See You Next Year, July, and a Bling-y Silver Cake

Is it just me, or did July just pass by in the blink of an eye?!  Here it is, August already, we're in the downward slide toward back-to-school, and I can barely remember what even happened in July, although it was plenty!  If I can do a quick re-cap from looking through my pictures, here is how our July went.

Canada Day, followed by the 4th of July, which Stacey celebrated simultaneously (much to my delight) at the Canada Day parade here in our town.

A quick long-weekend trip to Andrew's folks' cottage up north, which we are fortunate to get to take advantage of once or twice a year.

Yours truly's birthday, celebrated with an ultra-fabulous chocolate cake, homemade by Andrew and the girls.

A surprise weekend trip to Detroit to see Jimmy Buffett in concert at Comerica Park, which was ridiculously fun and brought back great memories of many New Years' trips to Key West in the early 2000s.  The best part about Jimmy Buffett is that he performs barefoot.  Livin' in the islands, even in the middle of Detroit.

July was capped off with a quick trip to Boston to visit some dear Boston College roommates and friends, and to have our girls meet their kids - some for the first time.  Swan boats, Make Way for Ducklings statue, carousels, splashing in the Frog Pond, a BC campus visit, catching up with friends, and ice cream - lots of ice cream - we crammed as much as we could into our few short days there. 

As the days roll by and the girls are getting more fun and interesting (and self-sufficient), I am becoming more and more grateful to Andrew that I can be home with them during these couple of years before they are both in school full-time.  Time certainly is fleeting, isn't it?

July also brought my in-laws' wedding anniversary, and Stacey inspired their cake.  She has been pining away for sparkly silver dragées recently, so I decided to bling out a little 6-inch cake with them.  Lots of them.

She also chose fluffy pink strawberry whipped cream to fill the three layers of vanilla cake.

I knew Stacey wanted a super shiny, sparkly cake, so I broke up the silver dragées with vertical strips of fondant that I cut with a roller and spray-painted with silver Americolor food coloring spray.

I usually refrigerate a crumb-coated cake before laying on the fondant, but for this cake, I wanted the frosting to be sticky so the fondant strips  and silver dragées would adhere easily.

However, I hadn't anticipated just how sticky the spray-painted fondant strips would be!  I thought I would be able to stick the dragées on by the handful and they would stick to the frosting but not the fondant.  But of course not!  They stuck to both.  Of course they did.

So what I had initially thought would be a simple task ended up with me painstakingly moving and placing silver dragées, one at a time, with tweezers.

And in yet a THIRD topic for this post, my friend Jenn is prodding me to improve my cake photos.  Admittedly, I'm not one for the details involved in the theory behind photography, but I also realize that my cake pictures leave much to be desired.  My utterly basic point-and-shoots on my kitchen counter don't do justice to the fact that I actually worked in the marketing department of a world-class company for the past 6 years.

So in an effort to improve in this area, I've sourced myself a nice white backdrop!  A dramatic improvement over our muddled greeny-brown granite countertop, even though I still have a long way to go in the lighting  department.  

But hey, it's a beginning!