Bundt Cake a la Mario Bros.

This thing was such a labor of love that I don't have any photos of construction (my hands were mostly covered in sticky stuff), but if you are interested in creating a Mario Bros. themed cake, this might be some good inspiration. It wasn't too difficult, I'm just a fondant novice (first timer!) so I had to get the hang of it.
I enjoy "architecting" cakes. This time around, I decided to surprise my son. He asked for just a lemon bundt cake (my favorite recipe HERE). I thought I'd kick it up a notch.

How did I make this?

1) I bought a lovely green porcelain pot at the grocery store that fit perfectly in the center of the bundt cake. I filled it with pressed rice krispie treats, then covered that with Oreo crumbs. I used 8 bamboo skewers sticking out of that, and placed four green plastic straws (two skewers per straw) over the skewers.

2) I pressed rice krispie treats into two plastic rice bowls, then stuck them together to create a sphere. Then I rolled it a little more to make it extra round.

3) I cut out a pie-shaped wedge (sort of pacman style) out of the ball.

4) I covered it with red fondant and smoothed it out as best I could.

5) I filled the mouth area with pink fondant and then fashioned a tongue. To get one layer of fondant to stick to another, brush a VERY little water on the spot and it acts like glue.

6) I rolled out the green fondant and used it to cover the straws and make a couple of big leaves (if you make the leaves out of flat rolled out fondant, you can roll up a bunch of extra into little balls and sort of place them under the leaves to give them some dimension and hold them up a little so they don't look sad and wilted.

7) I cut a bunch of circles out of white fondant, then rolled out a big long tube of white (to go around the mouth). Then I cut out a bunch of triangles for teeth, doubling them up on the bottom half so they would stick up properly.

8) I placed the teeth on the mouth, then covered them with the white tube to shape the white lips.

9) I placed the head onto the skewers (keep that plant stem fairly short and make sure the skewers don't stick up more than a couple inches out of the top of the stem or else (as I found out the hard way) they will stick out the top of the head).

10) After the head is attached, add the spots. (You are getting the benefit of my hindsight wisdom here. I put them on before I attached the head and it was a big disaster that I had to rectify as best I could.)

And that is it! Even though it came out far from perfect, this is one of my favorite cake themes I've ever done. I just think this guy has so much character - just like my now 8yo!

(I had to re-do the stem because the first time it was too long to hold up the head. I actually liked it better shorter.)