For the love of... reading

To say I loved reading as a kid would be an understatement. My parents put me on a book allowance and had to make me stop reading and go outside. I'm hoping my girls have that same love and desire for books. A few months ago I had an idea to create a reading tent in our new upstairs play room. I was going to buy a pre-made fairy type tent (you know the kind you can hang over a bed) then I saw one a mom made out of a hula-hoop and fabric. I can do that I thought!

And then we went to IKEA.... ahh I love that place. Well anyway, they had an outdoor "tent" made out of green net material for $15. YES! No hula-hoops for me I'm going pre-made baby. So we bought the tent and the flowers for decorating and then everything sat in our storage room for 3 months- bad mom bad.

After a lot of begging from Amelia we finally tackled the reading tent project. I have to say I love how it turned out and we had lots of fun making it. BUT.... it's not exactly what I was going for. Mostly because my sweet 6 year old was involved. I know- it makes it her tent, her design, she loves it, that's the point. I know. I know. BUT- I sure wish some of the decorations were in other spots :) Don't worry I'll get over myself... someday. So here it is........

TA DA



How we made it:

1. Gathered supplies from IKEA and Michael's. We used 9 large flowers, 2 garlands, and 2 bushes of flowers and one IKEA tent.




2. Hung the tent before we decorated it.




3. Took apart the flowers so we could attach them to the net on the tent. This is the tricky part. At first we talked about sewing the flowers on with twine, gluing them on with hot glue, but finally settled on using the pull-apart and re-assemble feature of silk flowers. I can't guarantee this will work with the flowers you chose (if you're trying this). We did sew the garland around the top with twine and that worked beautifully!

Remove flower from stem



Remove "cup" of flower from stem



Poke flower through the net and push the "cup" onto the flower backwards (wow that's an awful description- hopefully the picture makes sense!)



Then I found a tiny flower from the bush of flowers and attached it to the flower/cup combo to cover up the messy look and make it kind of cute! Hopefully you can see in this picture that the flower is on one side of the net and the cup and tiny flower are on the other side- holding each other on!



We sewed the garland around the top with thin twine and then I beefed up the garland with flowers from the bushes. I think the top is my favorite part!




Another shot of the finished product. I would really love to add more garland down the sides and move around those large flowers, but like I said I'll get over myself and leave my sweet little girl's design alone.... for now ;)



Things I love about the reading tent....

• It's big enough for both girls to sit in there and read together
• We can take it down easily and nothing falls off, just in case we need to put it away for a big upstairs party!
• We made it and Amelia is really proud of it.
• Total cost was about $30.
  
• Amelia is spending A LOT of time reading in her tent- which was the point :)