Tipi and how the steam came out of my ears

It's a dead giveaway. The teepees're flying around your ears, some more beautiful than others. All pretty pricey though.

And by pricey I mean tepees of around 100 euros or even more. I didn't think that was worth it. After seeing how Charissa made a teepee in an afternoon, I wanted to do it too! One trip to the Quantum and Gamma later I could get to work. I made a DIY teepee!

How I did it?

Scoring tipi materials

Since I am not so mobile anymore I did some research on the internet. At the Kwantum I saw some cool fabrics for only five euros a meter. Together with the little man we went out. We needed three meters of fabric. Once at the fabric department I found out that they had the fabric in several colors.

Now to choose. We found a really cool checkered fabric with gray and bright orange. Add gray thread and you're done. Approved by the little man we drove on to the Gamma store.

There we went looking for bamboo sticks. Six long sticks or 2 meters. The biggest fun we had together because sir also wanted to carry some sticks.

As the little guy 1.05m and so the sticks are twice as long, it was a hilarious sight. How do you hold something like this when you are small yourself??

DIY teepee; getting started

When we got home we started right away. On Charissa's blog I saw that she used a step-by-step plan from IKEA. That looked super simple, so off we went. First I had to fiddle with sticks to tie them together without them falling over. That wasn't easy.

Okay, stay calm Bianca. Little man helped me and assured me it would be fine. The cats hung in the sticks so that was pretty annoying too. Finally the stuff stayed up with the help of a few tight knots of string. Then cut fabric; piece of cookies.

Also the sewing together went like a charm. I just followed the steps in the plan. Hop tent cloth over the poles and it already looked like a teepee. In IKEA's step-by-step plan, they then made ribbons on the inside so you could tie the sticks to them.

Fine, let's do it anyway? And there came the frustration.. Steam coming out of my ears, drops of sweat on my back and hard bellies because it turned out I hadn't measured out the ribbons properly. Grrr..

I was completely done with it.
After looking at the teepee for half an hour and cursing myself, I gave up. Never mind, stupid tipi tent.
One night's sleep later, I suddenly had an inspiration. The little man was with grandma for the day and I had all the time in the world to get back to the teepee. I started slowly, put the sticks in the right place, laid the canvas over them and relaxed pinning where the ribbons should go.

Hallelujah! Homage! Three cheers! Half an hour later, there was a real Tipi standing there!

And it stayed up too!

The moral of this story? Don't forget step 6 from the step-by-step plan. I was so stubborn that I started to measure it out and then it doesn't add up anymore.

It would have saved me a lot of frustrated hours if I had just read correctly. But hey..
The teepee is ready, I have to chase the cats out and the little man is happy. What more could you want?

Do your kids already have a cute teepee tent? Bought or homemade? I'm curious.

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