R&R

The past two months have been non stop. Weddings every weekend.. travelling up and down the country.. editing.. meeting couples.  When we're in the midst of wedding season weeks tend to move very fast.. we shoot a wedding on Saturday and before you blink it's Friday again and we're back on the road.  This year we wanted some time off.. just little pockets of relaxation to keep us healthy and happy and what I'm discovering is that I'm actually more productive when I give myself smaller segments of time to do things in... who'd have thunk it!?! Now I schedule my edits.. timetable my workflow and give myself weekly and daily targets.  So now we're having normal lazy Sundays.. evenings watching films and last week I even managed to have four days in Cornwall with my girls.. in JUNE!?!?  I'm actually getting pretty good at this time off lark..

Here's a little bit of what we've been up to.. and as you can see Max is getting pretty good at this lazing around too..

Oh look.. more lazing about.. mainly in the garden..

I then headed down to Cornwall with my gorgeous From Our Hearts girls.. Anna Hardy, Debs Ivelja and Joanna Brown.  We all try to get together for a few days at least once a year and now that Debs has a flat overlooking Fistral Beach in Newquay we had no excuse to not get together.  The week was spent eating healthy food.. lying out on the grass watching the surfers.. drinking wine.. talking shop.. and getting in the surf (ok so I just had a body board but at least I got in!).  All four of us didn't pick up our 5D's all week and opted for polaroids, cheap point and shoot film cameras and our trusty iPhones instead... and the weather was incredible.. I came back totally refreshed and pretty freckly.. :)

I'm so lucky to have these three amazing ladies as friends and now we have a new From Our Hearts addition in the form of Hugo.. Debs' new hound.. he was spoilt rotten with kisses and cuddles and fits in perfectly..

I really didn't want to leave..

More film stuff to follow.. :)

a beautiful mess...

If you spend any time browsing the internet, reading blogs.. then you most definitely will have come across A Beautiful Mess.. the lifestyle blog of Elsie and Emma, two crafting and thrifting sisters from Springfield, Missouri.

They've been blogging now for five years and I've been an every day reader from before I even started this little photography business.  I've watched the blog grow... watched them build their vintage shop.. design their own clothing line.. watched Elsie get married.. move house.. and with every new project.. with every new adventure you would cheer them on a little more.. and it might sound silly.. but you end up feeling super proud of all their achievements..

So when they announced they had a new photo app I was cheering them on loudly from the sidelines.. and once I downloaded it I will happily admit that I was HOOKED!

You can add custom text in a selection of fonts.. there's pre-drawn doodles.. photo borders.. and a selection of phrases in Elsie's cute handwriting..



I just can't stop!!!

Aghhhhhh I LOVE it!!!!

Cute huh!

You can download A Beautiful Mess photo app from the iTunes store now or search 'A Beautiful Mess' in the app store.. I think you might get hooked too.. :)

You can also find me on instagram at @emmacase

* Photos above of me and Pete by Jesh de Rox and Marianne Taylor

Life lately..

So.. life has been pretty crazy the past few weeks and wedding season has well and truly kicked in!  Soooo... going in reverse.. this Bank Holiday Weekend we had two weddings.. one in Liverpool and then one in Wales on Sunday.. we were only an hour away from our good friends O&C Photography so we decided to pay them, their little girl Florence and the beach a visit (the actual Harry potter beach no less.. you know.. the one where Dobby dies).. it was absolutely beautiful and exactly what we needed. We hung out.. ate good food and laughed a lot.. we love this little family..

On the Sunday we found ourselves in the beautiful surroundings of Fforest in Wales.. it was such a beautiful wedding and it was so true.. no strangers were there.. just lots of new friends..




Ohhh I got a pair of Agnes and Norman shoes!! My absolute favourite.. Daisy in Mustard.. they are GORGEOUS!! I still need to blog about that shoot!! I also bought myself a Parker and have pretty much not taken it off since..

We also got to hang out with another good friend Lucy Ledger at her Sister's wedding on Friday.. and we got to meet her gorgeous boy Tristan.. I actually wanted to take him home with us.. I got cuddles most of the evening.. he is simply scrummy..



We managed to spend a little bit of quality time at home putting our wedding photos in frames and cooking.. and anyone that knows me at all will know that I HATE cooking.. with a passion.. so this is actually pretty big news..



We had a bloody great time down in London shooting a wedding with the Shutterbox kids.. we love working with these two.. actually it really isn't like work at all.. :)



Ahhhh and my favourite little family.. we celebrated Freddie's Christening in style with a little party at their house.. I've known my friend Zoe since I was 14 and she now has four gorgeous kids who both me and Pete adore.. we're so honoured to be God Parents.. check out her beautiful blog... here.

life lately.. {march}

So March has been a funny old month.. considering last year we were sat on picnic blankets in the park soaking up the warm sunshine.. it's felt a little like groundhog day with the snow looking like it wants a piece of Easter.. seriously now.. when is it stopping?!?!?!

But apart from the apocalyptic weather March has been pretty pleasant..

