What's a better way to entertain two 20-something's and a four year old on a dreary day than building a tent? We've done this once before and had a lot of success with it so we figured we'd do it again. Last time I had a lot of people ask me how we did it so you lucky bloggers get a step by step tutorial!
What you need (and if you have a Macgyver husband like I do, you shouldn't need to go buy any supplies):
-String, preferably something substantial or it won't hold up the weight of the fabric.
-Curtains, blankets, sheets, whatever you have, just make sure you try and use the most light weight fabric as possible.
-Clothespins or clips of some sort. You'll need quite a few, I think we used around 30.
-Scissors.
-A lot of patience.
-Snacks to bribe your husband.
-Pandora or your favorite radio station.
1. Make sure you are dressed appropriately for tent building.
2. Find a center point in your tent. Ours happens to be the ceiling fan. Our apartment is really small so our tent turns out to be the size of our living room. This is where your string will start and fan out to your corners.
3. Now you need to find your corners that your string will go to. Ours are two cabinets, two curtain rod holders, and a nail in our closet (which is there specifically for tent building).
4. So starting from your center point string your string (?) out to your corners. This will become your ceiling.
*I should mention that this is the point when your husband gets hit in the head with kamikaze Christmas decorations.*
5. Now you need to take more string and go from corner to corner so you can make walls.
6. This is what it should look like when you're done. So you can see it a little better I hung wash cloths on each string (this is as creative as I get).
7. Now take your fabric of choice (we used sheer curtains) and lay it on top of your ceiling strings and clothespin them where you want them. (If you're short like me, you're going to need chairs, coffee tables, kitchen counters, the couch, or whatever you have to stand on).
8. Take more fabric and clothespin it to your wall strings. We try to use the longest thing we have (in our case, sheets) so we have the least amount of gaps possible.
*This is what I got when I asked Lizzie to take pictures of our tent building.*
9. For our floor I take every blanket in the house and pile them onto each other.
*About half way through your tent building your child will probably get bored and find something better to do but will check on you every 5 minutes to make sure you're doing everything right.*
10 Voila! A tent! Now you can do what you want with it. We make it so the TV and computer are inside so we can watch movies and then camp out on the floor and eat snacks (and dinner, and then breakfast and lunch the next day...).
Lol! Best blog post, EVER! I love how much you get into the whole tent building thing. Normaly we just throw a few sheets over some chairs and call it a tent. I think I'll try your way one time! It looks like fun!
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