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Shopping notes by Anknel and Burblets

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If you’re a fan of Smallable and a fan of sales (I am both) you will love So Small. They really know how to do a sale. These are sales where you know you’ve got yourself a fantastic bargain. Postage is more expensive than Smallable so its best to buy enough to justify 16 euros postage when your favourite designer comes up.

And you have to be quick. They put a countdown timer on your shopping bakset. So you get 45 minutes from getting the sale email to login, decide what you want and pay.

It would seem there are a few mums out there looking to buy pink things in size 6.
Nothing like a bit of sales pressure to get the adrenaline going.

www.so-small.com

SMALLable.com

Clockwise from top left:
Duffle jersey sweatshirt – Mauve by Emile et Ida, Loose-fitting Dress – Charcoal Grey by L’Esprit de Luna, Tomas sweatshirt – Navy blue by Tuss, T-shirt – Old rose by L’Esprit de Luna, Jersey blouse – Taupe brown by Emile et Ida

This winter in the Lovely Shops household we are sewing up a storm of dresses and buying up a storm of tops from the most wonderful SMALLable. It’s the best children’s fashion shop we’ve ever come across – with a brilliant range of clothes in our favourite colours; slate grey and dusty pink. The fabrics are thick and soft and utterly delicious for a wonderful start to our favourite season, Autumn.

SMALLable says “Our idea is to offer very beautiful things (not necessarily outrageously expensive, it’s worth pointing out !) for all children from 0 to 12 years, in the world of fashion, design, decoration and toys.”

SMALLable.com

At the school spring fair I spied a young lad with big brown eyes wearing the most beautiful faded French vintage linen overalls. Following closely behind was his mother who could quite easy be mistaken for Amélie. The Amélie lady was wearing the most amazing woven-looking green gingham hat, and surprisingly, spoke with a slight trace of an Australian accent.

She had made her own hat. And the vintage overalls were a fleamarket find. Brenna does however make little linen jumpsuits for children, lovely hand-dyed dresses and beautiful little (well, quite big) felt dolls.

cobbledtogether.etsy.com

These are just the most amazing thing we’ve found in a very long time. Fabric wall stickers that are removable and can wipe clean from little sticky fingers.

Made in New Zealand – by the very amazing artist Kim Hands, we love the Nikau Palm height chart, the brilliant alphabet set, little rabbits and deer in pretty colours and the rose arbour with bluebirds of happiness. The little tree with owls is high up in our list of favourites too. Not cheap, but worth saving up for. At £10 a week into a savings account it will take us a couple of months but will be most definitely worth the wait.

Sticky Tiki on Etsy

Ollie loves Alfie
84 Stoke Newington Church St, London N16 0AP | Tel: +44 (0) 0207 241 4212

Quite a recent discovery but already a wardrobe staple. We even have a new set of rice lunchboxes for Edith’s days out.

Ashlyn curates a beautiful and thoughful collection of clothing, swimwear, shoes and accessories (read: Miffy lamps!). In fact it was the Miffy lamps in the window that made us stop the car whilst driving through Stokie one afternoon.

Since then we’re now the proud owners of beautiful party dresses, a dinosaur dress with matching leggings, a very sweet little heart skirt, brilliant flouro purple striped leggings cut on the bias and soon to be getting some beautiful soft leather sandals for summer. Not forgetting Edith’s new black togs and Astrid’s soon to be hers pink and red gingham beach ring.

Labels you can find at Olive loves Alfie include Mini Rodini, Louie Louis, Mini Numpf, Katvig, No added sugar and Nutured by Nature. Organic cotton and good colours abound.

Neëst
15, rue Claude-Tillier
75012 Paris
Tél : 06 77 08 51 29
www.neest.fr

A lovely french shop we discovered today via Le Train Fantome. They stock beautifully designed pieces by designers Masanori Oji, Yumiko Sekine, Anne Flohr, Masami Akatsuka and Karin Eriksson. They also stock Fog Linen, and my favourite tea towel design by Rie Elise larsen.

They’re having a little sale on December 11th and 12th so if you are in Paris it’s definitely worth a visit.

Drats, I knew it wasn’t the H&M website I was waiting for – it was Zara. And I’ve just remembered to look today much to my delight. Beautiful dresses, knitwear, coats and jackets.

The clothes are amazingly sophisticated, beautifully cut and great lines. Our two and four year old girls will look fabulous in these dresses. The best thing is the colours – lots of muted pinks and purples as well as charcoals and black. Brilliant.

Definitely will be doing our next lot of shopping here.

www.zara.com

We’ve been doing quite the research on Children’s Toy Kitchens of late – as we are going to be buying not one, but two of them this year for the girls for Christmas.

We looked at the Plan ones on Amazon, and we looked at fancy expensive ones at Heal’s, and we looked at nice sensible red ones from John Lewis, and we looked at neutral, fairly cool and would be ok one from IKEA…

But we really got excited when we found The Great Little Trading Company and their amazing variety of different, pretty, practical, and with the I-Want-It-Factor. Not I want it because I need to just find one and buy it, but because I actually want one myself.

Because we need to buy two we’ll probably go for a Provence Kitchen (right) for our eldest – although the Sorbet Kitchen (left) is super duper amazing I’m not sure we could fit it in the playroom. The Sorbet Kitchen even has a fridge and a microvave – it is definitely the best kitchen we’ve seen and at £145 is great value.

The Garden Kitchen (left)– the smallest and the sweetest of them all is definitely a good option for our youngest.

Also of note was The General Store (right) another hot contender if we did buy the Sorbet Kitchen for one daughter, the other could get The General Store and things would seem fair.