Adventures in Elmo Cake Making

I've known for about 6 months that I wanted to make Trevor an Elmo cake for his birthday this year. Today I started about 9 am. I made the cake, put it in the mold and set it to bake. I was quite excited when it was done. I had to shave some off of the bottom to make it sit flat.

It didn't look too bad after coming out of the mold:

But I could tell that I had my work cut for me.
I had to let it cool for an hour. But I didn't start frosting until about 4 pm when Trevor finally decided to take a nap. I pulled out my handy dandy icing tool and set to work. First I started by making fresh icing, but I didn't heed the directions and messed up my first batch and had to throw it away. Second batch not too shabby, but when I started to mix the food coloring all craziness broke out. Dye was EVERYWHERE. I still have red dye on my fingers and in my fingernails. I finally was ready to start icing the cake. The instructions said to squeeze some icing out and then put some cornstarch on my finger to smooth it out. This totally DID NOT WORK!! I was so frustrated that I wanted to throw the cake against the window. Not only was the frosting still sticking to my finger, it was leaving white residue on black and orange icing! I took several deep breaths to convince myself that throwing the cake against the window was not a wise idea, took out a spatula and carefully finished it. Then came the hard part: making the stars for Elmo's fur. My wrist was tired but Elmo was starting to come to life. I couldn't wait to finish him. Finally after 2 hours of icing the cake this is what I had: