In April I'll be attending a surprise 50th for my husband's good friend.  I offered to make the cake as a gift.  His girlfriend, whom I don't know very well, is excited about my offer and emailed me this about it:

" I wanted to do a cake that depicted activities in (names) life. He is very active in a lot of things. I have already collected some items to go on the cake. I pictured the cake as a couple of staggered layers with different sceneries. His activities include soccer, 4 wheeling, motorcycling, car racing, drums, a light bulb (for his profession), and of course snowmobiling. I already have all the items except the snowmobile and light bulb. I’m not sure if you can or want to do anything with those items."

In my opinion that would be WAY too much/too busy.  I think that sticking to one or two themes or interests is best but I'm not sure how to explain that to her without it disappointing her.  Any suggestions? 

Or if you've got any ideas on how to incorporate all this into one cake, I welcome those as well.  (Also, I'm guessing this will only need to feed around 50-75 people at most).

Well, pictures are the easiest way to incorporate multiple themes.  Then you just run them on icing sheet sand make gp or fondant frames for each one and place them on the sides of the cake.  It's really sort of cool.

With that many activities the first thing that came to my mind was doing a couple of film reels stacked off centre with edible image photos of the birthday boy engaging in his favorite activities as the film. You could have some of the film strip coming out of the bottom film reel, top it all off with a standing light bulb and or a #50.

Or a carved truck cake, could have a logo on it if he has one for his profession of just the light bulb image, with a four wheeler in the back of the truck, pulling a trailer with the other items on/in it.

Just a couple of ideas, hth.