Even though it's summer we've still been having quite a few rainy days in, and what better way to spend them then building blanket forts! So when we were challenged by Dunelm to make a fun blanket den for the kids to play in of course we were excited to take part.
We went for a safari theme to make a fun jungle den for the kids and loads of their soft toys to hide inside. We used loads of blankets and other fun stuff from the safari friends range at Dunelm including the fitted sheet, duvet set, fleece blanket, cushion and bunting.
We used the couch as the base of our fort, so we had all of the couch cushions to use as well. It was a challenge to set the fort up because Ivy kept trying to take it all apart as I was putting it together! Ethan wanted to help and happily brought me cushions and planned how we would lay it all out. We tucked the fitted sheet around the couch seats then stacked all of the small cushions on the arms to drape the duvet cover as the roof. Then we arranged the cushion and soft toys around to play with and snuggled up under the fleece blanket (it's so soft!) The bunting made a fabulous decoration for our fort, as well as holding it up! I tied each end to the duvet cover and hooked it over a window handle.
Eventually I ended up using our folded up play tent in the middle of our fort to help keep it up, mostly just because Ivy kept pulling it down on them! They were so cute in there together, hiding and playing games with the toys. The best was when Ethan really got into it and pretended that it was his safari tent, he used his hands as binoculars and was spotting jungle animals going past the tent.
We tried making another fort upstairs in Ethan's bedroom as well, using his bed as the base. We tied the duvet cover and fitted sheet to the headboard and footboard, then used clothespegs to hold both together. We then tied the sheets to big toys (Ethan's trampoline and rocking moose) meaning that the kids could crawl right underneath and lay down right inside their fort. At one point it go so quiet in there that I thought both had fallen asleep in their safari den, but they'd actually just brought some books in there and were sitting and looking through them together. The kids loved their blanket forts, this is definitely going to become a popular rainy day activity for us this summer!
* This post was written in collaboration with Dunelm who sent us all of the bedding that we used to make our blanket forts.*
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