It is a beautiful Saturday morning! Just wanted to share more of the fall flowers from Phipps Conservatory with you. Enjoy!

There was also electric trains and village scenery set up, it was fantastic. I will do a post with photos of those also as well as some other fall flowers.

We have lots of work to do around the house today. We are getting ready to have some painting done and will be scraping old paint off that has started to peal. I also have a painting I need to get started on today as well. Busy, busy, busy. It seems that's how our weeks are these days; all work no play. But that's okay it has to be done and I always feel good when its finished.

A dear friend surprised me with a wonderful birthday adventure today. She arrived at 7:50 a.m. to take me out for breakfast at another friends home, it was delightful! She had the table all decorated with fall colors and special treats. In the center of the table was a beautiful yellow mum with deep red stripes in the petals dressed in pretty fall wrappings, there were tiny (real) pumpkins all decked out in hodge podge, and a tiny camera necklace. We had tea, almond biscotti, quiche and hot homemade applesauce, it was sooooo yummy! We left from there and headed to Pittsburgh for the fall flower show at Phipps Conservatory. I got some beautiful photos to share with you below. So enjoy! It was a fantastic day!

My hubby and I have gotten back into bike riding; we both loved it as kids and younger adults and haven't been on them in several years, since my early 30s. So we decided to invest our anniversary
funds in new bikes and try out some of the rails for trails in our area. We would like to do some traveling over the next few summers to some of the places on our bucket lists and having bikes along with us would be a great way to enjoy a few of those spots.

The first trail we tried was the Butler to Freeport trail, it is pretty nice but I would advise starting on the southern end and head toward Butler. In doing this, you're biking the slight incline first, then its down hill pretty much all the way back. These pictures are on our favorite trail from Foxburg to Parker which is a beautiful 5 mile round trip trek along the Alleghany River (2.5 miles up and back). Eventually we'll have an opportunity to do the Emlenton trail which we're saving for spring.

The top picture on the left I took just before we headed down the trial. Below that, Daryl is riding down the trail a head of me. About a mile from the trail entrance we pulled over a short distance past the bridge so Daryl could make an adjustment to his new seat and I took some pictures. You can't really see it too well, but my bike is parked just in front of his. Behind me was the bridge, the photo of it to the right.

It was really windy that evening and that we struggled against it on the way back. It was tough riding. I enjoyed the ride, it was a beautiful evening in spite of the wind.