's your chance! Certainly we are not going to win anything with all the big blogs out there sweeping up awards, and frankly we don't really care that much. But, getting nominated does increase exposure and visitors to the blog, which we certainly would love. Take a few minutes and register on the CBA site, and consider nominating us!

The 2008 Catholic Blog Awards are here!

(Brendan)

Well, the time is here to nominate your favorite Catholic blogs for the 2008 running of the Catholic Blog Awards, and we're excited to be eligible for the first time in our young history. Ecclesia Domestica started in the Summer of 2007 and never got a chance to participate in the Catholic Blog Awards last year, but we've built up a wonderful audience of regular readers since then and hope to make a good showing so that others can learn about our blog and our home project. And plus, it's just plain fun to participate and vote for other peoples' blogs that I have come to admire.

So here's the deal: from February 15-29 you can nominate your favorite Catholic blogs in any number of categories at this website (you do have to create a user name and password, but it's easy). The categories change a little from year to year, but here were last year's categories (the one's with a "*" are categories I know for sure we don't fit in, but feel free to consider all the others :-) ):

Best Apologetic Blog*
Best Blog by Clergy/Religious/Seminarian*
Best Designed Catholic Blog
Best Group Blog
Best Individual Catholic Blog*
Best Insider News Catholic Blog*
Best New Catholic Blog
Best Overall Catholic Blog
Best Political/Social Commentary Catholic Blog*
Best Written Catholic Blog
Funniest Catholic Blog
Most Informative and Insightful Catholic Blog
Most Spiritual Catholic Blog
Smartest Catholic Blog

After February 29th, the nominating closes and the voting runs from March 3-17. Vote early and often!

Thank you Laura!

(Brendan)

Laura "the crazy mama" has graciously bestowed an "Excellent" rating upon our humble blog (thank you!).
Me being the typical male, I was horrified to find out that I would actually have to do work as a result of this, and nominate 10 other blogs. Luckily, right now I'm at work, and I just can't do it.

But I'll send some traffic Laura's way and hope people get the chance to check out her and her wonderful family. And Minnesotans stick together (literally, you can get your tongue stuck on us in this weather). We just came out of a cold snap where it was regularly in the -20's air temp (degrees F, though degrees C is almost equal in that temp) with -40 degree windchills (or more). I love that, because it keeps people from moving here to experience the good life. If we didn't have a spell like that every once in a while (and faithfully report on it), then everyone would want to move here and it would be too crowded (note: notice I did not say "overpopulated" :-), it would just take me much longer to get to work).

Some more pub on other blogs

(Brendan)

Many thanks to Thomas Peters over at American Papist for featuring Ecclesia Domestica on his blog!

Also, I noticed another referral over at Veritatis Splendor from a wonderful blogger who is apparently a friend of Sara Freund's (whom I blogged about in the last post) and noticed before I posted on Sara that this project fit her thesis exactly! Pretty perceptive...

Ecclesia Domestica featured at "Shrine of the Holy Whapping"!

(Brendan)

For those of you who don't know what the "Shrine of the Holy Whapping" is, the title of this post is probably something you'd never thought you'd read on this blog. The Shrine of the Holy Whapping is one of the more trafficked Catholic blogs on the internet, as one can see by all of their awards in the sidebar on the right. (I think I used the word "trafficked" correctly there, but hopefully there's no connection with illegal drug activity implied). I've even read their stuff from time to time as I surf Catholic blogs. At any rate, I had no idea that one of the bloggers at "the Shrine," Emily, is actually the Emily from a family with which we are friends from our parish, the Church of St. Paul in Ham Lake, MN. Her mom actually e-mailed Molly and pointed out Emily's post, and now I understand why our blog has been getting so many hits in only two weeks of existence! We've had over 1,100 unique visitors and over 1,350 hits.

You can read Emily's post here.

The comments are really fun to read, and many of them are hilarious. One person suggested that a "liturgical dance studio" might be in order for the home, along with lots of "felt banners." I also liked the suggestion of a 61" HDTV for watching EWTN (of course). I'll have to work those into the plan.

One person who commented unfortunately totally misinterpreted our blog (in contrast to everyone else who posted), but it's natural that not everyone will understand everything we write. Such is the price of blogging :-)

Thanks for the post Emily!