Pinterest!

Alright...ALRIGHT!!! I will admit it...I really love pinterest.  Why do I love it? Oh...I don't know...maybe for reasons like THIS!!


And THIS!!!!

AND THIS!!!!


Ok...ok...in short...Pinterest allows me to find silly pictures in one spot without having to spend hours on google looking up different themes....I can now just spend those hours on Pinterest...find LOTS OF GREAT THINGS. 

I have to preface this blog post with this.  I am not a naturally crafty/bakey person...so yes...I am always awed by things like this....


and this....

and...this....


why yes, Pinterest...how did you know I've been DREAMING of a gingerbread/pumpkin/whipped cream triffle my whole life??

Anywho...long story short...I have felt the need, for the past few weeks, to become more domestic.  Why? Oh...I don't know...maybe because when my mom was my age, she had five kids already.  Maybe because, most of my friends and sisters have or are having babies and are moving on in their domesticated life-styles.  Who said you have to have a family to want to bake?? Huh?

Ok...Alright!  I may be a little sensitive about the fact that I ate chips with melted cheese on top for dinner two days in a row.  I might be a little tender about the fact that I fill my cart at Target with meals-for-one...every week...


So maybe I want to change that a little bit. Maybe I thought I would try some of the recipes that I constantly pin on Pinterest....Starting with...

Blogging world...meet Reeses Smore's Bars...



They look delicious right? Nice and tasty...You can tell that there are reeses in there...You can tell that there is fluffy white marshmellow fluff.  You can tell that it is delicious...And OH!!! I so wanted to impress my family and friends at the Fourth of July party...I had a daydream as I was whipping them up, of everyone devouring them and asking for more. I dreamed of everyone saying..."Why is Brittany Bly not married yet??! CLEARLY she is a domesticated Goddess."

But alas my friends...I did dream in vain.  Little did I know that creul fate had different plans for me....I made it VERY clear if baking were indeed the reason why people are in relationships...I am VERY single for this sole reason...

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Yes...they were disgusting.  And when I pulled them out of the oven...I looked at them in horror, realizing that they definitely did NOT turn out right.  My second thought was...How the hell am I going to get these bars out of this pan??? They looked very melted into the damned thing...and to make matters worse...the pan was my roommate's...that's how un-bakey I am.

The only good thing that came out of this whole situation was that when I went to cut into the stupid "bars" the knife wouldn't even cut to the bottom carmalized disaster, so when I tried to pull the knife out of the" bars"...the whole thing slid right out of the pan! haha...Talk about miracles...

I hung my hypothetical apron up for another day.  A little humbled...but not compltely defeated, I pondered on the situation thinking...I have failed pinterest. 

Saturday rolled around and that baking desire boiled in my heart again....I decided to try once more...

This was my goal...

Banana Bars....with BROWN butter frosting!!

Oh delicious...You can almost smell them, can't you?

Well, long story short, (because I am tired of getting distracted by Pinterest everytime I have to look up a new picture...) I was determined to redeem myself.  I longed to say to my friends, "Oh hey, do you want a Banana Bar?" and have them try it and melt into the bliss of consuming the baked ecstasy.

WELLL...It was a success!! I redeemed myself!!

True, they don't look exactly like it...but they tasted SOOOO amazingly good.

So, all in all. I am not going to give up on being a great baker! It may not come naturally to me...but I really do love cooking/baking for others!

On a side note...

Other reasons I love Pinterest, It allows me to indulge in obsessions...

point and case?

Harry Potter

Jimmy Stewart

Joshua Jackson

Hemsworth squared...

Just Chris....

aaaand John Krasinski...

And more of Joshua Jackson....

Harry Potter/Hunger Games mashups?!

Aaaaaaand...scene... :)

Happy pinning!

Part 3: Unnatural encounters with dead birds

It is time to finish this 3 post series due to the fact that the universe is really coming against me.  Yesterday, I went into work early and as I was sitting in the computer room with one of the clients, I heard a thud against the window....I thought..."hmmm, that is weird. It sounds like a bird hitting the glass."  I shook it off  then about ten seconds later, I heard it again.  I turned around and saw a robin flying into the glass!  It did this about 5 more times and each subsequent time, I started freaking out a little bit more.  The last time, I said outloud..."What the heck is going on?!" To which my co-worker, who had snuck in to the room with me unawares goes..."What are you talking about?" I said, pretty hysterically..."A bird keeps flying into the window!!" He kind of looked at me and then took his kid to the wii.  Of course, the bird did NOT fly into the window again, because it knew that someone else would have to witness the fact that they are PLOTTING against me!


Today, as I was checking the mail, I looked down and there was a dead bird lying at the base of the mailbox.  What the eff? Seriously. I feel like this is getting to be very ridiculous. 


So...here we are.  I see dead birds.  Not like Hayley Joel Osmend in sixth sense where they are ghosts...more like..I always see dead birds.  I can count the times I have seen a dead bird while running.  Five in the last two years.  I am not lying...and I am not exhaggerating to any extent!  That is just while running!
People think that I am ridiculous for all of the rules that I have when driving.  If one window is down...the other one has to be too so that if a bird flies into one window, it can easily fly out the other instead of hitting one and dying....or this happening...


I have gone through drills with passengers on long trips about grabbing the wheel if I hit a bird on the highway.  Brandon is an expert.  We joked about this, but it came in handy on our trip from Utah to Minnesota.  We went over the plan and laughed very hard as we practiced him taking the wheel.  What happened approximately 10 hours later? My parents hit a bird in front of us and feathers flew all over the place.  I knew what had happened right away; Brandon looked at me and slowly took the wheel. 


