Summer Trip and BreyerFest

Ok, for our summer trip this year, we're going to take a little tour.  No, not a 3-hour tour, a 7 day tour.  I figure if we could successfully navigate our honeymoon in the car without killing each other, we'll be fine.  (just kidding...)

Our itinerary includes Dyersville, IA, to see the Field of Dreams.  Hey, they built it, we're coming!  Then we swing down through the Quad Cities where I was born to pick up some Whitey's ice cream (only the BEST ice cream around) to Peoria to see my Gramma and say hi to my Grandpa at the cemetery.  We'll stay overnight there, then swing over to Lexington, KY, to attend BreyerFest.  This is the 3-day expo that Breyer puts on every year for collectors.  For those out of the loop, I collect Breyer model horses.  Close to 300 in my collection now.  And during BreyerFest at the Kentucky Horse Park, they hold a model horse show.   (Before I go explaining that, let me finish the road trip destinations.)  After BreyerFest, we swing back over to Louisville to tour around and catch a Louisville Bats game.  (That's the local AAA baseball team.)  (Can you see that we're blending our interests into this trip?  Baseball and horses.)  After a night in Louisville, we head for home through Chicago.

Ok.  Model horse shows are similar to real horse shows, except the horses are plastic and about 12 inches tall or smaller.  Read this or this to get an idea of how things work.  Here's my....problem.  I'm competing in this for the first time against very experienced showers.  And those with a lot more money to get the pretty, fancy, rare horses.  There are two classes I'm anxious about - the Collector's Classes.  These are classes that basically allow a collector to exhibit some of the finer points of the collections.  The first is a theme class.  Pick a theme and show 8-12 horses in that theme, like all one breed, one color, one mold, etc.  I have chosen to show the horses that were created to depict horses from the Marguerite Henry Books.  In case you need to catch up, she wrote "Misty of Chincoteague", "Stormy, Misty's Foal", "King of the Wind" and many, many more.  I have the horses, and I'm displaying the oversized paperback books with each horse.  The second class is a Collectibility class.  Basically, a variety of models.  

But, I ask myself, how am I displaying these collections?  Herein lies my problem.  I have no clue.  I used Google Image search to look up some past collections that people have put up pictures of, and basically, I'm sunk.  (I think the link will work right.)  These are not only impressive horses (wedgewood blue Fury model!?!?!), they are impressive displays.  And I won't be able to use the same display for each class, they get set up at the same time.

Sigh.

So......this part of showing, besides getting all the horses cleaned up and ready to travel and show, will be consuming my brainwaves until the show is over.  Because I'm sure I will be making last minute adjustments until ribbons are awarded.

Any ideas are greatly appreciated!!!