Friday Favorites

Hello and welcome to my Friday Favorites! Today I am linking up with Andrea! 

1. I haven't gotten any flowers for May yet, but my April flowers sure were pretty! I like when I can find a bouquet that is colorful and has a variety of flowers and greenery! These were perfect for Spring!

2. I made this cake last month and it was so delicious! (I used this recipe) It's a lemon cake with raspberry cream cheese frosting between the layers and cream cheese frosting on the outside. And I piped some cherry blossoms on top. My mom asked for a lemon raspberry bundt cake for mother's day, so I'll be making that this weekend!

3. I got a wrong number phone call and the transcription made me laugh. I don't know why it says "I hope you have a good day in Spanish." The guy wasn't speaking Spanish and I can't tell from what he said where the "in Spanish" part came from. Anyways, I just thought it was kind of funny!

4. Getting my order of coffee from Peet's was definitely a favorite! I'm pretty picky about my coffee but having a good cup of coffee every day is always something to look forward to!

5. In case you missed it, on Monday I shared a post about what I've currently been up to, and on Wednesday I shared my April Photo A Day pictures!

Hope you have a great weekend! Do you have any plans for the weekend? We are supposed to get some severe thunderstorms today so I need to run some errands and do some grocery shopping before the storms start!

Friday Favorites

Hello and welcome to my Friday Favorites! Today I am linking up with Andrea!

1. A few weeks ago I made some raspberry sauce and a white almond cake with raspberry curd filling! It was delicious! We had a 5-pound bag of raspberries that had thawed and then refrozen, which resulted in a 5-pound frozen solid block of berries that wouldn't come apart. We had intended on using them for smoothies, but that wasn't going to work any more so I managed to get some of it apart and made the sauce and curd with it. It worked out really well! 

2. I picked these flowers up from Trader Joe's for the month. I was glad to find some that were kind of fall-colored!

3. On Wednesday, my mom and I drove up to the DuPont State Recreational Forest to go hiking. We hiked the Triple Falls hike again, but this time managed to find Hooker falls (which we missed last time because the trail head was across the parking lot and not attached to the main trail like we thought it was.) We also hiked to another waterfall, Bridal Veil falls. So we saw a total of 4 waterfalls on our hike!

We had hoped the trees would be a little more colorful but it's still a little early to see the fall colors here. I found another hike I want to do soon when the fall colors have reached their peak.

We hiked a total of either 8.3 or 8.8 miles depending on which phone you looked at. (Not sure why there was a discrepancy since we were together the whole time.) Anyways, it was a long hike with a lot of very steep uphill hiking. I should probably start playing around with the AllTrails app since I think it tracks elevation gain and stuff? I'm not sure but I'll have to check into it more. I've used it to find trails but that's about it so far.

I have a lot more pictures to share but here are a few I took on my phone.

Hooker Falls.

Triple Falls.

High Falls.

Bridal Veil Falls.

4. In case you missed it, on Monday I shared our visit to the Norfolk Botanical garden to see the roses and Washed Ashore exhibit, and on Wednesday I shared my September Photo A Day pictures!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Friday Favorites

Hello and welcome to my Friday Favorites! Today I am linking up with Andrea!

1. If you read Monday's post you saw that we moved down to the Greenville/Spartanburg area of South Carolina. After we got here we decided to go downtown and walk around a bit. The downtown here seems really nice. The Reedy river flows through downtown and you can see a nice view of the Reedy river falls by way of the Liberty bridge.

2. Croissants have been something I've wanted to try baking for a while and I finally decided to give them a try! They are quite a process as you have lots of waiting. You have to let it rise multiple times, then once you add your butter block you have to close the butter block in, roll it out, fold, let rest in the fridge, and roll and fold two additional times. Then I let it rest overnight and cut, shape, and bake them. I did 6 croissants and 6 pain au chocolat. 

As I was cutting them out I knew they seemed awfully big, but I thought maybe I should just stick with what the recipe said. But sure enough they puffed up a lot in the oven and were just much larger than I would have liked. So in turn they didn't bake as well in the middle as they would have were they smaller. So I know for next time to just trust my own instinct and not the recipe! 

But even though they were not quite what they should have been, I was still pretty pleased with how they turned out! They were light and flakey and tasted so good!

3. My mom and I have been having a hard time trying to find a place to go for walks as our neighborhood is pretty small and all the hiking is about 45 minutes away. So one Sunday we drove to a small town nearby and walked around. We came across a frozen custard place and decided to give it a try! I got the black raspberry which was very good!

4. Last weekend my mom and I went downtown for the Fall for Greenville event. A bunch of local restaurants had booths set up where you could get different foods to try. Since we are new to the area we thought it would be a great way to try out some local restaurants. You had to buy tickets, and then the tickets could be redeemed for different food items. 

The portions seemed kind of small which was fine since my mom and I were sharing everything and we wanted to try several different places. We weren't really impressed with anything we got, but it was nice to go out and do something as we don't typically go to stuff like this.

We tried blackberry beef tips with whipped Yukon gold potatoes (beef was tender but you couldn't taste the blackberry at all. And the potatoes weren't bad.), sparkling blackberry lemonade (wasn't sparkling like it was supposed to be and you also couldn't taste blackberry or lemon at all which was disappointing.) We also tried a slice of pepperoni pizza (just ok), beignets, teriyaki chicken and rice, and birthday cake gelato (this was good!). 

As we were finishing up a burst of rain came out of nowhere and it just started pouring! There wasn't anywhere to go so everyone had to just stand there and get drenched! Not a great way to end the day!

5. In case you missed it, on Monday I shared a Currently post and then on Wednesday I shared my August Photo A Day pictures!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Friday Favorites

Hello and welcome to my Friday Favorites! Figured I'd change it up a bit this week and go along with the Friday Favorites since 1, the official Five for Friday link-up went away a long time ago and 2, I only have four things for today! Today I am linking up with Andrea!

1. My mom and I have visited the botanical garden a couple of times over the last several weeks and it's always fun to see what is blooming! We've really enjoyed the cherry blossoms and the crabapple blossoms! I have quite a few more pictures I'll be sharing soon!

2. I ended up with two bouquets of flowers for this month. I bought the ones on the left at Trader Joe's but they really didn't have anything that was more colorful for spring, and then I ended up buying the ones on the right at Wegman's because I thought they were better suited for spring. Anyways, I just really enjoy having flowers around!

3. So I finally started playing Animal Crossing. My brother and sister have been playing since it first came out last year and I've been hesitant to get it since I wasn't sure how much I would like it. But I got a Switch for my birthday last year and after paying through Zelda Breath of the Wild again I really wanted a new game to play!

It's been pretty fun to play! I now see why everyone went crazy for it when it came out at the beginning of the pandemic last year! It's just a really fun, cute game. This is my little house so far. 

4. In case you missed it, on Monday I shared my March Photo A Day pictures and on Wednesday I shared Part 1 of our visit to the National Arboretum to see the cherry blossoms!

Hope you have a great weekend!