Pumpkin Caring in the 919: 2021 Edition

It’s time for one of my favorite Halloween traditions: pumpkin carving! Last night, we carved our pumpkin. I’m always in awe of friends who do creative carvings, but I love our traditional jack o’lantern. It was weird not having Zoe around this year, meowing and moping around in costume(s). We miss you, Zobo Cat. <3

Anyways, this year, Jay and Zachary designed the face and did the cutting. I cleaned out the guts. Alex drew his own little face onto the pumpkin he got at his school’s pumpkin patch last week. We watched “Ghostbusters” and had fun. It’s neat to have both boys be so interactive with it (in their own ways, of course). Here are some pictures:

Happy Halloween!! Post pictures of your jack o’lanterns in the comments! 🙂

Posted in Family, Halloween | 14 Comments

It’s (Not) Electrifying

We had a little bit of excitement in our neighborhood last night. At 9:30 p.m., the lights went out and we heard the loud pop of a transformer blowing. Group texts and Facebook posts among neighbors started flying and one neighbor explained that a tree had fallen in between her and her neighbor’s house, knocking down the power lines and blowing the transformer. She said it looked and sounded like fireworks going off, and that her husband had been outside on a walk when it fell. He missed getting hit by seconds and was stuck on the other side of the mess. Thank goodness he was safe!

Jay and I decided to take our flashlights and take a walk up the block to investigate. We were joined by other neighbors who were also curious, and man, was it a mess. There was a giant tree in the middle of the road, a live power line on the ground, and oil from inside of the transformer spilled onto the road and into a drainage ditch that went into our neighborhood’s lake. The fire department was already there when we got there and they quickly started cleaning up the spill, pouring some kind of sand or chemical-cleanup stuff all over it.

We only stayed maybe 10 minutes before heading back home. A neighbor texted an update around 11:15 p.m. that there were a ton of workers from the power company there working on the pole. We went to bed a little while after that update. I tried being cool and reading by candlelight/flashlight, but instead, pulled up a hot spot on my phone and finished posting my blog post on The Broadcast’s Halloween episode, since I had finished the text portion and was inserting pictures when we lost power.

The power came back on at 2:38 a.m. How do I know this exact time? Because the lights were on in our bedroom when the power went out and despite remembering to turn the light switches off everywhere else, we had forgotten to do so in our bedroom! Suddenly, everything went super bright and we were jolted awake, haha. It was like that very last shot in “Rogue One,” lol. We went around to make sure all was well and that no kids had woken up and went back to sleep.

Zach, Alex, and I took a walk down the street this morning to check it out in the daylight. It looks like part of the tree hit part of a neighbor’s boat, though I couldn’t get a good angle to really see. They cleared the tree off of the road, though. The powerline was still on the ground, but the power company was there, so hopefully, they’ll get it all cleaned up soon. Really grateful that no one got hurt and that the power came back on fairly quickly. We really thought we’d be showering at the YMCA after the kids’ swimming lessons this morning, haha. Whew! Have a happy and safe Saturday, all!

Posted in Home Stuff, Story time | 15 Comments

The Broadcast Ep. 6.17 “Nadja, Keeley, and The Unicorn”

We’ve been celebrating Halloween on the last two episodes of The Broadcast. On last week’s episode, we talked about Halloween and Halloween-adjacent movies. It was a blast. This week, we had our annual live Halloween party. I always love doing this episode because I love dressing up and finding “spooky” stories to read. This year, I was Keeley from Ted Lasso, Shandy was Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows, and Amanda was a unicorn. Here are pictures of the group in costumes over Zoom:

Huge thank you to Jacob for our new, Halloween-themed artwork! I love it so much.

Official description:

It’s our live Halloween party! On this week’s episode, we share “spooooooky” stories and attend a Twitter party about haunted houses. We also talk about What We Do in the Shadows and Only Murders in the Building, and debate dress codes.

As always, you can listen to the latest episode below or via jayandjack.comiTunesSpreakerSpotifyStitcherGoogle Podcasts, etc. You may have better luck searching for us as “The Broadcast with Amanda, Shandy, and Colleen” since there are a few other shows called The Broadcast.

As always, happy listening, and thanks for listening!

Listen to “Ep. 6.17 “Nadja, Keeley, and The Unicorn”” on Spreaker.

Seriously, I love this new artwork!

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Halloween Decorations 2021!

Stay Puft!

It’s no secret that I love Halloween time. Every year, I decorate inside and outside the same way that we decorate for Christmas. I love how it turned out this year, so I wanted to share some pictures. We had two new additions to the décor: the ridiculous giant inflatable Stay Puft on the deck and a ceramic tree with lights, which is a Halloween version of the traditional ceramic Christmas tree. I love it, but my only issue is that the lights are not very bright. It also runs through batteries really quickly.

New ceramic tree

Anyways, here’s our 2021 Halloween decorations! Do you decorate for Halloween or for fall in general? Let me know!

Posted in Halloween, Home Stuff, Picture Post | Leave a comment

The 2021 Raleigh Meet-Up Weekend!

