When a PR e-mail on family glamping dropped into my inbox and I saw the Truly Girly Den Kit I knew I had to try it out with my daughter! (Don't worry there is a more boyish one too).
My 7 year old was very excited when we opened the parcel and found the cloth satchel inside which contains the kit (in fact it was hard to get her to wait until I'd photographed it before it was opened!):
Once I'd let her open the satchel it was time to investigate the contents:
- purple tarpaulin
- purple fleecy blanket
- a groundsheet
- a 10m rope
- pegs in a bag
- wooden mallet
- the all important instructions
Our first issue was finding somewhere to try out the tent. It's been a very wet August up here and our garden is very waterlogged. So we decided to take it over to the grandparents' house where they have a bigger dryer garden.
With a lack of suitable trees we made do with the washing line pole and the swingball pole. In an ideal world it would be used out in the woods between trees. However the main instruction was that whatever the rope was tied to is about 5m apart and can cope with having rope tied to it. We fastened the rope securely and draped the tarpaulin over the top and my daughter hammered in the pegs:
At this point we realised that things weren't quite right as the tent was little bit low:
So we made the rope taughter and higher and made sure that the pegs were not only through the tarpaulin but the groundsheet holes too. As an extra precaution (mostly because we couldn't get the rope to stay straight) we used clothes pegs to stop the tent from slipping. This made for a much bigger tent space:
Once we were finally happy with straightening up the den we all tried it out and found that it great for snack time:
or snoozing in:
and there was room for quite a few of us:
What we need to hope for now is more good weather and a chance to use the den in more exciting places. I think as long as its well looked after it should last my daughter for a long time and I'm sure she will have plenty of mini adventures in it.
At £35 its not the cheapest toy on the market but I think it could be great value for money if your daughter loves spending time outdoors. My mum's only worry was that the wooden mallet could be used for purposes other than hitting pegs in!
This looks great! My boys would love something like that but I am with your mum on the wooden mallet possibly being used for something else.
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