Good 'ole Markies

I love pretty shops with inspirational displays and a good layout. Obviously they are designed to make people buy things but that's where reality generally kicks in - when you see the price tag! But it's free to have a look around and it can also give you ideas how to display things at your own place. That's my justification and I'm sticking to it... One of the nicest places locally is Marks and Spencer, or Markies as most British people call it for short. One of the two local branches is a homewares and food store and is conveniently placed in the city centre-located Union Square shopping mall, which has a cinema too. So instead of over-priced pick 'n' mix sweets to eat while watching a film, you can buy the best gummie sweet known to man - Marks and Spencer's Percy Pigs. Yes, I'll have a big bag please!
This particular branch of Markies has some very nice kitchen displays just now. This big Welsh dresser is a winner - a lovely shade of grey and see how good those copper pans look alongside it. And the cup handles. And the white countertop. All lovely!

Here's a close-up of the display on the white countertop, the copper, the wood, the white ceramics, all blend in together.

This free-standing kitchen is really nice, and very good quality. I had a hard time taking a good pic of it on my iPhone as the M&S's staff were giving me strange looks. I presume they don't get many people taking pix of their displays. It could have been worse, imagine if I'd taken them with the big camera!

Here's a close-up of the shelves above the sink unit. Very good styling, well done M&S staff!

Here's another Welsh dresser, but the lighting wasn't great on it for the pix as it's actually cream-coloured, not light blue as this pic looks.

These little cushions were very cute.

As were these bowls.

I love the font on these mugs, very old school. They look good all hung up together.

Perfect timing to release a pretty vintage-style book on cakes, with the new series of Great British Bake Off having just started. It's like the marketing people knew that!

And on the note of cakes, that might be a good idea for the weekend - cake is always good!

Karen x