Early Christmas

As we head into the weekend I wanted to share some photos from last weekend's photo shoot for Matalan department stores. Typically Christmas shoots take place in August, so this was a bit of a late one.

The location was a gorgeous house about 20 minutes from the seaside city of Brighton. Owned by an architect and designer who runs a business called, brilliantly, Unteriors. 

Here it is getting snowed in. This stuff is fab, but totally messy. These guys spent a few hours snowing various spots and a day and a half cleaning it up! Tedious business.

This gorgeous Mercedes belonged to the photographer and got the full fake snow treatment for one of the shots.

This is only about half the crew. Crazy how many people it takes to make a shoot like this happen.

To the right are a stylist, make-up artist, and the mother of one of the children.

 The bookshelves on the right - and out of the photographer's frame - are the way we found them. You know I love a messy bookshelf. To the left is what I did, all propped out with vintage books and Matalan product. Great for catalogues, not so much for real life, right? A perfect example of what I was saying about catalogues (I'm talking to you Pottery Barn) not being true to life. They're aspirational, not realistic.

We even got the family dog in on the action. So sweet, he didn't mind the bow at all!

Here I am in one of the "prop" rooms decking out a wreath for the front door.

Only 80 days, 16 hours, 38 minutes and 51 seconds until Christmas! (Thank you Google, for knowing everything).