Restoration Hardware Teepee Knockoff

Back in the fall I saw a picture of this amazing teepee from Restoration Hardware and fell in LOVE!  I had just built a stick teepee outside for the kids as we were having fun study early American history and acting out being pioneers and Native Americans in their playtime.  And then I saw this Teepee and it was just so whimsical to me!  So I picked up brown and white chevron fabric at Hobby Lobby 40% off and got home and set out to work figuring out how to cut the fabric and out it together.  We had new kittens and I just ended up stashing the bag with my sketch and measurements in a bag in the closet.  I had also gone out in the woods with a big pair of loppers and cut down some trees that were pretty straight and no more than 1.5 - 2 inches round for poles. Then it all just sat...and sat....but last week was the week!  My son has his first ever birthday party to celebrate turning 5 and it was Native American themed and that spurred me on to finish the teepee!

I had looked online but didn't find a tutorial that I liked because all the tutorials used some sort of large sheet, drop cloth or super wide fabric so the measurements and pattern didn't work for my 45 inch wide patterned hobby lobby fabric.  

So here is my tutorial for a DIY Restoration Hardware Teepee / Pottery Barn Teepee for less than $30. I bought more fabric than I needed Bc I didn't know how much I needed until I made it so I'll save you that!

Supplies

3.5 (or 4 just to be safe) yards heavy weight fabric (duck/canvas) hobby lobby has lots if fun prints around $9.99 and you can use the hobby lobby app on your phone to get it 40% off! For 4 yards that's $24.

Thread

Ribbon

4 poles either cut trees or PVC pipe ~70 inches long

Measuring tape

Pencil

Long straight edge like a board or yard stick

Sewing machine

Lay out fabric, folded in half lengthwise.

Measure 62 inches up and mark fabric with a pencil.  Use a clear quilting ruler to cut straight across at that 62 inch mark. 

From folded edge, lay out your long straight edge to get a straight line from corner to corner.  (I used the board we had just used as a cross for an Easter lesson). 

 Draw along that straight edge with a pencil.  

Then carefully cut along your pencil line

You will have this... When you open it you have one large traingle and two halves of another triangle.  

Repeat that process again with the remainder if your fabric.

Now you should have 2 large triangles and 4 half triangles.  Take one of the half triangle pairs and flip the fabric so the right sides are facing eachother and everything is lined up and then along the straight edge (not the angled edge) stitch the two pieces together creating a full triangle when it's opened.  

Repeat that process with the other half triangle pieces except this one will be the front of teepee with a door so start sewing from the top of the triangle and see down the the edge about 24 inches and then back stitch to finish it off.  I left the raw edges as is because I liked the frayed look.  

Now you should have 4 full triangle pieces.  

Next step is to simply hem the top and bottom of each piece.  Turn over the bottom edge of each triangle about half an inch and see along creating a hem.  

For the tops, we need to create space for a hole for the poles so fold the tops of each triangle over about 3 inches and see down to crest a finished edge.  

Now to assemble the triangles together.  

Place the triangle that has the opening for the door right side with one of the triangles with no seam up the middle (the triangle with the seam in the middle will go in the back).  With right sides facing eachother, see along one of the outside edges of the triangle to connect the pieces. 

Open it up and do the same thing, placing the other full triangle (with no middle seam) lined up with the triangle with the doorway, right sides facing eachother and sew together along the opposite side of that piece.  

When you open it up you should have the  front teepee piece with the opening in the middle with the 2 side pieces connected on either side.  

Now you just have to connect the back piece.  The one with the seam up the middle.  

Open up your teepee and place the last piece on top of one of the side pieces, right sides facing eachother and sew along the raw edges.  Then, connect the two last raw edges of your teepee together right sides facing eachother, and sew along the edge completing the teepee.  When you flip in right side out you will have a lot of fabric all connected!  

Now cut some lengths of ribbon ~18 inches (hopefully you have some on hand that you can use up and don't need to buy any!)

I simply reached inside the teepee and quickly centered a ribbon with each seam on the lower half of the teepee and stitched it down right along the seam.  Then repeated the process attaching a piece of ribbon to each inside seam on the upper half if the tent.  

The ribbons don't need to all be at the exact same spot in each seam, it's just to tie to the poles to help keep the seams lined up with the poles once you erect your DIY teepee.

now take your poles all gathered together and slide them up the middle of your teepee and spread them out. 

I then used some twine to tie up and secure the poles once I had them positioned the way I wanted them.

 Crawl/reach  inside your teepee and tie the ribbons securely around each pole.  

If you have your teepee on hardwood floors, consider throwing down an area rug or some canvas drop cloth to protect your floor from scratches. 

My son playing the drums I made as favors for his birthday party inside the teepee!

Later we hung a dream catcher great grandma had sent on the front

And added a basket to the side with play invitations, toms for playing the drums, feather headband, frayed t shirt, binoculars made if toilet paper tubes, a bear, bow and arrows etc.  

Spare throw pillows thrown in... Now not only are the kids drawn into this whimsical cozy space, but has become a new favorite napping place for the cats!  Which in the play world are wild cougars!!! Watch out!!!

