A teepee sleepover

Sleepovers have a pretty bad rep don’t they? All sugar highs and tired eyes. After hosting our first group sleepover I can confirm this is all true, but they are also lots of fun too. Sam’s sleepover party was a good six months ago now and I hate to admit it, but this post has been in draft since then. Does that make me the slowest blogger ever?

My blog has been really neglected this year and when I say neglected, I pretty much mean shelved. I am trying to write a bit more these days though, and find having this space open to record some thoughts always helps to get me writing more regularly, so here I am again. It got to the point where even my mum said she was sick of looking at my blog and seeing a post about blueberry muffins, so I thought I’d better do something about it!

Sam turned 10 in April and to make his party extra special I hired some of those cool sleepover tents so he and his friends could camp out in the playroom. If you haven’t seen them before, they’re A-frame tents that come with mattresses and accessories, and you can choose from loads of different themes. We went for ‘camo camping’, with four in the playroom for the boys and one unicorn-themed tent in my bedroom for Flo.

Aside from looking great, I thought this would also mean they would hang out in their tents for the evening, watch a few movies maybe, play games and eat pizza. I thought I’d be pretty much redundant… but instead I was answering calls of ‘mum’, ‘Sam’s mum’ and the occasional ‘Julia’ until about 11pm, at which point I gave up and went to sleep!

The day after the party was Sam’s actual birthday but attempts at going out for a nice family lunch were pretty futile, as he was so tired he could hardly eat his cake. The oe in the photos is a doughnut cake that my mum made for him, it’s a simple idea and made at Sam’s request after he saw similar on that website Vat19.com. This is the equivalent of an innovations magazine for kids, only it’s based in the States so postage is always way above the price of the product. I’m sure if you have children about the same age as mine you’ll know about it.

The tents were a great success though and so easy as someone else comes and does the set up for you. We used a company called Little Teepees (and no, I didn’t receive this to review, just giving them a mention because they’re fab.)

I’ll certainly be using them again – Flo has hers pencilled in!

Back soon (no more baking posts, I promise!)

x Julia