Hula Hoop Forts

Thankfully, Cooper was pretty excited about this idea!

Reason being…it didn’t go quite as smoothly as planned.

I had pinned the idea on Pinterest and had seen 2 different version:

1. Using a shower curtain and hooks

2. Pinning a sheet around the hula hoop

Easy peasy, right?

Haha….well…I figured we had the shower curtain, why not give that a go. Well, try hanging that, and actually keeping a “fort” shape in tact. Imagine each time you climb up the ladder, the hooks all slide to one side of the hula hoop. Go ahead and laugh. I would’ve too if I’d been watching myself.

Also, if the hula hoop is not perfectly level, again, all the hooks sliding to one side kinda problem.

So, here’s the best way I found to create a successful hula hoop fort:

materials:

sheets

safety pins

hula hoop

twine

ladder

step 1: Tie a piece of twine from one side of the hula hoop to the other, keeping it somewhat loose. Repeat on a perpendicular so you create an x, keeping them as close to the same length as possible (remember, must be level!) Gather the X at the top and tie together creating a loop.

step 2: Pin the sides of the sheet around the top of the hula hoop.

step 3: Roughly measure the length of your sheet, and how far down you want your hula hoop to hang from wherever you plan to hang it. Reason being, is for measuring how long you need to cut your twine to hang it. It helps to do this BEFORE climbing the ladder with the cumbersome hula hoop and sheet.

step 4: Cut twine accordingly and hang. We hung ours on our back patio cover. The kids LOVED it and I would imagine it was that much easier seeing as you didn’t have un-level tree branches to deal with.

step 5: Put blanket and/or pillows on the ground and read some books! or let the kids go crazy pulling them all over the place.

I hope this was a helpful explanation. Here are some more pictures to give you an idea of what we did, and how fun it can be! Note – I used both shower curtains and sheets, but sheets will be used if we ever do it again, MUCH easier!

Here you can see the combo of shower curtain and sheet. I had nearly given up when the sheet came out, otherwise I would’ve pinned it more thoroughly. The curtain worked better when I hung it on either side of the twine, kept it from falling altogether at least. =) We hung two and they wanted them to connect! hehe

Peeky!

AFTER they went all berserk in there (this truly was what went on, look up the definition, it will make you giggle), we did finally sit down and relax inside the little “fort”. =)