Windows 7 help with mounting windows 7 iso to usb flash drive

ok guys i'm a new user and i would like some help with mounting windows 7 to a usb flash drive... i am wiping my laptop and installing windows 7 and would like to use a flash drive to load the os to the laptop... i'm not sure if the usb drive would be called a boot drive... to put it simply, i want to use the flash drive in place a cd disk to boot in the os... any suggestions? how would i do this?