Five for Friday

Hello and welcome to my Five for Friday! I am linking up with Cup of Tea , Bright on a Budget, Della Devoted, and BYBMG!

1. I ended up doing SO much cooking and baking this week! I made gluten free and regular granola, gluten free cookie bars for my brother as well as regular chocolate chip cookies. And then we had a guest over for dinner Wednesday night and had chicken pot pie and chocolate cake. And I also helped my mom make a butternut squash and quinoa soup for my brother. Needless to say I need a break and it's going to be easy dinners for the next couple of nights! 

(I actually washed up a bunch of lettuce yesterday so we're having salads for dinner.)

2. Our guest Wednesday night was a friend of my brothers from school. My brother did a study abroad a couple of years ago, and since he did that he can participate in the buddy program at his university. So when international students come they partner you up with them to show them around campus and town and stuff. Last year my brother was a buddy to a student from India. They remained friends and he just got back, and, since it was his birthday we had him over for dinner.

He brought us back this really nice shawl from India. The fabric is really soft. It was definitely a nice and unexpected gift! 

3. Since Wednesday was national book lover's day, I thought I would share what I'm currently reading! This book came just in time (it was released Tuesday!) and I'm really enjoying it so far! Besides the fact it's from a great author, I love that it's set in the PNW! What are you currently reading?

4. Has anyone else been getting a ton of ads on Facebook lately? Like every third or fourth post is an ad. Pinterest and Instagram have gotten really bad as well! I am SO sick of seeing ads all the time! I generally will click to hide them, but I'm wondering if that is just a way to confirm to them that I'm actually seeing them? I'm halfway tempted to mark every ad as inappropriate just so maybe they'll go away! I've tried not clicking out of them and it doesn't seem to make any difference.

5. I ended up only getting one other post up this week as my Wednesday post just did not come together in time. But I shared some pictures of our hike up in Stanley.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Hiking in Stanley

Last month we made a last-minute decision to drive up to Stanley, Idaho to go for a hike. My brother and sister both had a day off, so it was the perfect chance to go! 

The drive up took us about 3 hours despite the fact it was only like 130 miles. The road was SO twisty and went up and down and there were spots where you would have to slow to 20 mph, and then speed up and slow down. Needless to say I was quite nauseous! And I was glad my brother was doing the driving! 

Once we finally started getting near Stanley, we were really surprised to find people everywhere! This was the weekend before the Fourth of July, but we had no idea so many people would be up there! After a bit of driving we finally found a spot to eat our lunch at the trail-head. 

We loaded up a backpack with some water bottles and set off on our hike! The hike was fairly easy but there was lots to see! We saw trees and mountains and wild flowers. We didn't see much wildlife except for a very excited chipmunk who chattered very noisily at us as we walked by! And we also saw a bunch of antelope on the drive back. It was all quite pretty! 

We eventually reached a clearing with kind of a swampy area, that signaled the end of that part of the trail. The view was pretty but the mosquitoes were TERRIBLE. Just awful. The closer we got to that marshy area the worse they got. So we didn't stick around long.

We turned around and started walking back to the car. It was getting  kind of late by the time we reached the car, so we drove around a little by the lake just to check it out before heading back home. We took a different route home, one that took us near Sun Valley, and that route was way less treacherous! I wish we had took that route up, but we didn't know.

Overall we enjoyed the hike and it was nice to get away for the day and see some nice scenery! 

Five for Friday

Hello and welcome to my Five for Friday! I am linking up with Cup of Tea , Bright on a Budget, Della Devoted, and BYBMG!

1. My mom and I were at Joann's recently and we stumbled across their letter boards. I've been wanting one for a while and my mom ended up getting one. I was trying to find a quote to put on it this morning and everything I came up with I was one letter short, so I went with this one courtesy of Dumbledore. ;)

I can't decide if I like the black boards with white letters or the white boards with black letters. Do you have one? 

2. I am so over summer. As if the hot weather wasn't bad enough, now we are getting a bunch of smoke. I mean, it's pretty bad when the entire forecast is just haze! Although usually we spend the entire summer with smoke and haze, so to get a fire this late in the season is not normal. I am just so ready for fall. Summer is definitely my least favorite season.

3. I came across this list of 37 Things You'll Regret When You're Old and I though it was pretty interesting!

4. I'm a big fan of podcasts. I'm not really one of those people who has to have music on all the time, I would rather listen to a podcast. My favorite podcast has been Up & Vanished. The last episodes aired Monday and I'm a little sad that it's over! Do you listen to podcasts?

5. In case you missed it, I shared some pictures from my trip to Washington, and I also shared some of my recent beauty purchases!

Hope you have a great weekend!

So I forgot it was High Five For Friday Friendship Day, so to add my own little story: I started linking up to meet other bloggers and Jess has been the one blogger who has consistently commented and we've commented back and forth for years now! And I've been getting to know Crystal lately. There have been other bloggers who have stopped by and it's just so nice to be able to communicate like that!