Those two year olds… they seem like they can be in more than one place at a time. This precious doll came into the studio this week and we had a blast. Had a lot of fun putting this together…

So last week, I’m judging for I ♥ Faces and I realize that I haven’t participated in a while. I love this particular category, so I thought I’d add one in..

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My well loved Chevy Tracker came down with a major engine problem this week which would have cost about as much as I eventually got for it on a trade in to fix. I loved my little toy truck, but few others in my family did. Still, I was very sad to come to the conclusion that at 10 years old and over 100K miles, it was time.

We searched all over the place for new cars, starting with GM first at the same dealership in Weatherford where we purchased Alissa’s current van. Her dad is retired from GM, so that has always been our first choice of car company.. plus GM cars have been very good to us over the years. You can imagine how disappointed we were to find nothing in the price range and size we wanted that was a good fit for us.

Trying to find the rare Chevy Equinox on a lot, we drove toward Granbury. There was a Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep dealership along the way, but the Jeeps were over priced and the Dodge we liked was great – but fully equipped, making it really costly. Shortly after, we saw this little Kia dealership. We had seen a couple of billboards for the new Kia Soul, so we decided to stop and take a look.

I am really impressed with the cars Kia is offering these days. They had several vehicles that could have fit the bill – most notably the Sorrento – but the one I really liked (and my wife didn’t hate, which is more than I can say about the Tracker) was the Soul.

So far, I’m loving this little car. Alissa calls it an MP3 Player on wheels. That’s not far from the truth. It has a fantastic standard sound system and the radio has built in iPod controls. It has more room than the Tracker, but is about the same size sitting in the garage. I hope to get even more than 10 years out of this one.

And if you are ever looking for a Kia, look up John Torres at Van Griffith Kia, he was very good to us.

So the topic this week on I ♥ Faces is Nostalgia… Of course, there’s no face, so it probably doesn’t qualify, but I figured I’d use this opportunity to show an ongoing art series I’ve been working on. First, the image for submission to the weekly contest:

This image makes me think of being a young kid and not being able to go outside for one reason or another.. perhaps sick, perhaps its too hot or cold.. the idea was to portray a sense of loss.

The rest of the series can be seen at this link: Ghosts of Youth. I do also sell prints, but my online store for it is down right now. If you would like to order, just drop me a line.

I’d also like to take note here that I have been invited to write a series of tutorials on lighting at the I ♥ Faces website. I’ll be getting started on those as soon as I get the kiddo back to school and my life starts to return to normal. Keep an eye out there for them in the future!

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Another baseball image this week from a recent Grand Prairie Air Hogs game. Utility player Cody Merrill dives back into first base to avoid a pickoff throw.

The category this week is feet.. but I didn’t know if I should submit this as adult or kid, for obvious reasons. This was shot at a wedding a while back.. I’ve tried to duplicate it several times, but this is still the best one of all of those attempts.

I titled it “Dance With Me, Daddy”

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For this week’s pets category at I ♥ Faces, I thought I’d submit this flamingo I did at the zoo. I think his posture and pose puts him just shy of being an awesome James Bond villian… seriously, look at this image and say to yourself in your most threatening voice…

“Before I kill you, Mr. Bond….”

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