Zoey's Zebra Cake!

So...my family is having babies. Lots and LOTS of babies. At least my in-law side of my family. My side of the family is old, so we're having a bit of a dry-spell. Good news is...i'm not one of the pregnant ones! So I celebrated by helping to throw one of my sisters-in-law a shower!

Here I have a cake:

My lovely sister and brother (Mariah and Taylor) decided to name their coming daughter Zoey, and theyre going with a zebra/jungle theme. You know...Zoey Zebra...so cute. So I thought I would finally get brave and try a real, fondant-covered cake. The last time I tried to cover a cake in fondant was about 3 years ago and it was a DISASTER! It ended in tears and a messy cake. I resorted to moulding fondant, and I got pretty good at it. But THIS turned into a work of art! Let me tell you, my hands were shaking, but I finally did it! The fondant boots and zebra took me hours of work, but I think the 2 minutes it took me to cover the cake was a million times worse! Until it turned out PERfect...then I cheered. Anyways, enough bragging and self-congratulating. Here are some cupcakes:

When I arrived with the cupcakes, my other sister-in-law had these adorable cupcake pokes leftover from a shower she had done the weekend before. They looked so cute! I have to put a quick plug in for Costco (because it's amazing). Pastry Pride Ready to Whip Cream. Its flavored...its fluffy...you can pipe it...it won't melt when it sits at room temp for a few hours...I love it! And I don't have to stress out about stabilizing my own whipped cream. That's what I used on the Heath cupcakes this time and it was stupendous. Anyways, you can find a pretty good tutorial on how to make the boots here. I added quite a few details to the design, but it's a good base to start with. My only complaint is that she doesn't provide a printout of the pattern, so you will have to play around with it for your sizing.