My Cake Challenge, should i accept it.....Thomas The Tank

As previously mentioned i enjoy baking, now i note here that i am not particularly good at baking, each cake comes out with its own set of individual flaws no matter how much i concentrate!!
So why do i enjoy it?
I blame the power that my childhood memories have over me! Some of my happiest memories from childhood involved helping my Nan bake cakes in her kitchen, helping her stir the mixture or fill the tins.......or getting to lick the uncooked cake batter out of the bowl when she was finished!!
As she isn't here anymore and my heart still aches for her everyday, baking makes me feel like i am a little bit closer to her and provides me with a touch of the contentment i imagine i would feel if she was here with me. I imagine she is watching me and laughing kindly whilst i blunder my way through various recipies.........i didn't ever see her use a recipie book, she could just make anything from scratch, she had a natural gift in the kitchen.
I however do not have that natural gift and follow recipie after recipie and still make mistakes. But it is all in good fun.
In 2011 i wanted to start trying to decorate cakes and so i took on the task of making a Thomas the Tank Engine cake for my godson who was turning 3 years old. I didn't realise at the time what a monumental task the Thomas cake was and how even professional bakers see it as a challenge. So i went into the task with enthusiastic naivety (in hindsight that was a good thing). At the time i was 12 weeks pregnant and i spent about 6 hours carving and decorating the cake without sitting down, by the end my ankles were 3 times their normal size.......i spent the rest of the night terrified they would be like that forever......by the next morning normal size had been resumed.
My godson obviously didn't understand the time the cake took, the effort or the physical stress for my poor ankles, but he did enthusiastically recognise the cake as Thomas. I would have cried if he hadn't at least recognised my effort as the right train!!
What do you think? I was pleased with my first foray into cake decorating.


Not bad for my first go, a litte wobbly and i missed some of the details as i was exhausted, but still a good go.
Next cake challenge......Stormtrooper cake for my husbands 35th birthday