(Literally don't know what I would do if I came to my car and saw this...I would have to walk to work.) 
I see them on the side of the road while driving. (Geese and robins are my favorite...Not).  I see them when I'm walking downtown.  I see them when taking kids for a walk around the building.  (then I make my co-workers clean them up because I can't stand it)

Worst driving memory: A hobbling bird that had been hit getting obliterated by a truck and seeing feathers exploding in my rear view mirror.  If I had left work 30 seconds earlier, I would not have seen it. 

What mainly happens is a physical freak out. I flap my hands and plug my ears. I will usually scream a small little cry and hop/run away very quickly. If I am driving, I scream for a long time while physically freaking out.
Here is a picture list of what happens to me:

initial..."Is that a...?


well...maybe it is a piece of paper or...a feather duster...ah crap...not again...

uhhh uhhhhhaaaaah!!!!

AHHHH (maniacal laughing/crying/whimpering) GROSSSSSSS!!!!


Ok...breath.....

It I don't look at it, then I will be ok...

Well, I have to make sure I don't step on it...

STILL SCARY!!!!!

AHHHHHHH!!!


If I plug my ears...and grasp my face, I will be fine....I just need to...

RUN AWAY!!

So there it is....I am afraid of birds...alive and dead.  For ligitimate reasons.  I hope to one day be over this fear...as it is my greatest desire to survive the apocalypse and I am sure there will be lots of dead birds everywhere...or at least I will have to hunt birds and clean them...However...until then...Here is what I truley believe....

Part 2: Birds dead OR alive...in my house

A traumatic thing happened to me last night.  I dreamt of one of my worst fears happening. Me hitting a bird with my car and being able to see it on the front hood and also not really being able to do anything about it.  It was horrible. Upon waking up from this frightening nightmare...I was reminded as I listened to the baby birds that have hatched inside my wall, that I still have a duty to my blog readers to get my story out there.  The universe is collaborating against me...or for me...(I don't really know anymore) to get this phobia taken care of.
I do have to say that I don't think I will be able to do Part 2 on my own.  I'm going to need a little help from my friends...aka,

Chris Hemsworth/Thor....

and Joshua Jackson.

Alright...some of you may want to stop reading the post after those two pictures.

My second encounter with birds, which has lead to my crippling fear of dead ones happened to be when they started showing up around my house as a child.  We had a few cats when I was a child.  One of the wonderful things about cats is that when they love you, they leave you gifts. These gifts can be any number of things.  Mice, frogs, birds...etc.  My cat liked to leave birds on the doorstep.


I really just tried to type in dead birds and could not look at the pictures...I am sorry!!! not that anyone is really that upset about it....but serious...GROSS!!

Let's just say I got a bird in my bed one time.  Horrifying.

We also have a wood burning stove at my house.  Every summer, when our stove was not in regular use...birds would make nests in the chimney and then fall into the smoke stack...thus making for a loud and drawn out, flapping death. 

When the death was over...Joe, (my dad) would often open up the stove and take out what was left.  One particular time, I scooting into the other room as he did this, he opened up the stove top and said..."Oh!" as two tiny birds flew out and into our basement.  All of us ran around the room screaming and freaking out as these two birds flapped around our basement and our dogs and cats went wild.  I don't really remember how we got the birds out of the house, but I don't think I was a part of it. 

 My roommate Laural and I have an agreement...I will kill all spiders if she will check the stove everytime we make a fire for dead birds.  She has had to clean one out already...

The whole ordeal of birds being in the house reminds me of two of my favorite shows...(Sorry for the bad quality)

This summer, as I was helping my brother clean out his room, he said very quickly..."Uh, don't come in here." I said while walking in "Why, is there...OH MY GOSH!!!" and froze as I saw the dead bird our cat-like dog CHLOE had brought into his room as a gift. 

I can't bring myself to search for or post pictures of dead birds in people's houses...but I am sure that you can all imagine what this might look like...I do not suggest typing "dead birds" into the search box....

This concludes (due to the fact that I can't post pictures of dead birds in houses) the second part of my Bird Phobia posts. 

Soon to come our final installment...
Part 3: An unatural number of encounters with dead birds.

Part One: Where the fear began

I know I've discussed my phobia of birds in nearly all of my previous blog posts somewhere...but enough is enough.  I believe that it is time for me to finally talk about this fear in great detail from the begining.  To warn all of you out there...there may be some disturbing images throughout this blog.  I suppose I should just warn myself because I'm the only one really afraid of birds.  AND, I've decided to do this in several different posts.

The beginning
When I was young, at a very young age, my cousin and I were in my backyard when out of no where a blue jay flew out of the tree and started flapping/attacking us.  I know that I am not the only one in this world who is afraid of birds...take a look at these little gems that I found...on google.

Look at her/his face...this ungenderable person is clearly terrified and probably will be for the rest of its life...


This poor little Asian child....with her teddy bear muffler/skarf will not be consoled after this...she is surrounded. And those pigeons will not let her go.


This poor child is being pooped on...POOPED ON!!!! and by the looks of the package of bread crumbs in his hand...he was trying to feed the damned thing and it thanked him by crapping on him several times...



Crows are the worst...and I think this is from the movie, The Birds.


Canadian Geese are a runner up to the Crow for the worst bird. That guy is riding a BIKE. That goose doesn't care.  He still thinks he owns the bike path....because he is a giant disgusting poop machine that steals children's lunches.


This magestic eagle is attacking a camera man. 



This guy is not afraid to show how terrified he is. And he has tattoos all over his body...



Another child trying to feed the birds....


just to summarize...


To be continued....
Part Two: Birds: Dead OR Alive in my house...