Scottish Antiques and Arts Centre

I treated myself to an afternoon here.  What a great place, on one side of the building there are individual antiques dealers displaying their treasures and on the other a gift shop, food hall and restaurant.  The french-inspired boutique is gorgeous (see picture).  They have boxes of children's sandals from the 1950's which are like little works of art - so sweet, they made me all broody!  A wonderful cream painted dresser caught my eye.  I will have to work on Derek a bit for that one.

The gift shop has great traditional stocking fillers for kids and adults alike (remember jumping beans?), a fabulous range of flocked wrapping paper in rich purples and golds, notecards from Ryland, Peters and Small (my favourite book publisher), and in one corner of the gift shop I drooled over a range of truly beautiful layered lace and chiffon dresses.  The ladies leather bags are lovely too. I could have gone mad, however, I stuck to the task in hand and picked up some smellies for Christmas pressies.  I also stopped off in TK Maxx which I've become quite addicted to, especially the homeware department.  I picked up a really lovely velvet photo album which reminded me of my bridesmaid dress on my wedding day. There is a fantastic range of books in TK Maxx - the Taschen series of Interiors books for a snippet of the original price and my favourites, the Ryland, Peters and Small collection of Interiors books which I am now amassing quite a collection of.  I still can't quite believe that they are selling them for only £4.99 each.  Have dropped major hints to my hubby for Christmas.