I don't know what just happened to November. It feels like it was just Halloween, and I blinked, and tomorrow is December. I better not blink again or I will miss Christmas!

Our family just got back from a fantastic week's vacation on the Texas Gulf coast for American Thanksgiving. A couple of weeks before we left, an old work friend from Labatt got in touch to request a cake for his girlfriend who is leaving for a month's vacation to Colombia. She's going to be away over the Christmas and New Year's holidays, so he wanted to celebrate early with her. Along with her birthday. And Hanukkah because she's half Jewish. And hey, why not just have a cake for all those celebrations at once! Oh, and can we add in a Colombian flag for good measure?

I wasn't sure if it was the best idea to agree to make this cake, given the timing of our arriving home from Texas on Saturday and delivering the cake on Sunday, but I decided to give it a go. It was too fun of a cake (and too good of a challenge) to pass up.

I think my friend was envisioning a sectioned-off cake with quadrants depicting each of the celebrations, but I suggested we combine all of the elements in more of a mash-up.

So here we have Christmas:

And New Year's Eve, depicted by the gold clock face and shooting stars at midnight:

Her birthday is represented by birthday candles and the 26. (You'll never guess how old she is turning.)

And finally, half of the candles are Hanukkah blue, and the other half are the red, blue and yellow of the Colombian flag.

Totally fun, super cute, organized chaos, am I right?

As an American, I've always felt like Halloween was the kick-off to the holiday season. Once you get through Halloween, you're off and running to the indulgent joys of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I've had to adjust my perspective a bit living in Canada, with Thanksgiving falling early in October... but that's cool, it's fantastic to have a little early preview of all the goodies to come.

I wanted to make a Halloween cake this year that wasn't too labor-intensive, since holidays with a 3 and 5 year old - while fun - are still quite a bit of work, getting them prepared, dressed, fed, partied, rested, etc. This spooky yet sweet mummy fit the bill. He even has lavender eyes to keep him fun and friendly, perfect for a 3 year old who continues to be terrified of everything that moves.

I covered a 3-layer, 9-inch round chocolate cake with white fondant, and then cut out an oblong piece of black fondant, to which I affixed (with water) simple circular eyes, also cut out of fondant. After I applied that to the side of the cake, I rolled out long, thin strips of fondant that I cut somewhat haphazardly with a pizza cutter into strips that were anywhere from 3/4" to 1 1/2" wide, and anywhere from 4" to 10" long. I started out by framing the eyes, and then rather randomly laid on the strips (affixing with water) till it was covered. Easy breezy cheddar cheesy.

In a complete non sequitur, I had a request last week for a Scottish tartan cake. It was for a friend of a friend's mom's 70th birthday. She had no specific tartan preference since they descend from "a mishmash of clans". So she left the color and pattern up to me.

Not having any tartan training, I turned to The Great Internets. For the first time ever, The Internets failed me. I found no good tartan cake examples to steal. Er, borrow. The majority of the tartan cakes I found had either a plaid ribbon wrapped around them or a plaid edible image applied to them. Neither of these was particularly up my alley, so I dared to venture out on my own.

My Google search of Scottish Tartans revealed this one, which just happened to have the fewest colors of all:

After testing how to layer on the strips without involving excessive basket weaving techniques (using strips of leftover fabric from my sewing box), I rolled and cut out long, thin strips of fondant (maybe this wasn't a complete non sequitur after all) and laid them on my white fondant-covered vanilla cake.

Granted, it's not an exact tartan replica of any recognizable Scottish clan, but still, I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Happy 70th birthday, Libby!!

And now, without further ado, let's get these holidays started and laissez les bons temps rouler!