Here's another freezer paper stenciled t-shirt that I made for the Little Man a while back. Its a stylized version of the Pittsburgh skyline found here.

A Long Walk in the Woods

A couple weeks ago, my husband and I decided to take a short little trip that was supposed to be a nice hike through a wetlands area and end up at a waterfall. It was something that we had read about in Pursuits magazine (a magazine about Pennsylvania designed to get you to visit PA) and since it was near the outlets in Grove City as well, we thought we'd go up, take a nice walk, take some pictures and hit the outlets before heading home.

I'm not sure what's wrong with us, but we didn't read the article as closely as we should have, apparently. We knew it was about 3 miles back to the falls, but it seemed to take forever and for some reason, I was thinking a 3 mile loop. The wetlands, while interesting, were not an hour's worth of interesting. We saw lots of redwinged blackbirds and one crane.


The Little Man behaved wonderfully. He doesn't mind just looking around at everything usually. Dutch gave up after awhile and insisted on being carried. We walked and walked and wondered where in the world the waterfall was. Finally, we came to the main road. Where was the waterfall? Did we miss it?


I got a little bit of cell reception, so I called Mom & Dad and asked them to read the article to me again. Turns out it was just down the main road a little ways and behind an antique shop. The walk through the wetlands was completely unnecessary and most definitely not a loop. We had, however, parked our car back at the other end of this loooooong trail and it was getting dark, so we turned around and made the hour long walk back to the car.

By then, of course, it was time to feed the Little Man again so we gave up on the waterfall altogether. I was tired of walking and lugging around the camera and the dog and The Man had carried the Little Man the whole way. We were both starving. So we popped in to the outlets long enough to look at Carters and decide that the clothes were entirely too expensive for such a little person and we got fast food for dinner.


Moral of the story is read the entire article closely. Next time, at least, we know where the dumb waterfall is and we won't have to walk through the boring wetlands to get to it. At least the weather was nice and the trail was pretty.

Labor Day

Panther Hollow Bridge

I never seem to get around to posting anything about the 'Burgh. I guess its hard to tote a camera around to places sometimes. Must work on that.

Panther Hollow Lake

We didn't do too much for Labor Day. We did go for a walk in Panther Hollow in Schenley Park in the hopes that it would be fun for us and get Dutch some exercise. The little guy is a trooper. He doesn't give up. I have the feeling that he would walk until he collapsed if we asked him too. I think it was the first walk we've taken him on that truly wore him out. Mostly he comes back and still wants to play. Darn dog.

Panther Hollow Lake

After the walk, we visited a friend who just bought his first house and stopped in at the Rib Festival near Heinz Field. Apparently this is a celebration of the kickoff of the football season? Who knew? I guess we don't normally get out much on weekends with The Man's schedule and we tend to miss stuff like this. Anyway, they had tons of food and it all smelled heavenly. They had concerts going on all weekend too. It was a great weekend for it. We picked up our ribs and headed home, since we had Dutch with us and they didn't seem to be letting dogs into the festival.

The Point

New Baby Elephant at the Zoo

Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium is celebrating the birth of the first of two baby elephants expected to be born this month. Its a girl and her name has not been announced yet.

from Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium

Check out the video of her learning to walk. Cute.

from Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium

More Video from WTAE here

Blueberries!

Yesterday, we went out to Paskorz Farm to pick blueberries again. The berries are just starting to ripen, so you have to pick around the green ones a bit, but we managed to get 20 lbs. Yup. 20 lbs. Yay! I think next week would be an ideal time to go again, since they will continue to ripen and maybe the picking will be faster. I like going out there because it is rather quiet and the blueberries are nice and big and just the right amount of sweet & tart that I love.

I just tossed them into quart freezer bags - I got 12 quarts - and they are great for just scooping out into a glass and eating them frozen throughout the rest of the year.

We may have to go back and try to get some raspberries soon too. Yum.

Strawbabies!

We have strawberries. Yay! We tried to find a cheaper place to find strawberries this year, but no such luck. We gave in and went to Trax Farms. I was hoping that we could pick some of our own with the little time that we had, but it started pouring down rain just as we arrived. I went ahead and bought some already picked because The Man insisted. He hates picking them.

I bought 17 quarts. Eek. That was ridiculously expensive. I did find some cute ruffled terracotta pots and had to have those as well. I resisted buying any more flowers, though, and that's a feat, since I have a terrible weak spot for flowers! They even had some of the metal planters like we bought for Mom in Springfield and I managed to walk away. Oh, and there's an antique section there as well and I found an all-white embroidered tablecloth with lace that I resisted buying. Such restraint I have!

I spent the afternoon taking the tops off and I froze most of them whole to use later for jam or for making smoothies. I love throwing some whole frozen strawberries in a blender with yogurt and milk and pineapples or bananas or whatever. I'm craving a strawberry rhubarb pie just now. Must have a least one pie, right?

Cr*ig'slist Find

I have been playing around looking at Cr*ig'slist lately and there seems to be a lot of stuff. If I were to buy a dining room table for just starting out, there's some good deals to be had. Its not really what I'm looking for now, but it would have worked before. Oh well. I was tempted to buy a few different tables for using as work tables in the basement, but The Man had the back of our truck full of other junk at the time, so I missed out.

This time, however, I found something I like and I managed to convince The Man to get them for me. Yay! They were a pair of chairs that belonged to an older lady and her daughter was selling them. I like them. They are a bit worn on the velvet, but not bad. They are nice and sturdy and heavier than you'd think.

He doesn't quite understand the appeal, but I like them.

Oh, funny thing. They were selling several items of furniture for her mother, and one of them was a lift chair. For some reason, when we showed up for "the chairs", her husband assumed we meant the lift chair, even thought we'd e-mailed about these ones. We had to laugh at that. We're 29 and 30. Not really shopping for the lift chair, sorry! I think he was just hoping to get rid of the thing and wasn't really thinking.

Oh, and I'm wondering about painting the wood either black or white. What do you think? Or should I just leave them alone? I have no idea where I'm putting them right now. I just kinda liked them.

Spring Show at Phipps

We managed to get to the Spring Flower Show at Phipps Conservatory the other day. I enjoy going there to spend some time with flowers and take some pictures. We ended up having to go on a Saturday, which I wouldn't necessarily recommend, since more people are generally out and about then and I'm so not a people person. But it wasn't too bad. The flowers were lovely, so here they are. Enjoy!

The Man's Day

Yesterday was the Man's 30th birthday. To celebrate, he had eggs, toast, bacon and sausage for breakfast. Then there was pizza for dinner and a hockey game. The game was fun and the Pens won. We even picked up Malkin bobbleheads. I'm not a huge hockey fan, but he enjoyed the game.

Then we came home and watched a movie and had birthday cake. Very exciting day, I know, but that's his idea of a good day. Very healthy. He did redeem himself by getting on the treadmill today, however.

Love you, babe!

Christmas Decorating

We finally went and got our Christmas tree this week. Well, it was Monday, so I'm a bit slow in posting. We went to Nutbrown's Christmas Tree Farm. It was nice to find a local place and cut our own for a change. The past couple years, we just didn't know where to look and hadn't spent much time looking either. I think we got a Concolor fir. Its different. The needles are long and soft. I hung up some little wreaths in our front windows and a few on the kitchen cabinets and decorated the mantel. Its looking a little more like Christmas here!