Today we're having a potluck Thanksgiving at work (of course). But we're also celebrating all of the birthdays and new babies and job promotions that occured in the month of November. They do one big celebration at the end of each month because we have over 200 people in our area and if we didn't do it that way, we would be celebrating every day of of the month. Typically this is celebrated with a store-bought cake (nothing wrong with them - they are awesome) but this month I was invited to make the cake!

So I started the process on Sunday after finding a really cute idea. I realized it would be WAY less stressful to start the process a few days in advance and work on it a little each night so that I wouldn't be up until midnight the night before. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world and that did not work out for me. I was up until midnight last night finishing this cake. Anyone who has made cakes (ie: my mom and sister) can attest that nothing is more stressful than having to create intricate details on a cake the night before its due, fondant not working out like its supposed to, and time ticking away. I could only think of my BFF Brittany the entire time because every time the two of us have a project it takes WAY longer than it should. During teh whole process, Brent's job was to provide time updates every once in a while to hopefully keep me on track....it didn't work though. So at midnight I was finally done. I cleaned my crazy kitchen and headed to bed. whew

It isn't perfect by any means, but again - each time I make a cake I learn valuable lessons to remember.

The "table" is two loaf pans put side by side. The bottom "grass" is a 13 x 9 sheet cake and a half. The food items were hand-sculpted out of fondant and the pilgrims and indians are sugar cookies with royal icing. As you can see there were quite a lot of elements involved in this cake. Not to mention is it extremely heavy and almost broke the board it's sitting on. Again, I learn something new every time. The good news is that everyone at work loves it! I think my favorite part of the entire cake are the food pieces - the turkey, yams and corn.

So I always take pictures of my cakes before I leave my house just in case there are any casualties while transporting - my thought is that if something does happen, at least I have a picture to prove that it did look right at one time.

The second the flash went off after the last picture I took, my little man indian fell off the back of the cake and his head split in two. AHHH. If you only knew what I had been through with these dang cookies. I actually just laughed about it because of everything that had happened the night before... Here's a picture of the indian cookie - thankfully he's back up on the cake and no one can tell he's a little "broken."