A shower for Froggie!!

Today's the shower for my friend Caron who's due to have a baby in a few weeks. She likes frogs so the baby has affectionately become known as Froggie. LOL We've got about 25 people coming to the shower and as usual I'm worried if there's gonna be enough. Do we have enough plates, napkins, cups, food!!!! Everyone's been asked to bring a dish so I'm sure we'll be fine. April's made this great smelling chicken dish that's been sitting in a crock pot 2 cubes up for the last couple of hours. I can hardly wait to dive in! It was my job to make the "fun" cake, photography was also my responsibility. So I hired this teacher from mom's school. He takes great pictures and I'd hired him to do the photography for mom & dad's anniversary party. Well, the bill came in and I just about died. $122.89 for 2hrs!!! I totally feel I'm being ripped off here. I mean, he only charged me $100 for 6 hrs at their party. Well, it was my choice to bring him in so I'm footing the bill. I could have just taken the pix myself but I really wanted it to be nice. Let's move on to the cake. I wanted to do a frog but I just didn't have time to practice the shaping and working with fondant. So I ordered a cake pan from www.Wilton.com and it's in the shape of a 3D duck. Sounds easy right? Apparently not. On Monday I had to make 1 more scrapbook page for Caron's group gift (we each took a month to cover the baby's first year). Tuesday I'd planned to bake the cake. One small problem. You need strinig to tie the 2 halves together and I can't find it anywhere!!! Wednesday dad stopped at Wegmans on the way home and got some with his other groceries. I throw the cake in the oven and hope I can get it out before bowling .... no such luck. So I tell my brother that it's got 12 minutes left to bake, there's instructions on how it needs to cool which is for 4hrs. I figure while I'm at bowling the I can shower, grab a bite to eat, decorate and be in bed by midnight. So I take my time when I get home and go up just before 11:00. HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM. The cake didn't rise to fill the top 1/2. So here I am with 1/2 a duck and no idea what to do. On goes the light bulb! I throw a 9x13 in the oven and go to Tops for frosting. The cake comes out, I shower while it cools - I hope - and Im ready to go. I cut the cake in 1/2, stack one part on top of the other and frost it to look like a birthday gift, complete with satin ribbon. I guess the cake wasn't cool enough because no matter what I did frosting ran, the cake cracked and by 3:00 a.m. I'd had enough. The bow went on, it went in the fridge and enough was enough. Getting up this a.m wasn't easy but I did it. Got dressed and hauled my cake downstairs (pix to follow) and sure enough, it does look like a birthday gift ..... just wrapped by a child. Caron saw a picture of it and loved it. Heck, she's loved everything about today so far. Tonight I plan to curl up in my jammies, watch Grey's Anatomy and crash out early. Hmm... wonder if I can PTO tomorrow. Nah, unless it's really bad I'll be here. Travis has 40 days of leave to use up and I'm still hoping he'll be here for a couple of those days. Well, maybe more than a couple. Traveling from Korea's not exactly here to Cheektowaga! LOL