So the carpet in the house is down and life has gone back to normal after 'decorate all the things' phase. I'm not going to lie.. we have probably finished 80% of it but the 20% that is left to do are the types of jobs that probably never get done.. so hey.. lets see if by October any of them will be finished..

 So it was my Birthday this month and just like Christmas, me and Pete don't tend to do much in terms of present buying for each other so instead I spent the morning in town buying bits of makeup and the nicest navy and white striped dress from Primark.. (I actually saw it on a guest at a wedding recently and asked her where she got it.. this tends to happen at least once at every wedding).. I also got the lovely coral suede shoes from Accessorize (I now just need the weather to go with them).  I also got some lovely surprises in the post too.. the mug is from the lovely Veronica Dearly (I love it as it incorporates two of my favourite things.. eggs and tea).. and a lovely photo album from the Shutterbox kids.. which I decided to fill with all our wedding polaroids.

Me and Pete then headed down to London for my friend Rachel Simpson's new shoe collection launch. We shot her new collection, agnes and norman in Brighton back in February and walking in and seeing all the imagery alongside her gorgeous shoes.. well, it just makes you feel all warm inside.. :)  I'm going to do a full post on the collection soon but, just beware ladies.. and gents.. you're going to want every single pair.  To top it off the launch was at the beautiful shop Lucy in Disguise which was literally the worst place to put me.. ;)  I came out with the most beautiful dress that I literally cannot stop looking at.. and I think it might actually have been made for me.. :)

We also managed to squeeze in a wedding fair right at the end of March and we'd been secretly planning our stand for a while now.. we had a great time at EWE.. the other suppliers were wonderful and we had such a lovely day meeting people.. and the best thing about it?  Oh my goodness.. I HAVE MY FRIGGIN' NAME IN LIGHTS!! Ha ha!  The amazing Vowed&Amazed (we shot their wedding in 2011) have just absolutely blown us away.. they are AMAZING!!! I absolutely love them and they are taking pride of place in our office forever and ever..

 It's been a pretty exciting and hectic month.. here's to a slightly less hectic April..

life lately..

We've had a pretty lovely February.. we've finally come to the end of the epic 'paint all the things' house makeover. It's taken us about 6 weeks to paint everything, get a new kitchen floor.. new carpet.. have a HUGE clear out and get pictures up on the walls.  There is still a few 'little' jobs to finish but it finally feels like home and that feeling is absolutely incredible..

Feb also gave us a bit of time to just chill..we hung out at home..bought some new clothes (I'm kinda feeling the aztec thing this year), ate well, went to hot yoga, played with some new cameras, shot quite a bit of personal stuff and my second article (about branding this time) appeared in Photo Pro Magazine.. yey!

We then had the pleasure of heading down to Brighton for a few days for a shoot involving some friggin' awesome shoes.. (which I'll be talking about very soon).. we were there for just 3 days and had the most incredible luck of being graced with sunshine for the whole trip.  We both really needed it and came back refreshed and so, so happy..

Life is, once again going to start getting a lot more hectic from now on as wedding season is about to kick in. I am determined more than ever for this year to be filled with good times in and out of work.. I want to keep exercising, eating well, taking the normal amount of days off a week and making more memories for us.. I'm really looking forward to the year ahead..

life lately..

So the past few weeks have been kinda busy.. shooting some yummy shoes and some beautiful stationery, keeping Maximo entertained in the house as he's not keen on this continuous white stuff.. oh and we had a lovely feature about blogging in February's Photo Pro Magazine.. :)  Wedding season is just around the corner and we have some more Welcome Home Workshops coming up in a couple of weeks (they come around fast) so we've been busy getting ourselves ready for the mayhem.  We're also STILL in house makeover land... which is taking much longer than expected.   We've now painted 80% of the house and we should have new carpet and a new kitchen floor (fingers crossed) in the next couple of weeks. The problem we've had is that our house is SO small.. and every time we've painted a room, we've first had to take everything out and put it in another room (and sleep in it).. to then have to put it all back in to paint the next room and so on. I'm actually starting to realise just how much stuff we have and the other night I couldn't sleep staring at all the stuff piled high literally surrounding the bed and asked myself.. if someone took it all away tomorrow and you never saw it again.. would you really care?   If you know me you know that I'm a little bit of a hoarder.. I love a car boot and a charity shop and over the years I've brought home typewriters, chairs, mirrors, plates, lights, cupboards, bikes, clothes, a deck chair (it'll be useful in the Summer!!!).. as I can't bear to walk out of the shop and leave them without a home.. but our home simply isn't big enough.. and do I really need five typewriters?!?! So once the carpet is down and we have some normality back I'm going to sell some bits and bobs and anything we make is going towards our travelling fund.. I think it's a really good exercise as the hoarder in me sometimes needs to be kept in check..

So.. I've just got to decide on what's best.. ebay?, maybe a yard sale on the blog?.. I might even do the Saturday Flea at the Custard Factory where our office is.. what do you guys think?

life lately...

our life lately...

So what happens when we don't have weddings to shoot?