Lollibopping with the littlest baker

It's summer time and that means festival season is well under way. The festival scene has really come into its own in the last 10 years with more and more festivals popping up each year for just about every conceivable member of society.

I remember the days of being excited about going to festivals, a day or if you're really lucky a whole weekend spent with your mates in a mud sodden field (Great British weather) listening to some of your favourite bands and maybe some more obscure ones thrown in for good measure. Going home exhausted and exhilarated with some great memories of a day well spent.

Move on to me now being 30(!) and a married mum of one and those days seem behind me for now. This festival season there was just one festival that I was excited to visit and that was Lollibop!

Lollibop is a festival all about children. Littlest baker was just so excited to be having a day out in London and going somewhere that was all about her! 

We didn't manage to see everything and do everything as there was just so much that trying to do it all would have been akin to a military manoeuvre and when you have a 5 year old in tow sometimes its easier to just go with the flow.

We did however get to watch the fabulous Katie - CBeebies I can cook live on the cooking stage. She wasn't cooking, but at 8 months pregnant did a magnificent job of entertaining her audience with singing, dancing and jokes. Littlest baker made her way to the front of the stage and got stuck in with joining in with the action. 

We even managed to squeeze in a photo with Peppa Pig and the Cloud babies! 

We watched the cast of The West End show Peter Pan (starring Stacey Solomon) on the main stage whilst we sat and ate our lunch. 

The whole thing was a star filled extravangza - Dick and Dom were on the main stage following the Peter Pan songs, Sid and Andy (CBeebies presenters) were in a smaller tent. There were lots of photo opportunities with Mr Men, Postman pat, Shaun the sheep and even Justin Fletcher was there!

What was brilliant about the festival was that all of this and the rest including face painting was included in the ticket. So often you take your child for a day out, pay the entry fee to wherever it is and get hit for everything else they want to do once you're in. How refreshing that this wasn't the case at Lollibop. The food stalls were reasonably priced, we got a toastie for littlest baker at £2.50, there was also a Paella stall, hot dogs, burgers, churros (which I may have treated myself to) and some clever person had thought about what kids really like to eat and had a Fish finger butty stand.

Yes! She is 'feeding' a pineapple, I didn't get it either! 

As you can imagine there were plenty of stalls all giving out free samples/money off vouchers to advertise their business - pretty much all of them relating to children of varying ages. There were of course the odd stall aiming themselves at the grown ups, we are after all the ones controlling the purse strings. I did get a few bloggers samples from some of these stalls which will be reviewed in a seperate post.

As you would expect the sponsors and partners of the festival were well represented across the park with the one standing out the most in my opinion being Chobani who seemed to be everywhere I looked. Lots of their posts were being handed out and I bagged myself a few which made a handy breakfast to keep me fuelled for the busy day after the early start I'd had. I'm sure the presence Chobani had a the festival can only help them with their move towards UK yoghurt market dominance!

Thanks to Chobani for allowing myself and littlest baker to be your guests at the festival, we had a great day with lots for the Littlest baker to tell her friends about the day she went to her first festival.