The first time a neighbor came in and saw my girls playing in a made up “tent” she nearly fainted. I suppose it looked like maybe we’d had a private, one house earthquake. But no–it’s just that we found that the sturdiest and most amazing tents–or Rumple Houses–as Lyndi used to call them, are made from cushions and blankets—lots of blankets, and…
furniture. Yes, that’s what I said.
If you’ve never made one before–oh, what you’re missing!
Yes, that is a chair and an end table in there somewhere sheltering a couple of happy kids and the perfect plate of brownie cookies. We liked our “rumple house” that way. They were a lovely thing and liable to stay stacked up and played in and slept in–merrily–for days. Usually until someone a bit too rational and ordered was on their way over, then down it would would all come…like it had never happened.
Some people just wouldn’t understand.
One of the girls’ little friends came to play once in the middle of our “tenting” adventure and said, “Oooooh…you guys are going to be in trou-ble. Just wait till your mom sees what you did!”
Of course, that’s when one of them piped up–“Oh, she helped us tip over the rocker—it was too heavy for us.”
Guilty as charged.
But she came in and romped and played all afternoon and left saying, “I’m going to see if my mom will let us have a rumple house.”
Good luck with that.
So, if you are one of those staunchy souls who are inclined to say, “No, no. Bad mom,” –be warned. We’ll likely just chuckle…
and invite you in.
You’ll love it…
and…
we have cookies.
I haven’t made one of those with my girls in awhile. I think that is what we will be doing today. 😉
OOh! I remember that. It was so cool 🙂 I don’t really have any tippable furniture, though…
Hmm…
Oh… ALL furniture is tippable, with the right people tipping it! 😉 Heh! We WERE old enough to ask permission of sorts though, your kids might just think you’ve gone nuts! You could always do it when they’re asleep… sooo they don’t know exactly how you made! Sneaky! 🙂
SOOO MUCH FUN!!! I’m glad you have a picture of this, because I remember it being SOOO much fun! I’m glad we didn’t get in trouble… sooo thanks for that! 😉
Dude….we’ll be over.
:]
I did that with my siblings growing up. We mostly used kitchen chairs and blankets. My mom didn’t care as long as we cleaned up when we were done. Thanks for bringing back some good memories!
I bet the bald kid could find some “tippable furniture” at your place. Ha ha. They are little enough that they’d love a card table tent like crazy–so start there. We’ll move on to bigger and better stuff later. When they get bigger they will realize that MOM gets to be in charge of this activity and when and how it happens. That’s the beauty of it.
It was always so fun. I just remember scrambling around to put it all back before we had certain people show up. Remember that it was up for a week once during certain business trips. So dang fun.
It’s funny how some people would see this as totally out of control, but I loved it because my kids were right there where I could hear them and see them and I didn’t have to wonder what they were up to. Those were always my favorite kinds of activities. We were never too big on “go away and play” type things.
Life is too short to worry about company that doesnt understand! I loved doing that kind of stuff with the kids- making memories! fun!
Whenever we had to do a quickie pull down because someone snooty was coming–we just laughed and talked about how much fun we could have if we just didn’t take everything so seriously. Sometimes it all went right back up when they left!
:]
That’s it–I need to make a Rumple House out of my room 😉 Bwa ha ha It would definitely improve it don’t you think? Oh dear… :S
I wish my camera was working….because if it were, you would totally see that we had one up before this post was done…..two in fact :). My son took our card table, our computer desk and his bed and put like 7 blankets. My other son, he took our camping pads and laid them straight across the two beds, then he put like 6 blankets on top. It was so cute how they were working together for 2 purposes 🙂
Adorable! I remember doing that at their age.
“Oh…Animal….”
:}
Well, I wish you had one too–we’d love to see it! They’ll remember this kind of thing forever.
Some of my warmest memories are of my mom bringing us lunch to eat in our little rumple house. It was only a card table and some blankets but it was still just magic.