Homemade Garden Tent...

Yesterday, Ava decided to nap for two hours in the morning, leaving me plenty of time to do morning devotions, and few chores around the house and then get all creative. I've been adoring these little material girly tents around and about... the kind you can buy at Garden Centres, or make when you just happen to have a free 6 hours (what mother has that?!) Pinterest is currently littered with them so this morning, when I had a spare half hour, I decided to throw together a little garden tent for Ava...

Ta - da!

It was actually DEAD easy to make, and took me about 20 minutes to throw together (the little lady woke up just in time - just as I had finished putting the material over the tent!)

Here's the play by play for this easy homemade tent - you need...

* Four wooden posts (two longer, two shorter)
* A hammer
* String
* A large piece of material
* A blanket

Step One: Hammer posts into ground so that they are steady and secure...
These posts were leftover from our craft room renovation last summer. I NEVER throw wood out - I believe it will always come in useful! Here I just made sure it was sanded off and splinter free!

I put the two taller posts at the front, and the smaller ones at the back and made a trapezium shape, so that the tent is larger at the front, and gets smaller as you move back...

Step Two: String a frame around the top of the four posts, knotting and looping so that it is secure...
I literally used some garden twine and initially tied it off at the back post, so that it would be out of the reach and eye-line of little fingers... I looped it round each post a few times so that it was extra secure. If you want to make it super-secure, you could hot glue it, or nail it, but I wanted to keep it detached so that I can take the little tent up and down without getting in a big tangle each time!

Step Three: Add carpet...
OK, not really! A blanket will do... something to stop that itchy grass bothering those little legs, and to keep those ants/general creepy crawlies at bay. I just folded the blanket in so that it fit the shape of the frame!

Step Four: The tent top...
All you need here is a seriously large piece of rectangular material. I picked this stuff up a couple of years ago at a gorgeous material shop in Matlock... it was something like £1.99 a meter so I took about 3m worth! I layed it over the top of the frame, wrapping it tightly around the frame legs at the front and pulling it taut over the frame. I then tied some bunting that I made just before Ava was born (not shown in this picture) around the top of the frame to hold the material in place.


Then I just put Ava's cushion in, her cassette player (picked it up for £3 at the charity shop on Wednesday! Brilliant! I have SO many story tapes for her, but I didn't have a cassette player to play them on - nowhere seems to sell them anymore - so I was SO chuffed to find it. But that's another story!) and a basket full of toys... happy as Larry!

Why not have a go?! It's provided hours of outdoor entertainment and sun protection here!

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