Guess What? There’s An Oregon Cottage Podcast! {+ A Quick Tutorial to Start Listening}

Do you listen to podcasts? I do and really love the medium for making things like cleaning, gardening, and driving more interesting. So I’m sort of excited to announce that Brian has talked me into doing a podcast! “Sort of” because it’s a bit scary and unknown – and maybe because it was all Brian’s idea, ha!

But the only way I would do it is if he did it with me (who wants to hear themselves talk for 20-30 minutes – not me!), so it’s a joint venture for us, like many of our videos and DIY projects. Since we’ll be talking about projects, food, and gardening – all the things you would expect from AOC – plus a little life and more than a little laughter, it only makes sense that he would join me (I have mentioned that he’s the funny half of us, right?).

We’re calling it An Oregon Cottage Podcast. So creative, right? But it does get to the point! Our goal with this is to entertain and inform – each week there will be take-aways for you, from seasonal menu ideas to lessons learned in DIY projects to interesting things we’ve used or seen.

There will always be an article published here on the blog to go along with each episode (called the “Show Notes”) where you’ll be able to see photos and get links to the things we talked about. You will be able to access all the show notes on this handy-to-reference podcast page and the new button in the navigation bar. Each show notes page also includes a player so you can stream the podcast straight from your computer if you’d like.

You can check out our latest episode (a new one will be ready every Friday) and all of the previous episodes that we have released in these places:

iTunes
Google Play
TuneIn Radio
Stitcher

If you’re already a podcast listener like me, just head over to your favorite place to listen, subscribe, and download all of our episodes. And let us know what you think! Tip: when you subscribe, every new episode will automatically pop up in your feed, so you’ll always keep up-to-date.

If you’re new to podcasts, here’s how to listen in – it’s free and only takes a few clicks:

How to Start Listening to An Oregon Cottage Podcast (or any podcast…)

First, what is a podcast?

Podcasts come in all varieties and flavors, from funny shows, to news related, to business, to family and so much more. They are basically talk radio you control so you can listen to what you want when you want. Which is pretty cool.

I typically listen to my favorite shows when I’m gardening, cooking, or on cleaning night (my favorite time to listen – it helps it go FAST) so it doesn’t take extra time to keep up with a few podcasts. I can listen easily when I would be doing something solitary anyway. I also know people who listen on their commute or other in-the-car-times, while exercising, and doing projects like painting furniture.

Okay, so how do you listen to them?

I listen through the iTunes Podcasts app on my phone which seems easiest to me since it comes pre-installed on iPhones and iPads. It looks like this:

Here’s a quick tutorial to use the podcast app to find and subscribe to An Oregon Cottage Podcast:

1. Click the purple Podcasts icon (the same you saw above) to open the app.

2. Click the magnifying glass in the bottom-right corner to Search.
3. Type “An Oregon Cottage Podcast” in the search bar at the top.
4. From this screen, click the large AOC Podcast icon in the middle of the screen – the one with our picture on it.

5. Once on our podcast page (see screenshot above) press the Subscribe button to make sure all our episodes will show in your “my podcasts” page. You can click on an episode to play from here.
6. You can also view and play all of the episodes you haven’t played yet (of all the podcasts you subscribe to) by clicking the Unplayed icon in the bottom left of the screen – click the episode you want to listen to and it will start playing.

Note: The most recent episode of any podcast you’re subscribed to may download automatically if you have it set to do so in your phone settings (see below for how to set this up), but you can always control what you’d like to download by clicking the download icon (the cloud with a down arrow) next to each episode. Then you can listen all at once no matter if you are connected to wi-fi and without using data.

What about Downloading?

When I first started listening to podcasts I was worried about storing a bunch of downloaded episodes, but you can set your phone up to do just what you want with them – download nothing automatically, download only the most recent, or download all unplayed episodes. In the screenshot above, I’ve set mine to download the most recent episode automatically.

For the most control, choose ‘off’ and only download the episodes you want manually using the cloud/arrow button next to episodes.

And here’s where I set my worries aside: you can also set up the podcast app to automatically delete played episodes! Just click the button to show green like the screenshot above and the episodes you’ve played will be removed from your device automatically.

What other ways can I listen?

You can also listen by streaming over wi-fi without downloading to your phone (click play without hitting the download icon). Or by streaming on your computer with the player found on each of our show notes pages.

You can also listen on your desktop through iTunes directly by following this link and clicking “view in iTunes” under AOC’s logo (PC owners can listen desktop and Android phones through Google Play, and you can also listen through third-party apps like Stitcher and TuneIn Radio).

That’s it – once you’re set up it’s all ready for you every week to go in and listen to a new episode whenever you want! Anytime after Friday of each week you can click the purple Podcast icon on your phone and click the ‘My Podcasts’ or ‘Unplayed’ button on the bottom left to see the new show waiting for you.

Let us know what you guys think – Brian and I are hoping you enjoy this as much as we are making it for you!