Advice needed for toy shop for 4 yr old

[Emmalou]

Hi everyone, My dd will be 4 v soon and I had thought about buy her a shop to play in. I've seen the one at J Lewis (#60.00) and there's one on sale at luxurywoodentoys but I wanted some advice from anyone who's already bought one. Which one did you buy and are you pleased with it? We have a small house by dd is always playing shop etc so I think she would like this .... Help please!

I have to say that I wouldn't waste the £60 on buying a piece of plastic (sorry presuming it is plastic). Instead what we did is we bought a cash register, kept empty boxes of cereal etc, kept milk cartons and gave them a good wash out and anything else that we came across that could be used. They already had a little shopping trolley and a basket.

This for us is better as 1. it doesn't cost that much, 2. you don't need to worry about "shop stock" getting damaged 3. it's completely portable (ours is stored in a cardboard box) and it can be as big or as little as you like

My sister and I used to do this when we were younger and I remember the great times we had. Sorry but for me the pretend shop stuff doesn't cut it

big item will drive u mad in a small house. thats partly why we havent bought dd1 the play kitchen she wants as storage is a major problem. perhaps buy her a seperate til and then either some used boxes,jars etc from home, or buy a pack of toy food items/boxes from toys r us. then its easy to store when she isnt playing with it and is out of the way.

My dd has a lovely wooden one from Tridias, but their website is being renovated and has been down for a while. I take the point about boxes and so on, but she loves hers. The closest I could find was this , but hers doesn't have a roof and was much cheaper (about £50). We change it all the time, it's a dress shop a lot of the time- I bought some dolls' clotheshangers, so they hang along the front and the shoes go on the shelves. It's also been a cafe with the menu chalked on the board at the back (the one in the picture doesn't have this). It does take up a bit of room though, so misdee is right, it may drive you mad!