The Three Indians Princesses have been forced to move their summer camp to higher ground…higher covered ground. Granny’s back porch. This past winter the local EMC came around trimming trees and were nice enough to run most of it through a chipper, leaving Granny with a huge pile of mulch. Unfortunately for the girls, it’s smack dab in the middle of their favorite tepee camp. As they searched for a new camp location the plentiful rain we’ve had this summer made Granny’s porch the ideal place.
You can see how Granny’s clothesline assists in their tepee building.
   They each have their own room-this one belongs to Princess 1
            Princess 2-I think she’s got the best spot
                       Princesses 3’s corner
The Princesses have some neat spy holes-just in case an invading tribe comes into their territory.
I like how the wind billows their walls-and sends a soothing breeze through the camp.
Pap says at 12 & 11 years old-the Three Indian Princesses are about too old to be playing house. Granny and I say-we hope they’re still playing  house when their 18.
Ever build tepees or tent houses when you were a kid?
Tipper
I loved making tent houses or hide-outs as I called them.
The house I grew up in had a cool little room under the house that I had fixed up as a hide-out.
how wonderful! when i was small my sister and i would be shipped to my auntie shelia’s to spend a few weeks with my cousin. we would make a tent from blankets strung over the washingline, make a shop in the old brick shed next to the outhouse…saving empty packets and filling with newspaper and better still climbing the huge chalk hill behind aunties house so we could slide down it in big cardboard boxes! i believe auntie has a photo of us together, complete with one of her cats we dressed in a little knitted tam o’shanter!
Build on, girls! I like your digs.
I built mind with sheets and furniture indoors. Very temporary. I did have a fort in the woods out back, though. Also very makeshift. But they were fun.
I think kids grow up way too fast now a days. I love the table with the flower on it. She’s made a very pretty little tent house. I had a teepee Dad built for us outside. I think it was made out of an old army tarp wrapped around a tree trunk. I spent many days inside that tent. I loved it! wish I had a picture of it to remember it by.
I so remember my four girls always creating “their special place” tents (sheets and blankets over the clothes line) (sheets over chairs and tables. You have an awesome area for creativity for your girls. They are cute and innovative.
My girls made tents using tables, chairs and quilts. Our house was often one big camp during the long cold winter months. They had fun, and my grandchildren have done the same, while visiting.
I think it’s wonderful that your girls are still “playing house”, as your Pap puts it. And, I hope they are still playing when they are 18, too! What a great post. Nice to see that girls are still creative and content.
Love their new spot! Being close to Granny probably has a few other perks too 🙂 We found cozy spots in the bushes growing up – always fun and cool in the heat!
On the back porch, when a storm was blowing in, my brother and I would pin sheets to Mom’s clothesline. It became our ship…”Batten the hatches!” my brother would yell as the wind whipped through our sails. I loved every minute of it.
I love the princess’ rooms. What a wonderful place to play.
Tipper,
This is a great posting and reminds me of my playhouse I had under the big pine tree when I was a little girl. Mama would give me bottles and say, “Put these into your playhouse.” I had so much fun playing in my playhouse. I took moss and covered the floor for a carpet. Hope the girls have as much fun as I did when I was growing up here in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
What fun as kids we had playing under the quilts on mom’s clotheslines. You are so great at stirring good memories.
I think I’ll go home and find some old sheets and make my grandchildren a tent.
Keep those girls young as long as possible.
*GIGGLE* I love the “spy holes”!
Location, location, location!!
Looks like fun.
🙂
Please let them be kids as long as possible and let them do the things kids do; it’s there the best memories are born and it’s there, to our childhood, we are wont to return when our lives in the grownup world need soothing.
All too soon our kids are forced into schedules and timetables and responsibilities that suppress the urges of freedom. What spiritual good does all-day kindergarten, or early-imposed formal education, or shortened summer breaks that grow shorter each year yield?
On a rainy day, am I not still urged by some ancient pull to draw the chairs on the front porch closer together and drape blankets over them and make a tent into which I can withdraw and escape the bonds of society?
Give me those halcyon days.
All the time and so did my kids, all over the place and in winter in the house. My sons favorite tent place was under the dining room table, he would use every spare sheet and blanket in the house.
Now my grandchild does the same thing.
I love it.
Your three girls are so pretty.
