Doom and gloom abound in the markets

(Brendan)

It doesn't matter whether one is talking about the stock markets, credit markets, or housing markets, doom and gloom is everywhere these days. It certainly would give pause to anyone planning to, oh I don't know, sell and build a home next year. It can be mind-boggling trying to keep track of all the bad news, and sometimes good news, that may affect our particular situation in the coming months.

On the bad side, for instance, since only a year ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down over 20%:
Any money invested in stocks as a vehicle for saving for home construction could be taking a serious hit.

But, on the good side, we don't have any exposure to stocks in our savings for the home, with the exception of some stock in the company I work for, which is actually up a couple percentage points for the year to date.

On the bad side, the subprime loan crisis (and even worse, the complete collapse of parts of the mortgage banking sector in recent days) has cause credit markets to tighten considerably, even to the point that people with good credit are finding it much harder to be approved for a loan (or there are much stricter loan terms). As evidence for this disconcerting trend, this article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Get ready for a mortgage maze". The practical affect for us is that it could make getting a construction loan very interesting.

But on the good side, material costs for home construction have come down sharply in a number of areas, making the cost for building our home less with each passing day of this downturn (and thus also the potential size of a construction loan). Evidence for this from CNNMoney.com: "Build your dream house now".
Also on the good side in terms of construction costs, a potential decrease in labor cost. We are putting our home project up for competitive bid, and have lined up 4 (possibly 5) general contractors/builders to bid on our project. This is the way to get the best possible price on construction. And suffice it to say, whether the contractors let on or not, these guys need the work badly and competition for our project will be fierce (driving our cost lower). And the Minneapolis Star Tribune supports this: "Home building activity at a crawl in Twin Cities".

On the bad side, home values across the country have declined in the past few years, and haven't seemed to hit bottom. This means that selling our home could be very difficult, and that our selling price may have to come down significantly to ensure our house does sell in a timely fashion. Once sold, the amount of equity in our current home will be less than we had hoped, meaning less to put towards our next home.

But on the good side, anecdotally I know a number of people that have recently sold homes within weeks (not months) of putting them on the market in the Twin Cities, and another article was just released today that helped validate this trend. From the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal: "Minneapolis-St. Paul home market improves slightly in July". Minneapolis lead the nation during the last month with a modest increase in home price index. A quote:

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index, which tracks prices in 20 metro areas around the nation, reported an index level of 143.4 for the Minneapolis area in July, up 1.3 percent from June. (The index is based off of home prices in January 2000, so a rating of 143 translates to a 43 percent appreciation rate since then).

The index value for July is still down 13.1 percent from the prior year (when the value was 164.9). But the Minneapolis market was one of the areas of strength during the most recent period.

The next best market was Denver, where the index value rose 0.8 percent in July, and the survey found that the Minneapolis area, along with Atlanta, Boston, Dallas and Denver, had reported improvements for at least the past three months.

So what does all this mean? It means we don't have a clue how things will play out for our home project in the coming months, but we do know two things:

1) There are so many people out that who have serious problems, involving losing their jobs, or homes, or worse, and our concerns are nothing compared to theirs, and we are so very appreciative of all of the gifts that God has given to us. We pray for all those who are suffering.

2) We want God's will to be done, and we are quite comfortable handing over complete control to Him, knowing that the Lord works all things together for the good of those who love Him.

St. Joseph, pray for us!

Pics of a home chapel sent by a reader...

(Brendan)

I thought I'd pass on (after asking her permission) some pictures of a wonderful home chapel sent by Ecclesia Domestica reader Gabrielle. Gabrielle notes that all of the furnishings are from England (she is Anglican, or traditional Episcopal) and everything in the chapel is circa 1880-1900, or a little thereafter. The cross is dated 1879 and the lecturn is 1885. Enjoy!

Worth a view...

(Brendan)

This wonderfully produced clip is worth a few minutes of your time as we wind down the presidential campaign. It's a great reminder, even a wake-up call, that there are some issues that transcend all others.

I would only edit the last statement to say, "Inform your conscience with the truth, then vote your conscience." :-)

Design Updates: Volume 4

(Brendan)

Again, sorry for the low posting regularity! It's busy as usual, but that does include lots of selecting, selecting, selecting things for the house. This usually involves Molly and I pawning off our wonderful kids on an unsuspecting relative and then furiously driving around to different stores trying to cross some things off our list. So here's a data dump.

