Bird Cake

I made a cake this weekend. I know, you're surprised. Me, making cakes? I must say this one was a bit less frustrating, after the frustrating part.

I made butter cream fondant. I made the grass and tree leaves about 5 days early. When it was time to put them on the grass wasn't dry enough, and the blades that stuck out the furthest wanted to break. So I had to cut a few down. I also made almost all the blades too long and had to cut some down because of that. So my next time note is to mix it with gum paste, for better drying and quicker drying. Or at least that is what it does with store bought fondant, so hopefully it will do that with this fondant, because I really liked the way this one felt and tasted.
Now my second frustration was my own fault. I made two batches of fondant. On the second batch I tried talking and cooking. That is never good when I am trying something new. So I added too much salt. I was told it wasn't that bad, but I could tell a huge difference. I decided that batch could be for decoration and not covering. I was really hoping I could make that work, however I ran out of pink for the bottom tier. In covering it, I had to roll the fondant thin and then piece it together. At least this layer would be mostly covered and the crack/fixes might not be too obvious.
On the middle and top layer, I had plenty of fondant and I was very happy and much less frustrated with how it covered.
The part, I feel, looks like an after thought is the branches, that kind of look like short fat trees. I was having a hard time getting a dark brown. On my first batch I added a touch of black and I though it looked like army green once it was mixed. The day of the cake I tried making a smaller batch of brown with a lot of food coloring. But still a soft poop color. Still not what I wanted. I wish I had thought about doing this before I tried the fondant, but I think melted chocolate would have done a much better job, and I probably could have made them look like twigs and branches rather than short fat trees. I am referring to piping melted chocolate on wax paper and sticking it in the fridge to harden. That would have given me a perfect color and finer lines.
However, this was for a little girls first birthday, so I don't think she looked at my poop color branches and thought, "OMG, who would put that on a cake!" Or at least I hope she didn't....
Next cake, Big Girl J's birthday cake. My big girl is turning 4 and getting even bigger! I will give you a hint, in case you didn't read the post about the invites. It will be fish themed.