This post contains affiliate links. The links in the text go to Amazon.com, but I’ve also included the Amazon.ca links at the bottom of the post for my fellow Canadians. 

Remember the fabulous twirly skirt I made that my daughter loved for thirty seconds and then discarded in favour of a princess gown? It turns out I haven’t learned my lesson.

This weekend I made my daughter a small hula hoop tent. It’s insanely simple to make:

1. Hem the end of a bed sheet; make the hem at least a few inches deep.
2. Thread some rope through the hem, then tie it together so that the top comes together in a circle. It doesn’t have to close all the way.
3. Suspend a hula hoop from the ceiling with another bit of rope. Make sure the hula hoop is a bit lower than the top of your sheet
4. Spread the sheet out over the hoop.

Easy peasy. I added a strand of fancy jewels that I knew my daughter would love, but other than that I left it as simple as I could. The full instructions are found in the book Cool Spaces for Kids, which has so many more clever ideas – such a great resource. I’ve been wanting to make this tent for awhile, and since I had a couple of hours to myself on Friday, I thought it would be a great quick and crafty project.

I love that the tent can be taken down easily and doesn’t take up too much room. I do wish I had used a bigger sheet so it would spread out more at the bottom, but I was just using what I had on hand.

As for my spirited daughter, she seems okay with it. At first, she cried when she saw it because I had the audacity to move the glider chair from one side of her room to the other – but I was sort of expecting that. My daughter doesn’t deal with change well – I mean, this is the girl that cries when I hang up a picture in my house because everything is suddenly so different. Sigh. It does make me wonder why I even bother sometimes.

Honestly, why do we do things if our children won’t appreciate them? Why did I spend an evening making this tent, or a week making her a skirt, or even an hour each night making supper that often gets one or two bites and then goes cold? I’m not really sure. I guess when you’re madly in love with your kids you just love to see them smile. Maybe that’s why we all spend hours making goofy faces at our babies, or spend countless days at the park, pushing our kids on the swings. They may not seem to appreciate any of it, but just the possibility of catching a look of joy on their faces is all the motivation we need.