How FUN !!!!! Can I come and join the Indian Princesses? I’m an apple orchard tree fort gal myself ……and also a playhouse gal (built by Mom and Dad) ….. and a tent gal (when my brother and his buddies would share)…….and also a back porch fort gal …… I LOVED having my outdoor kid forts with my best pal Suzy in the summertime .
My best friend and I made a 2 story fort in our backyard with a picnic table and a wooden ladder as a base. The best fort I’ve ever created (or seen) in my 44 years – thanks for reminding me!
My son has what he calls forts made from quilts or sheets all over the house at times. It wouldn’t do to have one outside here, too many fire ants! My son is 12 and seems a little slower at growing up too, which is fine with me since kids grow up all too fast these days anyway.
First, I want to say that first pic (feet) is amazing! beautiful photo!
I loved playing house when I was a girl — never stopped, matter of fact. 😉
Your princesses are gorgeous and smart, and so are their tents.
I think now a days girls grow up too fast. I’m glad your girls are still playing. I believe you are raising them right. I wish I was little again, don’t you?
That’s elaborate@ I love the decorating. I’m going to have to think of a way to do that here. Someday. And yes, I hope they’re doing that when they’re 18!
The best thing when my older brother would babysit for me (he was eight years older) was when he would take sofa cushions and sheets and build me a “house.” My daughters did the sheets on the dining room table thing, and my younger daughter would use cardboard boxes to make “houses and tunnels” for our cats.
Tipper: What a neat post, never built a teepee but did have a secrete cabin built in a depression on a hill. The entrance was in the roof.
I am so gald they’re still playing like this, Tipper. Kids give it up way too soon now, trying to be grown-up and cool and mising out on the freedom and joy of being young.
We often played such games–under tables, under the porch, in the back yard. Sometimes the whole upstairs became a town or a house apart from where we lived–an old west town perhaps, where the dance caller called the squares from the top of the dresser. Sometimes the backyard was transformed into a town with little roads that we drove our toy cars on, each of us having a different grown-up name (I was Uncle John don’t ask me why) and a job. I ran the orphanage and had a farm, my sister Mary ran the store, Judy was the nurse, and on and on. The games lasted for weeks.
The kind of imaginative play we indulged in back then made us, I think, more creative as adults, and more able to solve problems, think critically, and be more compassionate as we tried on so many roles.
My “sibling” was our wire fox terrier, Perky. I remember every laundry day during the summer we would make a tent using the clean top sheet. The next birthday Perky gave me a little tent for outside. Yes it was a pup tent. There is a great picture of us looking out from the tent. The Princesses rooms look like fun, plus they probably get to sleep outside this way.
Yep, my little brother and I did… and we got in my middle sister’s dresser and got her neck scarves that were all different colors and made head bands and for my little brother we tied a breech clothe… if I find those photos, I’ll put them on the blog. It was too much fun and my sister was p.o.’d big time. It was great.
Helen
Did I ever build forts!!! I still build forts to sneak away for a while and I don’t even want to tell Pap how old I am!!! Everyone needs a fort of their own! The Three Indian Princesses have the right idea!! 🙂
The Indian Princesses look like they’re having such fun, Tipper! And you’re so right! Eleven and twelve, albeit a year away from being teenagers, is still very young! There’s plenty of time! :))
It looks like they have an awesome village. My Dad built us a great treehouse when we were kids and we played more cops and robbers in that thing than I can begin to remember!
We played a fair bit of cowboys and indians too!
Your princesses are beautiful.
Keep them playing house as long as possible.
I made tents with sheets and quilts hanging from the clothes line and draped over my Granny’s kitchen chairs. Your Princesses are beautiful and I agree, they will never be too old.
Amen to “still playing when they are eighteen” At fifty I am still “playing” house the only difference is that my house is now not some boards and odd things dangerously nailed together in the woods behind my parents’ house. (oh wait, it is “odd things dangerously nailed together”)
A room (bedroom) in someone else’s house is not the same as having your “own” house. It does not “teach” quite the same things.
Sophistication is not all what we would like to believe it is.
No offense to Pap’s opinion of course. Growing up well and prepared for a girl, I suppose, is different that a fella.
You are only as young as you feel.
First, thanks for putting “I’ll be Young” on the play list. I listen to it often.
When we were little, every summer we would “go camping” out in the back yard. My brother and I would put sheets on the clothes line and make a camp. My dad would stay out with us and tell us spooky stories. Once we went to sleep, he would sneak back into the house. Maybe he was afraid of the things that went bump in the night. 🙂
Thanks for dragging up another great memory !!!!!