One of the materials we've added to our interior "palette" is slate, as there were a lot of suggestions from my brother for "slate gray" color materials. Well, nothing can be more "slate gray" than slate, but the key is cost. Slate is a natural stone, so typically it can cost more than man-made materials, but with our extensive checking we found some good prices. So here's where we are using it:

Kitchen Backsplash:

Tumbled slate wall mosaic blend (Home Depot)
1"x1" tiles mounted on 12"x12" mesh

Master Bath Floor:

Multi Classic Slate (Home Depot) - only $1.49 per square foot!
12"x12" tiles

Master Bath Tub Surround:

Slate mosaic tile blend (Home Depot)
2"x2" tiles mounted on 12"x12" mesh

In the master bathroom, initially the walls will just be painted white to save cost, but the end vision (as suggested by my brother and we loved the idea) is to have a warm beige mosaic tile covering all of the walls (to be installed by me). Mosaic tile is very expensive, so keeping it out of the initial home budget is necessary for such a large scale use. I'll install it later, and the slate will then provide a nice contrast on the floor. In terms of the walls, this is a pic that my brother used when suggesting this idea:

First Level Wood Floor:

For the wood floor on the first level, my brother suggested a dark brown (rather than the lighter wood he initially showed on the rendering of the family room interior) because it has a way of visually grounding the home (plus, lighter wood is so common and widely used, so dark wood is an interesting and different tone). Here were his suggested tones (click to enlarge):
With this suggestion in mind, we're looking at this low-cost engineered wood floor option from Lumber Liquidators ($3.99 per square foot, with a "handscraped" finish that would add a more rustic look). We've gotten samples and like it.

And with the tone of the wood floor selected, this allowed better coordination with kitchen cabinet colors. We ditched the "medium brown" tone cabinets in the kitchen because the tone will be similar to the floor, but almost assuredly just slightly different. So the cabinets and the floor would clash. With a dark floor, my brother suggested a white or blond wood kitchen cabinet tone, such as in these example pics he provided (click to enlarge):
Molly has actually always liked the idea of a white kitchen, and my brother's suggestion gave the go-ahead to make it a reality, so we're going with the Adel White finish in our IKEA kitchen.
Laundry Room:

As we're always looking to contain cost, we've decided to do away with the idea of having built-in cabinets in the laundry room. Instead, Molly is going with this IKEA system that is really cool. If there's one thing IKEA is good at, it's design for organization. An example pic of their laundry system is below.

Upper Floor Bedrooms (Flooring):

Did I mention we're going with carpet tiles in the upstairs bedrooms, that we'll install ourselves? Flor brand carpet tiles are the best and have the most options. The tiles aren't cheap, but the labor cost will be zero, and whenever our kids next spill a can of paint on the carpet (I say "next" because this has already happened in our current house multiple times) we can just take up the affected tiles and replace them. Piece of cake.

Here the floor in the boys' bedroom (shown in this pic being used as an area rug):

And here's the floor in the nursery (a nice, gender-neutral green tone pattern :-). Again, here it is shown being used in an area rug application:

We still are thinking on the girls' room and the Master Bedroom; we've ordered samples from Flor to help us decide.

Well, maybe I'll stop here for now. There's lots more I wish I could show you, but there are not accessible pictures that I could find. For instance, not everything in the Home Depot store is shown on their web site. We've chosen a backsplash and flooring for the girls' bathroom, flooring for the boys' bathroom, flooring for the laundry room, flooring for the first level bathroom, and some other stuff! Sadly, no pics, but you'll see it eventually.

There's lots more to come soon, including my personal favorite: lighting!

Design Updates: Volume 3

(Brendan)

In order to contain cost as we near the bidding process for our home project, we're tracking a number of suggestions from contractors (along with things we've come up with ourselves) that would save money. Some of these things make enough sense that they need to be worked into the plans before the bidding, and some we'll wait until we see the costs to decide if we want to implement them.

One item that we want to get into our home design before bidding is dividing the large, floor-to-ceiling windows in the family area into smaller windows. Just as a reminder, here was a rendering of the interior of the family room (click to enlarge):
It was always the plan to have at least one division in the large windows to the left so that there would be an operable portion that could be opened and closed. This would allow for cross-breezes in the Summer. However, there would still be large portions of glass making up the bulk of the window area, and cost is a concern. The larger the expanse of glass, the more expensive the window.

