Going on Vacation: Staycation style

Sometimes  going away on a vacation just isn't a possibility - that is when you have to embrace the Stay-cation and milk it for every ounce it is worth.  Cassie has such a great idea for staycation-ing that you will want to steal for your own summer fun!!!

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Sometimes going some place fun and far away just isn’t in the budget. Or, if you’re like me, you live in an eternal vacation spot and every day feels like a holiday! Either way, you can get a little creative and make a “Staycation” this summer! My girls have been really interested in camping and so I decided a fun project to do this summer would be to make the Little Lizard King play tent.

If you have a budding sewist on your hands like my sweet five-year-old, then you can even make it a whole family project! The moment I uttered “PVC pipes” my husband’s ears perked up with the joy of a Home Depot trip in mind.

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After a trip to the Depot to get some of the hardware supplies (5 pvc pipes and a ¼ in drill bit my husband “claimed” he didn’t have yet), we set off for our local Hawaiian Fabric Mart to raid the clearance racks. The play tent requires about 5 yards of fabric and is a great opportunity to use old sheets, curtains or clean out your stash. Kenzie picked out two polka dot contrasting prints, at $2.99 a yard I was pleased!

Kenzie is still learning to sew but hemming the pole tubes was a great job for her to tackle. Her straight lines are getting more and more impressive with each sew! She lost interest once I had to pin the panels and tubes together, and Sofia the First was much more entertaining. I finished assembling the tent quickly with my serger.

The play tent is a beast to cut and sew, not necessarily time consuming but just a BIG project compared to sewing small children’s clothing! The hard work was definitely worth it when I saw her beautiful, brown eyes light up and heard her sweet shriek of joy once the tent was assembled.

My husband would have liked to have helped us finish the tent construction but I have the patience of a two year old so I ended up drilling the holes on my own (which took all but 2 minutes, seriously easy peasy). I used some old shoe lace cording to tie the poles together and ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing- a play tent!!!

We set off to one of our favorite beaches just down the street and Kenzie spent some time relaxing and reading in her new play tent! Looks like a blissful “staycation,” right?

I hope this post gave you some inspiration on a fun project your family can put together this summer if you are a “staycationer” and in need of some creativity!