It’s been two weeks, but I’m finally getting to sit down and recap our awesome Raleigh Podcast Meet-up Weekend! It was a smaller group this year, and we definitely missed our friends who weren’t in attendance, but we had a great weekend. I think I may have even gotten a little bit more sleep than usual…maybe? lol

In keeping with tradition, we met up at Casa Carbone on Friday night for dinner. We had the back room to ourselves, which is always nice because even with a group as “small” as 20 people, we tend to get loud, haha. We laughed, we ate, we took pictures, we drank wine. It was great. And in keeping with tradition, Jay and I headed home first while the group got ice cream at Fresh, a local ice cream shop that’s in the same shopping center as the restaurant. It’s pretty delicious. Once everyone finally arrived, we had our Ted Lasso-finale watch party. I had made my final batch of biscuits to serve while we watched it and was super nervous that people wouldn’t like them. Thankfully, everyone did! They polished them off the same night, haha. Hooray! And, of course, I loved the finale (minus the Keely/Roy stuff at the end, which is crap).

I had told everyone that I really wanted to get a good night’s sleep on Friday night, so they had to be out by midnight. The best-laid plans…

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Posted in Friends, Podcasting Adventures, Weekend | Leave a comment

The Broadcast Ep. 6.15 “Goldie Locks and the Three Meet-ups”


Whew, last week was a really busy week and I’m bummed that I haven’t had a chance to recap the Raleigh meet-up weekend or show you pictures of our Halloween decorations yet. I’ll get there this week; I should be able to hopefully manage my time better. In the meantime, here’s the latest episode of The Broadcast, in which Shandy and I recap the 2021 Raleigh Meet-up and the three of us talk about Ted Lasso. Please note the time info about the Ted Lasso talk in case you don’t want to be spoiled.

Official description:

Amanda got to live a five-year dream while Shandy and Colleen recap the Raleigh 2021 Podcast Meetup. They also talk about the Ted Lasso Season 2 finale.

**Spoiler: The Ted Lasso talk begins immediately after the ad break and lasts for approximately 19 minutes.**

As always, you can listen to the latest episode below or via jayandjack.comiTunesSpreakerSpotifyStitcherGoogle Podcasts, etc. You may have better luck searching for us as “The Broadcast with Amanda, Shandy, and Colleen” since there are a few other shows called The Broadcast.

As always, happy listening, and thanks for listening!

Listen to “Ep. 6.15 “Goldie Locks & The Three Meet-ups”” on Spreaker.

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I Made the Ted Lasso Biscuits!

I made the Ted Lasso biscuits and they didn’t totally suck!

There are a few different recipes out there but I followed this one. All of the recipes call for a lot of butter, which makes sense because it’s really tough to mess up the deliciousness of a recipe that has so much butter, haha. I’ve been practicing over the last month (in preparation for the Season 2 finale episode) and tweaking based on comments and trial and error. After four batches, I think I’ve gotten it down. They’ve been pretty delicious the last two batches. I’m hoping to serve them to everyone during the finale viewing tonight and I’m so nervous! I am not known for being a good baker or chef in general, haha. Wish me luck!

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Posted in Food, TV | 1 Comment

Let the Games Begin!

2021 Raleigh Meetup Weekend had its warm-up tonight. J.P. and Kayla are here! We had dinner with them and Elena. Hooray, it was so great to see them again. We are ready to see all of our podcasting friends after a long 2.5 years. Let’s gooooooooooo!

Posted in Friends, Good times, Podcasting Adventures, Weekend | Leave a comment

Alexa, Stop Ruining the Surprise!

Thanks to supply chain issues, Jay has been ordering Christmas presents for the boys for a few months. Smart, right? Let’s be proactive! But there was one small issue we overlooked…

Note to self: Alexa has a big mouth! I’m sure there’s a setting we can turn off, but this has actually been displaying on the home screen for several weeks, lol. Just a head’s up for anyone else who may be ordering gifts from Amazon in advance – find whatever setting to turn it off! 😛

P.S. Apparently my kids don’t pay much attention to Alexa because they haven’t said anything yet lol.

Posted in Christmas, Ramble/Ponder/Rant | Leave a comment

The Broadcast Ep. 6.13 “Hello, Jason’s O!”

Happy Friday! There’s a new episode of The Broadcast out today. We chit chat a bit and decide that we’re going to record a special (fun) Halloween movies episode on October 19 (for release on October 22) and need some suggestions! Let me know below if you have any. No horror movies, though. We want fun ones like “Hocus Pocus” or “Nightmare Before Christmas.” I’m definitely going to be watching the new Muppets Haunted Mansion movie for it, haha.

Official description:

It’s Jason’s O! Colleen has more Alex stories. Are we biography people? We’re going to dedicate an episode to Halloween movies a la our holiday movie episode and need your suggestions by October 15!

As always, you can listen to the latest episode below or via jayandjack.comiTunesSpreakerSpotifyStitcherGoogle Podcasts, etc. You may have better luck searching for us as “The Broadcast with Amanda, Shandy, and Colleen” since there are a few other shows called The Broadcast.

As always, happy listening, and thanks for listening!

Listen to “Ep. 6.13 “Hello, Jason’s O!”” on Spreaker.

Posted in The Broadcast | Leave a comment