Natural Pest Control

Well spring is here full on and so are all the critters, creepies and crawlers.  But we have got a pretty good pest control thing going on now.  Our 4 chickens eat bugs like crazy around here!  Our first year before chicksens here in the woods the spiders were so gross, I was just disgusted and freaking out all the time... Every window and shrub of the property had a giant ugly spider right in the middle.  Last year our chickens are then all, I saw only 1 big spider.  I also saw one if my chickens eat a garden snake the other day like a giant spaghetti noodle!  

When the chickens are locked up at night and no longer free ranging and hunting the bugs in the grass and shrubs, we have 4 bats that come out and hunt the moths, mosquitoes and flying ants all night.  I also hear an owl but haven't see. It.  

And, our boy cat has become a good hunter and is killing chipmunks and mice.  We had started to hear nice sounds in the cieling but since our cat has become a hunter I haven't heard anymore noises!  

So now I just need to figure out how to get rid of weeds easily and naturally without pulling them myself!  Lol 

But those chickens I tell ya....they more than earn their keep!  They lay eggs every day, they eat all the bugs, we put their pool in the compost which is supposed to be the best and they love going down to the compost like and scratching around...so they even airate it for us!  They also keep my kids entertained, and my toddler just walks around the yard with them...they eat all our chicken scraps so I never feel like anything goes to waste.  Seriously.... They are awesome!!!

Naturally Learning

Well in our journey this year away from curriculum and going back to basics with a more Charlotte Mason/Unschool/relaxed eclectic/delight centered learning approach, the fruits of this experiment have been sweet to say the least.  I mean  I know they say "never say never" but as of now I don't ever see myself buying a boxed curriculum again.  If there are certain tools or books we need or want then sure I may get some things a la carte but our days just feel so much more fulfilling, engaging, loving and inspiring without being boxed in and stressed out about the curriculum.  But this isn't an explanation/information post on homeschool styles, I just wanted to share a quick tidbit from our day as an example of "unschooling" and math.  

Yesterday I set out the board game Dino Tracks (a math game) on the table.  I didn't suggest playing it, just set it out on a clean clutter free table to be noticed.  That is strewing.  The kids asked me to play with them so I stopped what I was doing and got on the floor to play the game.  I took the problem solving cards aside and said "these might be too hard for you lets not use them in the game" (reverse psychology). So they begged me to set the game up using the problem solving cards.  One of the problem solving cards required division so I told my 5 year old son to get his calculator (he's been collecting them from the dollar tree and learning addition facts on them for fun he thinks it's amazing and is memorizing the facts as he always rechecks to see if he'll get the same answer each time and he also pretends it's his own iPad/iPhone. lol) and told him how to type in the problem and find the answer using division.  

Today, my daughter that just turned 8 picked up one of the big calculators that was in the baby's toy basket and started experimenting with division like I showed them during the game.  She showed me a couple of the answers she was getting and asked a couple questions and a light bulb went on in her head.  She started to understand basic division without me having to sit down with a lesson manual and try to explain it while we both become frustrated.  She was pretty exciting at her discoveries and continued on figuring it out for quite some time and now she understands a new math concept I had not set out to teach her today but it arose out of strewing, being engaged and flexible to stop what I was doing to play with them and most importantly, her own innate curiousity.  

We also had a math lesson on percentage in the car that randomly came about from another question.  And she totally understood.  

I love it.  I really learned that I can't just sit down and have an agenda tell me to input some specific information into her head on a particular day and if I don't then feel stressed because I'm getting behind.  Because really, I learned the hard way...if there is no reason in their mind to process the information...they won't... No matter how easy, fun, patiently and creative you try to present it....it's like potty training a kid before they are ready...you can start potty training as early as you want but it doesn't mean they will necessarily be potty trained any sooner, you may just have to deal with accidents that much longer.  

As for daily practice to get better at Math Facts, we've been using Xtramath and the Splash Math App.  If my daughter wants to use my phone or iPad to look up rainbow loom tutorials or play a certain game, she can if she does her math practice first and she actually reminds me some days to do Xtramath if I didn't remind her because she wants to earn the certificate to print off.  So getting practice with that helps with her recall of Math facts and then like I said, new Math concepts have been coming up just in our everyday conversations and games and some days she gets in the mood for her math book so we will take out her Singapore math book and whenever we do she gets really into it and does like 12 pages or more.  Usually at bedtime and that's why she wants to keep going lol! So I see it kind of like how toddlers eat.  Moms often worry because their toddlers diets are so eratic but then when you step back and look at what they are eating over the course if a week vs how much or little they eat every day, you see that it all balances out and they are getting eat they need.  

Math Strewing/inspiration for younger kids

Dino Tracks

Math War

7ate9

Card games like crazy 8s, war, go fish, solitaire etc.

