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For Tiny Londoners & Their Adults

Bablands is a resource for Londoners who find themselves with a small creature to dress up and entertain. Part-magazine, part-guide, Bablands follows the adventures of Babu and Roro as they seek out London’s coolest kids’ shops, best child-friendly hangouts and activities that won’t make mummy want to gauge her eyes out with a weaning spoon.

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Bablands on Instagram

AD. Fancy winning £500 to spend at IKEA? Just snap a cute pic using Livat Hammersmith’s Festive Filter, post it to Insta tagging @livat.hammersmith and you’ll be entered into their prize draw. What would you buy? 🇸🇪🎅
It’s Babvent Day 6 and today (admittedly a little later than scheduled), I’m teaming up with the excellent @inflatanationcolindale to offer four tickets for a one-hour bounce at the Colindale branch at an available time and date of the winner’s choice. For the uninitiated, Inflatanation is basically a giant inflatable indoor playground, a bouncy castle on steroids if you will, featuring massive slides, ball shooters, assault courses and more. It’s the most delightfully bouncy, sweaty fun and the perfect activity for a chilly winter’s day.
AD. Fancy winning £500 to spend at IKEA? The cheeky Tomtes at Livat Hammersmith might just be able to help. Simply take a cute snap using their special Festive Filter and post it, remembering to tag and follow @livat.hammersmith (putting your kids in gnome hats for the occasion is entirely optional). That's it! Just IMAGINE what you could buy with £500 of IKEA credit. A bed? A sofa? 500 Dala horse gingerbread biscuits? 10,000 tea lights? This giveaway is open now and closes on the 21st of December. Good luck!
It’s Babvent Day 5 and today I’m PUMPED to be giving away this very cool Shooting Star Necklace - Mirror Rainbow by costume jewellery royalty @tattydevine (and if you don’t know who they are, where have you been the last 23 years?). The necklace features five laser-cut mirror acrylic stars and its chain is adjustable from 56-61cm. This would make such a cool gift (to yourself) 🌟🌈
AD. There’s a new Santa in town and he’s bringing all the hygge with his cosy Swedish Grotta. Find him and his balloon-animal-constructing elves outside IKEA at @livat.hammersmith every weekend until the 18th and on the 19th-21st (check LIVAT website for timings).
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AD. Want to share your Christmas list with Santa but don't fancy paying through the nose for the pleasure? @livat.hammersmith has just landed itself a brand new grotto with a stylish Scandi twist (that's right, it's a GrottA). It comes complete with balloon-animal-sculpting elves, a free gift for every child and what I’m convinced is the *actual* Santa. The best bit? It's totally free to visit, with no need for timed slots or scrolling desperately through your spam folder for your tickets. Just rock up and demand that pony, and don't take no for an answer 🐴
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@thegingerbreadcity from @museumofarchitecture opens tomorrow. This year the exhibition is themed around climate and split into five climate islands: polar, continental, temperate, dry and tropical. I could have spent ages examining the hundreds of tiny, intricate biscuity buildings, but Babu, Roro and Lily had other ideas and we probably only spent about 20 minutes in the actual exhibition (they recommended 30-45) and then maybe 45 minutes in the workshop space making our gingerbread house (recommended time 1-1.5 hours). This lot don’t hang around 😂 Tickets cost £15 for over-12s and £10 for under-12s, then the workshop is £50 for one adult and one child on top of that 💸 I’ve got to be honest (which I realise doesn’t always make me very popular), £150 for an activity that lasts a maximum of two hours is crazy. Don’t get me wrong, I love this exhibition and feel extremely lucky to be invited each year, but if I wasn’t then we wouldn’t be going because I don’t have that kind of money (does anyone?!). I definitely think they should allow one house per family rather than one adult and one child - because really who wants more than one gingerbread house sitting on their kitchen counter? - and given that the workshop is fairly self-explanatory, £50 seems like A LOT. I mean, I saw a kit in Aldi the other day for £7. I know that’s not the point and maybe Aldi shoppers aren’t the target market here - it is in Knightsbridge, after all - but yeah, there’s my 50 cents (which tbh is more my kind of budget lolz). On until the 3rd of January.
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@fujifilmuk House of Photography’s Arctic Adventure is so tiny you could barely call it an occurrence, let alone an adventure, but it’s cute anyway, with a series of scenes to explore and take photos in. We were literally in there for 10 minutes and the majority of that was spent sliding down these giant yeti feet, but since we literally walked past on the way to the Transport Museum it was definitely worth a look.
