My mechanic's daughter has just turned 10. It's not every day that you enter the Double Digits for the first time, and I think that calls for a special cake, don't you?
I asked him to give me some details about his daughter... her hobbies, favorite things, stuff like that. I don't know him very well and had never met his daughter. The only criteria he gave me was that the cake and icing should be chocolate, she likes cartoon monkeys as the main theme of the cake, and if he had to choose between describing her as a girly-girl or a tomboy, he'd lean towards tomboy. He told me she'd be happy with a sheet cake, but I wanted to flex a little cake muscle and, um, sort of pressured him into accepting a 3D monkey. He was nice about it, though. :^)
Doing sculptures usually means doing some research on the subject matter, in order to get a feel for the item being sculpted. Well...... confession time here: monkeys creep me out. Seriously. So, it goes without saying that I only did my internet searches for "monkey" pictures a few minutes at a time over a few days. Once I found the pictures I planned to use for references, I printed them out and gave myself permission not to look at monkeys for a while.