Calculators as toys

Geometric pattern blocks

Containers to sort and count their nature collections (rocks, nuts, acorns, sea shells etc)

Rainbow Loom

Toy clock

Rock n learn DVDs time and money

Asking then to check the time for you often

Putting a dollar store calendar in their rooms and they can cross off and keep track of days themselves 

Let them help bake and read recipe and measure.  Take a moment to show them the equivalents.  

Math music -skip counting songs

Apps and websites like

Xtramath

Starfall

Splash Math

Math Ninja

Timmy's Kindergarten Time

Dresser makeover

My husband and I got this golden oak hand me down dresser when we got married and the mirror for $10 at a thrift store and in the midst of being busy with work and raising little kids it was just functional but not our style.  For Mother's Day a couple years ago I got a black headboard and footboard for our bed but the rest if the matching set was kinda outrageous so we have had mismatched stuff for a while.  Well this weekend it was finally nice out and I was able to refinish the dresser!  I used an Ebony stain on it after my hubby sanded it down.  We were going to stain the mirror black too but there was some other ugly brown stain in it and we didn't want to sand it...got lazy so the only paibt I has on hand was the left over turquoise paint from my daughters room (it was BEHR Marquee Misty Isle) so I decided to just play around brushed some of that on without giving complete coverage so it has a bit if a rustic vintage vibe.  I don't know if I like the mirror this bright of turquoise set against the black but I like it a lot more than I did before and it took like 10 minute so I can always change it another time if I grow to really dislike it.  So anyways, don't have a true before picture but have the sanded down pic mid progress and the after...so yeah I loved using the ebony stain vs black paint.  The wood grain remains and it just looks nicer than I think black paint would have and it went in so fast and easy and was dry in no time!

Desoto Falls

I am going on about 6 weeks where I have only seen the sun probably 2 times.  I'm feeling a little depressed and am upping my Vitamin D as I have a history of it plummeting to extremely low levels. So while I hang out inside feeling unmotivated, I thought I would go back and finish some posts that I didn't have time to do when the weather WAS nice and we were spending all our time outside and I wasn't posting anything.  So I can remember the nice outdoor days and look forward to them again...spring is coming...spring is coming.... in the mean time lets revisit one of our previous hikes and look forward to doing more of that soon!

Desoto Falls was a great hike to do with the kids.  It's located in Lumpkin County, Georgia.  There is a little history to this area, it is named Desoto falls because a breastplate of armor was discovered in the 1880s that came from the men under Hernando Desoto that were in the area in 1541.  There were originally three falls you could hike to on this trail, but one is now closed after the storm of the century in 1993 and the upper falls are now inaccessible.   

We enjoyed our hikes to both falls.  When you arrive you come to a trail head (with a marker giving the story about the breastplate from Hernando Desoto) that give the history of the area and then you can go either left or right.  We took the trail to the right first, visiting that fall and then walked back and visited the fall to the left of the trail head, which was smaller and a shorter walk.  Both trails are not too long and easily doable with young children.  

This hike is very easy, more of a nature walk than a "hike"

Length : about 2 miles

Parking: $3

Directions and additional info about the trail Atlantatrails.com

Exploring an Old Homestead

We recently had the pleasure of a wonderful outing at our friends historic family homestead.  We started with a picnic by one of the waterfalls on the property and then hiked around and even got to see old indian markings on the cliff rocks.  There was even a cave where my best friend's mom and her sisters used to build fires and cook noodles as kids.  This land in Cowiche, WA was breathtaking and amazing in the middle of winter, I can't wait to go back in summer!  I hope my friends turn this family property into a wedding venue after they fix up the 100 year old barn!  If I still lived in WA my friend and I agreed we would totally go into business together doing something special out here!

Learning can happen Anytime and Anywhere

                                     

As part of our Charlotte Mason Nature Club, we recently made a trip to the planetarium for a celestial show to be followed by going to the observatory to use the telescope and view the constellations and a comet. The kids loved the show at the planetarium but unfortunately we couldn't find the telescope observation place afterwards, out in the mountains in the dark..we just could not find it so disappointed,  we came home.  It was already late for our young kids but when we got home I looked up and the sky was clear and brilliant.  Orion was IN YOUR FACE there, so I had hubby put the boys to bed while I got out sleeping bags and rolled them out on the back deck.  We didn't have to be up early in the morning so we snuggled in the sleeping bags observing the skies and constellations.  I had stepped out of the show at the Planetarium because the baby was getting too excited and vocal so it was neat that my daughter started noticing constellations I didn't know about and missed hearing about in the show and listening to her telling me about them.  Just laying out there for a while, she was able to notice how the stars and moon had shifted in the sky and we were able to talk about that, and what direction the sun rises and sets and same with the moon tracking across the sky as everything spins and orbits.

 "SCIENCE!!!"

What was disappointing (missing the telescope viewing) turned into an opportunity to seize the moment and create a special memory and learning experience, and a reminder to me why I love homeschooling and having a flexible schedule...being able to stay up til 11:30 watching the stars in winter snuggled in a sleeping bag, and not having to be anywhere first thing in the morning.  Learning doesn't have to happen at a certain time of day or in a certain place.  It can happen anytime, anywhere.