tepee present

Still catching up here, with something I meant to post several weeks ago. Wren's friend Cash turned three a few weeks ago, and I am kind of clueless about birthday presents for little boys. I really love it when the girls can be involved in the process of making the gifts they give to their friends, and I know tons of little presents we could make that are guaranteed to make a three year old girl loose her shit- tutus, wands, cupcake bags, I could go on.

I went into parenthood with some loose idea that I would not be perpetuating gender stereotypes in my own children, which in retrospect is a pretty laughable goal. I will say that I did alright with Wren, until one fateful day when she was two and a half and wearing a pair of pull up diapers. These were Huggies, I think, and they had the Disney princesses on them. These were not pullups I had bought, since I never buy name brand diapers, and I had been actually trying to buy a mix of "boy" and "girl" diapers, after determining there was no actual design difference. My mom must have stocked up when she was visiting, but really, there's no blame. It was inevitable, and of course once she saw the princesses, she's never looked back.

Anyway, that's a long ramble to say that, once I've exhausted my tiny store of boy present ideas (superhero cape... um.... yeah that's it) I am totally stumped. So I was happy to see this tutorial on Sew Mama Sew a little while ago.


The materials were all relatively easy to find- first the bamboo poles, then the painters drop cloth, and the metal rings. We could only find three metal rings, but that turned out to be fine. We used rubber bands to tie the poles together, and had our helpers get inside to make sure we had the right size.


First we cut the canvas,following the original instructions, before we measured it over the top of the poles. I really wish we hadn't done that, as I ended up having to sew on a new section to make it the right size. But eventually we got the right fit, and I sewed a section closed over the door, instead of using ties like the instructions indicate. Basically, we started making the damn thing about 30 minutes before we were supposed to go to the party, so we simplified wherever we could.


The girls tested it out, before we rolled the whole thing up and tied a bow on it. If I had a yard, I would be very tempted to make another one of these to keep, but the girls already have a "kitty cat tent." It's pink, with flowers and a kitty on it. So yeah, it looks like gender typing is here to stay.