Unnatural Disasters and Cyclone Yasi

We are into day 2, birthday cake 3, of our week long 4th birthday celebrations.
Tomorrow we are having our playgroup friends around to celebrate Peach's birthday, yet again. We have been in the same playgroup for more than five years. Now tots that once pulled each other's hair in the portacot are in school uniforms, and their younger siblings are tottering around.
Some of us, me included, are unfortunately running out of children and this will be my last year as a legitimate playgroup member.
Today I made myself a list, and ran around the house like I had a motor on my rear end. I felt quite smug that I'd got everything ticked off. I even made the birthday cake and layered it with jam and cream (whipped by hand, thank you very much).
Feeling the efficiency charging through my veins I thought I would just whip up the icing and decorate the cake before the children went to bed.
Hells bells! The disaster that now lies grimly in my fridge is almost beyond belief. I had to laugh....or else I would have cried. It will surely get some laughs in the morning.
I am trapped too. I can't just duck out and get another one, everyone is arriving just after nine.
Have put quite the gallery together so you can really appreciate how bad it is. My fatal errors included:
- not taking enough care
- not making enough icing
- making the icing too thick
- cutting the layers of the cake too thin
- not having a proper plan in my head when I started
- not concentrating
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Please learn from my mistakes.
Before I wheel out the beast, let me firstly show you what I normally churn out. It's not great, but passable.

This is the Frankenstein thing I created this afternoon.....from all angles....it's bad, very.

Then the avalanche....

This is a blurry, unflattering photo of me trying to stick it back together, which I liken to lying down in front of a runaway train to stop it. Notice how close it is to the side of the bench. I'm not sure if I was subconsciously trying to push it off, or the poor thing was trying to jump! See my look of panic.

Let me tell you, there's going to be a lot of wide eyes and hands over the mouth tomorrow when I unveil this baby.
As a social experiment, I don't think I'll give them a heads up. I'll just put it on the table and check out the reactions.

In summary, as we like to say, 'Nevermind, it doesn't matter'.

This is a photo of our house from an angle I've never seen before - compliments of a tiny, budding photographer. (actually looking at it now, I feel I should point out that the tiny photographer is not the cat)

Tonight, at the bottom end of the state, we will be thinking of all those at the top end.  Wishing you a safe and uneventful night.