One contractor also pointed out that the large areas of glass would likely have to be tempered glass, which is an extra processing step done by the manufacturers for windows that gives more strength in order to protect against breaking. With small kids in the home, it's also a safety issue. Having tempered glass would add even more cost to already expensive windows. The solution will be to divide the windows into many small windows, likely of a standard size. This will save on cost in multiple fronts, as smaller, standard size windows are cheaper, and smaller windows would not have to be tempered glass.

Here's some examples of large window areas could be divided into smaller windows without losing the aesthetic feel of the space:
Dividing windows will also give more options for selecting which sections will be operable and which will be fixed glass, so all in all it's kind of a no-brainer design change. We don't have the specifics on how windows will look yet, but my brother is working on it.

Design Updates: Volume 2

(Brendan)

Now that we're back from our vacation, time for another post! This one regards some interior choices we made some time ago in order to save money while still providing a high level of design. Suffice it to say, as we keep our eyes firmly fixed on our budget, we are very glad to have IKEA as a great option for low-cost, well-designed items. And we're not stopping at our kitchen.

First-Floor Bathroom

This is a very small bathroom, enough for a sink and toilet. Here's what we're going with for the sink and faucet (the cabinet is shown in white, but we would actually be using this or this for the cabinet):
This is the sink from up above:
Boys' Bathroom

We've picked out this series of cabinets for the boys' bathroom (just an example):
And the boys will get this cool sink:
Overall, we wanted something fairly masculine and "cool" for the look of the boys' bathroom, and we're thinking about a black and white tile pattern for the floor

Girls' Bathroom

Here's a picture I found that uses a very similar set-up to what we're using in the girls' bathroom. The cabinet style, bowl sinks, faucets, etc. are all the same as what we've picked, and there will be two sinks just like is shown here. I think the mirrors will actually be something more like an oval rather than these square cabinet mirrors, though:
We're thinking of a light green tile backsplash for the girls.

We haven't quite gotten to choosing things for the master bathroom yet, but we'll have to do that soon!

The Domestic Church: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Humanae Vitae

(Brendan)

Those who follow Catholic news know that the 40th anniversary of the publication of Pope Paul VI's extremely important encyclical, Humanae Vitae ("On Human Life"), just occurred a couple days ago. Published in 1968, this document is likely the most important Papal encyclical of the 20th century, as it reasserted Catholic teaching on a myriad of issues having to do with the sanctity of life and of God's design for human sexuality. What really set off a firestorm was the shock the media and the secular world received when learning that Pope Paul VI explicitly reaffirmed the immorality of contraception. Most observers had been expecting a change in this teaching, and even some bishops had advised the Pope in this regard. But, in an act that one can only attribute to the constant guidance given the teaching office of the Pope, Pope Paul VI went against all currents of the time and reaffirmed the truth, and praise God for it! Most strikingly, Pope Paul predicted a series of consequences to wide adoption of contraception that have disturbingly all come true, shedding light on the truth of this teaching. Among his predictions were that:

• Widespread use of contraception would "lead to conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality" i.e. divorce, abortion, infidelity, etc.
  
• "The man" will lose respect for "the woman," and "no longer (care) for her physical and psychological equilibrium" and will come to "the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment and no longer as his respected and beloved companion."
• Widespread acceptance of contraception would place a "dangerous weapon... in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies." i.e. that nations or public organizations would use contraception as a means of controlling populations and human procreation.
• Contraception would lead men and women to think that they had unlimited dominion of their own bodies.

The correctness of these predictions are hard to argue with. These are the consequences of contraception, but of course contraception itself is immoral for it's own reasons (see CCC 2370).

For some interesting reading, check out very good article in the ecumenical Christian journal, "First Things": The Vindication of Humanae Vitae. Well worth 20 minutes of your time.