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We’ve been to pretty much every @nowgalleryse10 exhibition since 2017, but I don’t recall any of them being as big a hit with either of my kids as @babbym ‘s Ribbons was with Roma today. Ribbons’ central structure is a floor-to-ceiling den made from coloured ribbons that have been knitted together. Inside the den, which is reminiscent of a huge woolly jumper, visitors can relax on a specially made carpet and watch three TV screens showing films in which Bovan wears his creations. The best bit is that Ribbons is a participatory installation, which means not only was Roma allowed to touch it, but she got to add to it too 🙌 In the corner there’s a ribbon dispenser where you can cut as much ribbon in as many different colours as you like, then weave, plait or knot it into the existing structures in the space. We were there for 90 minutes and only left because I needed to eat something, but she was so happy in her house 🏡 When we arrived she’d just had a huge meltdown on the tube and I was really stressed, but the knotting was so lovely and therapeutic. Note to self: buy ribbons, knit den 🧶⛺️
First annual Santa visit done (I’ve told them that the ones we visit are the real Santa’s mates or it just gets weird). God bless free Santas in a sea of £50 ones 🥴 The Zoo and Hamley’s ones are lovely and everything but Christmas is extortionate enough without having to pay through the nose to talk to a strange man in a polyester suit, amiright? To be fair the Transport Museum isn’t free to visit, but adult tickets last for a whole year (mine was still valid), kids go free and you don’t need to book timed entry slots anymore, so we just walked straight in. Santa will be at the Winter Wonderland every day from now until Christmas (check the website for timings) and you don’t have to book, though you might have to queue at busier times. Oh, and you get a badge 🎅
I’m mad stressed at the moment so I couldn’t believe my luck when @sharkyandgeorgeevents invited the girls to their kids’ club at @oldspitalfieldsmarket last weekend. I wasn’t keen on leaving either of them with people they didn’t know well when they were very little, but I’m a lot happier about it these days, especially since I find this particular age combination pretty tough going at the best of times 🙃 Babu was a bit nervous when we got there but they both settled in pretty quickly when they realised how much more fun they were going to have with these guys than with stresshead Mummy. I felt a million times better at collection than at drop off having taken three heavenly hours for myself (tbf I just sat in a cafe doing some work, but still), and they’d had the best time making snow globes, writing Christmas lists and turning each other into snowmen with bog roll ⛄️ Thanks for - at least temporarily - saving my sanity @sharkyandgeorgeevents 🙌
20 awesome things to do with your little Londoners in December is now live, packed with the very best things - free and paid, Christmassy and not so Christmassy - happening in the capital next month. Looking for the grottoes, light shows, ice rinks etc.? They have their own ever-growing festive post (currently with 40 activities), and links to both are in my bio. Enjoy!
Have you been to Lucy Sparrow AKA @sewyoursoul ‘s Felt ‘R’ Us Christmas pop up at @brunswicklondon yet? If not, why not?! It’s Lucy’s biggest store yet, featuring some of her greatest felty hits, including items from the Bourdon Street Chemist at @lyndsey_ingram and installations such as The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Lunch from Buckingham Palace, felt operating theatre Triple Art Bypass from Context Art Fair in Miami and the police car from The Billion Dollar Robbery at Saatchi, as well as some very well decorated Christmas trees. Speaking of which, tree decorations are £10 each and they’re so cute it’s faintly ridiculous. You can visit Felt ‘R’ Us and get your decs and gifts right up until the 24th of December, and go and see Lucy’s felt Christmas tree for @meatgram round the corner while you’re there. Free to visit, no need to book (but take your wallet because I guarantee you’ll want to buy something).
Seven Romas and seven Lilys 🥲 I’d seen a few photos from @twist_museum before we went and was fully expecting a Selfie Factory-type setup. While it is obviously designed to be Instagrammed and TikToked to death, it does have a bit more of an exhibition feel, with explanations for each piece or room and more of a structured layout. That said, it’s very much an experience rather than a ‘museum’. Tickets start at £19.50 for adults and £18.50 for ages 3+ which is frankly insane for what it is, and massively prohibitive for families (for comparison, Camera Obscura in Edinburgh is five times bigger and the same price, only it’s free for under-5s). While I’d definitely revisit exhibitions like Frameless (which can also presumably be updated since it’s essentially a bunch of screens), once you’ve done this one you’ve kind of done it, and I did wonder about its longevity and how they’d refresh this when it gets tired since the optical illusion theme is fairly limited. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really great bits. We loved the Ames room and the bit that makes you look like you’re swimming with dolphins, and I think overall the girls really enjoyed it when they weren’t trying to kill each other, but still, £40 for an hour’s entertainment is nuts.

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