Creative Birthday Cakes

This year I decided to make Taryns birthday cake. Well if I am being completely honest It was the night before Taryns birthday and there was no cake. I normally would have just gotten one from the store but this year Taryn had a special request. She wanted a cake that had a castle with princesses riding horses and mermaids in the water. At first I was going to give up on the whole idea of a fancy cake how could I fill that request but I wanted to give her a special cake for her birthday. So I used what I had in my kitchen and house it seemed to have worked out pretty well even though it wasn't everything that she wanted.
Here's what I had
1.)Strawberry flavored cake mix
2.)Chocolate frosting recipe
3.)Coconut/green dye
4.)Blue frosting
5.)Marshmallows ( like the kind that are in hot chocolate packets)
6.)my little pony figurine
I fallowed the cake recipe and once it cooled I cut it and layered it on to my cake. Then I frosted it with chocolate frosting that I made. After that I put my coconut into a bowl (about to hand fulls) with about 3 drops of green colored food dye. I mixed it around with a spoon until all the coconut was green then I put it on my cake for the grass. After that was done I took the blue frosting and made my river. The frosting that I had was in a can and had tips that I could squirt it out with. It worked great. Way better then in a bag. I had found this in the baking isle of my grocery store. Once that was done I then added the marshmallows and the pony figurines. What is great about this cake is that one, it really is easy and two, the possibilities are endless. Just change up the figurines or the color you dye the coconut. For example if you wanted a jungle theme you could put animal figurines on. Or if you wanted to do an ocean theme you could just dye the coconut blue and put your ocean figurines.
I hope this helps anyone who is trying to come up with a last minute birthday cake.