And interestingly (shockingly?), the New York Times has just today published an Op-Ed piece by John Allen that is also worth a read: The Pope vs. the Pill

Pope Paul VI

Design Updates: Volume 1

(Brendan)

Well, we've been in the construction documents phase for some time now and have lots of little updates to the home design as a result. Updates often result from my brother finding a problem while doing the detailed design and needing a solution, or sometimes design updates have come from selecting interior materials and details. It would be way too painful for you readers to try and read a "Brendan-post" that tries to pack all of these updates into one loooooong commentary, so I think it's probably best to do it in bight-sized chunks. This is design update, volume 1.

Symmetrical exterior windows beget interior rearrangements

You probably all remember this rendering of the exterior of the home that my brother did some time back:
On the main facade, there are three sets of three windows on the bottom level (with the middle set including the front door). These three sets of windows align directly below the three windows on the upper level. Sounds great, but one problem: this doesn't exactly work well with the interior of the home. The symmetry is lost due to the placement of the rooms. See below (click to enlarge).
See how the set of windows in the dining room is off-center with the axis of the room? The set of windows in the school room is also off-center, but we all agreed this was not really a concern as much as the dining room. With the size of our family there will be a nice-sized dining table in that room that will be long and centered, and there should be a sightline straight through the room on both sides or it will seem a little weird. So, my brother set about finding a correction to this. Here's his solution (click to enlarge).
There's a bunch of things going on here. The biggest change is that the bathroom and closet have switched to the North side of the foyer instead of the South. No problem, it doesn't change anything functionally or aesthetically. Secondly, the windows have been shifted into different positions slightly on facade. Thirdly, the sets of windows have been more defined, with the center window being operable (a key requirement of mine so that we can take advantage of cross-ventilation in the summer) as a casement window, and it's also larger than the windows on either side in order to be more symmetric with respect to the front entrance (where the door is in the center). Here's how that looks on the exterior (windows on upper level not shown):
One item to note is that my brother showed the windows rotating inward, but we would change this to be outward. You don't want the windows rotated and sticking into the interior space of the home itself, that's just asking for Aidan to either A) hang off of them with his full weight, like some sort of primate, or B) run smack into them while running as fast as he can and looking backwards at the same time (a frequent occurrence with walls already).

The set of three windows in the school room is still off-center (just in a different position) but, again, this doesn't bother us as much as it would have in the dining room. It might even be better for keeping the sun out of people's eyes while trying to do school work.

It's our 1-year blog anniversary!

(Brendan)

On July 9, 2007 I started off this blog with an "under construction" post, and followed the next day with our first official post (which is permanently linked in the upper right of the blog, under "New to this blog?"). We've been amazed at the readership our little blog has generated and have been blessed by the experience of sharing our thoughts online and getting feedback from others. Here's some numbers from our first year:

Number of posts: 126
Site Visits: 14,419
Page Views: 25,298
Number of U.S. states with visitors: 50
Number of countries with visitors: 105

It's that last one that blows me away. Here's a diagram of the countries with visitors to our blog, along with a list (the darker color is the majority of our visitors, the U.S.):

Argentina
Antigua and Barbuda
Armenia
Aruba
Australia
Austria
Bahamas
Bahrain
Belgium
Bermuda
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brazil
British Virgin Islands
Brunei
Bulgaria
Cameroon
Canada
Chile
China
Columbia
Costa Rica
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
Egypt
El Salvador
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guam
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Ivory Coast
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kenya
Kuwait
Lebanon
Libya
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malawi
Malaysia
Malta
Mauritius
Mexico
Moldova
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nigeria
Norway
Pakistan
Palestinian Territory
Peru
Phillipines
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Saint Helena
Saudi Arabia
Serbia and Montenegro
Singapore
Slovakia
South Africa
South Korea
Sri Lanka
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan
Tanzania
Thailand
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen

When I just try to imagine someone in the Palestinian Territories, or Iran, or Mozambique, or Yemen, or Ghana pulling up our blog on a computer screen, I just amazes me. Even the fact that we've had visitors from all 50 U.S. states is fantastic. Not too bad for a blog that, honestly, was started just to keep family and friends up to date on our home project.

Looking back over the past year, I tried to think of my favorite post, and decided on this one:

The Domestic Church: Are Large Families Harmful to the Environment?

This is one of the many ways that I feel that God has used this blog for the "new evangelization." Case in point, if you search in Google on a phrase such as "Large families environment" or "large families harmful environment" or the like, the post I linked above appears on the first page of the results, and in some cases at the very top. Praise the Lord! Knowing that someone researching this question has a decent chance of ending up at that post and reading it (amidst dozens of other sites claiming the world is "overpopulated" and that children are bad for the environment) gives me great satisfaction and hope that such a person would be led to the truth.

Molly's favorite post from the last year was:

The Domestic Church: To "Santa" or not to "Santa"...

This ended up being (just by a hair) the most commented post of the year. The fact that one commenter compared parts of the post to the "Byzantine iconoclastic heresy" was quite entertaining :-)

Just to close, on behalf of Molly and myself, thanks so much for participating in our blog and we hope you continue to read! By this time next year our house will be half-way through construction!

Family Formation: Keeping Our Promise

(Molly)

I remember vividly the moment when Father Steve asked Brendan and me to state our intentions to one another. “Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and His Church?” Just then, the microphone Father was using made a blaring “screeeech!” He continued, “even when they scream like this thing just did?” I don’t think his improvisational words were meant to scare us from our commitment, but it gave those gathered to celebrate quite a good laugh. Brendan and I promptly answered “we will.”

One week after our first anniversary, we brought Clara Mary to that same place to receive the Sacrament of Baptism; we again promised to teach her the Faith and help her to live according to her Baptismal call. We have since presented three other children in these seven years for the same purpose.

For us, the commitment we made to one another, to our Lord, and to our children is not one we take lightly, but it isn’t one that necessarily comes easily. As products of a generation that wasn’t well-formed in the Faith, in many ways, we found ourselves taking what we were brought up to know and seeking more. And we wanted to surround ourselves with other families who were also seeking solid formation for themselves and for their children. That is when we found ourselves at the Church of Saint Paul in Ham Lake, Minnesota.

We knew that the parish had a reputation for its commitment to forming its parishioners in the Faith, and for its unwavering faithfulness and obedience to the Magisterium. And it wasn’t long after our membership began that we found ourselves in what seemed like a whirlwind of opportunities through a ministry called Family Formation.

Family Formation, a ministry developed at the Church of Saint Paul for Kindergarten through sixth grade, is driven by the principle that parents are the primary educators of their children in the Faith. Unlike the familiar CCD model where parents drop off their children on a weekly basis to “let the church do their work,” the majority of formation happens within the home. Families are given Home Lessons to complete together. The entire family focuses on the same topic and children are given age-appropriate materials including games, crafts, or other projects. The cover page of each lesson is written especially to equip parents to understand the material and to teach it to their children. There is also in each lesson a section entitled, “Hey, Dad!” meant to inspire fathers to take an important role in the process.

In addition to the participation in Home Lessons, the entire family gathers at the church on a monthly basis. Children meet in classrooms with other children their age to focus on a subject led by a volunteer catechist. Parents gather together to hear a speaker share on the same theme. Often at the end of the monthly session, the children will re-join their parents for a special prayer such as the Stations of the Cross. (Pre-school children, or Little Lambs, are also given Home Lessons with the same focus as the older children. They join with other kids monthly during Mass for Sunday Celebration. This format allows them to learn to participate fully with the community during Mass, but also gives them additional opportunities for growth in formation.)

We have found that Family Formation:

• Brings the Faith alive through dynamic lessons, activities, and audio CD’s
• Follows the three-year liturgical cycle and points families to what is happening in the Church year. Click here to see complete 3 year topic overview.
• Is driven by Sacred Scripture
• Is faithful to the teaching of the Magisterium
• References the Catechism of the Catholic Church
• Received the Imprimatur of Archbishop Harry J. Flynn of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 2007

Our family has been eternally blessed (I mean that literally!) by this process of formation. We have especially benefited from the materials provided during the Advent and Lenten seasons. One of our favorite supplemental materials is the “Priest Paper Doll” which is a cut-out of our Pastor, Father John, complete with vestments that can be “worn” during the appropriate Liturgical Season.

I have been personally blessed as a member of the Family Formation Core Team which spends one hour per month in prayer together for the ministry of Family Formation. All lessons have been personally authored, edited, illustrated, and collated by members of the Church of Saint Paul and the ministry has grown to include parishes and families across the United States and Canada.

The Family Formation website is now up and running! Visit www.familyformation.net to read more about the history of Family Formation, to read inspiring testimonies from other families and parishes who have been blessed by this ministry, and to view the available materials.