Indoor camping

We've been building dens a lot recently. Lots of upturned furniture, cardboard boxes and bedsheets! Far too much fun!

The culmination of the various dens was a hunormous one made from an upturned papsan chair, two plastic pipes from the garage, an elderly ikea chair (that we affectionately refer to as the "soul glow chair" because of the stain on the headrest that I can't get rid of), a play rug, an old cardboard box that used to be "the independence day house", and before that, "Thomas the tank engine-sort of", and a bunch of bedsheets.

It was an uber den! Porch, two internal doors, a middle room and a bedroom at the end.

After that the kids wanted to "camp out", so we made a little pretend camp fire.

I put a load of the moss circles that we used for the indoor picnic around the front of the den and the kids coloured in some fire to add to the wood pile.

We pretended to toast the most pathetically miniscule marshmallows ever and they wrapped up a load of play food in tin foil to bake on the edge of the fire.I figured we should probably have a go at making some fake smores. Is that how you spell it? I'd never heard of smores until I came to the US. There was to be no real melting on the pretend fire, so we just sandwiched the marshmallows in the graham crakers with nutella. The kids saved a couple of the graham crackers with the chocolate licked off for their dad. It's the thought that counts right?

The kids brought along the chipmunk I made ages ago, because there are always chipmunks when you go camping. I'll have to make a racoon and a grisly bear next I suppose, unless we pretend that we are camping back in the UK, then the scariest animal I'd have to make would be a badger, but then again to make a realistic simulation of camping in the UK I would have to screw the sprinkler into the livingroom ceiling.

Making dens is great fun! I think I want to go get some more of those plastic pipes, because they were only 79cents each and we could make a cool teepee with a few more! Is it bad that I find myself looking longingly at plastic plumbing connectors in Lowes like they are tinker toys?

Speaking of Lowes, it's another build and grow workshop for free tomorrow. Building a mini school bus this time. I think that's the last of the summer series though, so it'll probably go back to being once a month rather than once a fornight.

Have you got any killer den making tips? My kids are getting such a kick out of the livingroom being entirely consumed by this structure.

Fangletronics hero is busy making a pretend flickering flame doodad with LEDs for the kids to put under the pile of wood in the campfire for a more realistic indoor campfire in the dark! Whooo!