Happy Second Birthday OMHPS

OMHPS (Online Model Horse Photo Shows) is celebrating their second year out of beta this month. In the spirit of things, they have hosted a new birthday themed photo show. I was so so so excited when I saw this! Fun shows/scene classes are my very favorite thing, I had so many ideas chasing each other around in my head. I finally settled on a small stall decorated for a party, with a few animals and a foal.

This is how it turned out:

Overall, I'm really happy with it. It took me two weeks to set everything up, as I made a bunch of the props, had to paint the barn (it still needs another coat or two XD) and had all the chaos going on. I finished it three or four days ago, just in time to get hit with a big snowstorm that prevented any hope of photos before this afternoon (there is still snow on the ground, but none blowing onto the porch and the sun is shining clear).

Here are some close-ups of the details:

The barn itself has a funny story behind it. I had gone to the salon with a family member to get our hair done. While we were there, our beautician gave us a couple tickets for a duck race in our town. We kinda - ---- wait a second. I better explain what a duck race is before I move on. In my town, we hold an annual rubber duck race in our park's pond. Two guys paddle out in a tiny canoe and dump one or two totes of rubber ducks (with numbers written in sharpie on their bellies) out in the middle of the pond. The first ducky to go over the miniature waterfall at the end of the pond wins. The person who has the ticket with the winning ducky's number gets $200. All clear? Ok. So we got these tickets and we were both just kinda chuckling to ourselves like "what are we supposed to do with these? Like we'd ever win". Just joking, I made my family member promise to buy me the Breyer Hilltop Stable if she won, and I promised to buy her something if I got lucky. The next weekend, we both attended the race. We didn't bring our tickets, because, well, what are the odds?? We watched and clapped for the winning duck and went home. About an hour later, my family member got a phone call from the rubber ducky herder who told her she had won!! It was pretty funny, she was just there and clapping for herself. I don't think she'll ever live that down. She bought me the barn of course, but I only just recently got around to painting it. It finally came into good use!

Looking back, I really wish I had included my mini rubber ducky in that shoot. Drat. Opportunity lost.

What do you think of the entry? I'm fairly happy with it. According to the show rules I can enter one more photo. . . hmmm. Who will it be???