Saturday, June 21, 2014

Because...SUMMER (Also--my ONE CAKE for this year)

Finally!  
My one big cake adventure for the year--more on that, below...
Wait.  It is the weekend right now, isn't it?  I just realized I honestly don't actually know what day it is.  *stares into space*  Saturday? Yeah, that seems right.  
See? Why would I be inside?  (Louis and Jack in the rose garden)
Moving on--

I probably won't post as much, so I'm just checking in to say that I'm fine. (I know you were putting your entire summer on holding wondering about that, so yes...rest easy, my dears).  I don't even get online much in the summer, because I'm outside, so, for all my fellow bloggers who I love to read--I'm not ignoring you, I'm saving the reading for later.  When the sun's not out.  Which is like 80% of the year, here.

Not that I won't still pop in to rant about one thing or another.  Like right now, I am driving my second rental car this summer, and I can just FEEL a "car review" post brewing soon.  If you're a Mazda 5 lover, you may need to look away for parts of that one.

If you know me, you know I pretty much live for summer.  My year revolves like this:  Holidays, that icky cold gap between the holidays and my birthday, waiting for summer, SUMMER, summer's almost over, I wish it was still summer, almost holidays, and back to-- holidays.  


The sun finally came back out this morning, the BBQ is out, the garden is peaking with the first giant wave of my zillions of antique roses, and I've spent the last three weeks enjoying having my brother and my mom here, watching our oldest graduate, knitting hats, studying French (for hours every day, for real...like where you actually speak it), and reading Utopia in the hammock.  Not even an e-book.  A real book.  With paper pages and everything.  

Also, I made the cake (at top) for our school's graduation, which was absolutely one of my funnest cakes ever!
A little closer view of my 3-D sugar tractor and palette 
All the details were made of sugar.  The whole thing is airbrushed metallic gold, which didn't translate well in the photo.  The kids each got a specific sugar item sculpted to match their interests, so I made a tractor (with wheels that turn, y'all), a palette for the grad going to fashion school, a film reel for the film school student, the British flag for the one going abroad, and a hand-painted sugar bagpipe for the girl who was leaving for Ireland and Scotland the day after graduation.  I can't tell you how fun this one was to make, and it was a privilege to do this for my daughter and her friends.  
Also--if you are interested in history/politics/society and you haven't read Utopia, you should check it out.  I'm a history freak, especially 16th century England and France, so I'm not sure why I haven't read this yet.  It's fascinating to me that this book was written in the early 1500s, but if you don't know that, you could easily forget that it's not sometimes talking about current trends in human nature and government.  Not at all what I expected.  (Note to self--I can also see where some of those hippie communes I remember from the 70s got their ideas.  It was just a book, people.)

So.  Here's to forgetting what day it is...for at least another 60 days, then we send one to college and one back to school, and the whole thing starts over again.

*muah*





 

8 comments:

  1. You are officially the best mom EVER for making that cake! It is beautiful and I love how you incorporated everyone's interests/plans into it to personalize it.

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    1. Thanks! It was really fun to be able to use my talent as a gift, and the kids were so appreciative and sweet. They each took their *thing* home too, as a keepsake.

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  2. I love the cake so much and am so glad you posted this!! Have fun out in the sun...I'll take you when I can get you. :)

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    1. :) I will! and I'll be looking forward to catching up on my reading when I get inside.

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  3. Summer used to be my favorite time of the year too and I think it will again in the future, but because the weather here is so freakin hot in the summer it's kind of a pain. It's not ideal for being outdoors with a 1 year old and a 3.5 year old when it's 90+ degrees with high humidity. Counting down the days until the cooler temps come back so I can take these babies OUTSIDE! Enjoy your summer!

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    1. I hear ya! We're in the north, so we survive winter (and cold wet springs)...and wait for those few, short, perfect days of summer. But I have friends in Florida who say they have the opposite problem--they survive the heat and humidity of summer by staying INside and waiting for...winter.

      We used to live in southern Oregon, too, and I remember waiting til it COOLED OFF to less than 95 in the evenings, so we could go outside.

      I just wish we had a longer "nice" season here. :P

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  4. ...and the cake tasted even better than it looked!!! Good job.
    Love, Mom

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    1. It WAS pretty crazy delicious. I impressed even myself... lol

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