My Childhood: Blanket Forts

Every Wednesday I'm going to (try to) post a memory from my childhood. As I mentioned before, the reason for this is because I really don't remember all that much, and I'm hoping that by actively thinking about it every week, I'll start to put the pieces together.

Hahahahaha, I fail miserably at blogging, but I'm working on it. I realize my last childhood post was forever ago. So here's to getting back to it in the new year.

So, when we were kids, we loved making strongholds of any kind. In the winter we made snow forts in the yard. At other times, we dumped all of our "builder" toys out together and would make a ridiculous amalgamation of tinker toys, lincon logs, waffles, k'nex, and even my doll house / kitchen set. It was pretty impressive.

Our summer forts, though, were the best. We made blanket forts. Since we didn't need the blankets on the bed anymore, what better way to utilize this resource than to make forts? Exactly, you can't think of one. We would strategically arrange all of the dressers in our room to make the structural framework for our awesome castle. Most of the time, blankets got tucked into dresser drawers or books got piled on the corners to stabilize the "roof" of our stronghold.

In our zeal, nothing was sacred. I think we even tacked a few blankets up by tucking the corners into the drop ceiling tiles for effect. We used the mantel to create a taller room in our blanket fort and the dressers to create the tunnels in between rooms. There was of course room made for the toy box treasure chest in one room.

Well one time we had run out of building materials to secure the roof of one of our corridors. We started hunting around and found this cool bronze plaque (probably 10-15 lbs). Perfect! We hefted it up on top of the 4.5 foot dresser and tucked the blanket underneath. Our fort was complete!

We began playing in our new fort and doing our usual nonsense when somehow we either pulled on the blanket or kicked into the dresser. Down the plaque came on my head. Ow. Fortunately, I'm rather thick-headed, so no permanent damage done. I still actually remember this happening (I guess that's a good sign), especially the part where we were banned from making forts because it was apparently a potentially amnesia / death inducing activity.

Honestly parents are no fun sometimes. :)

Sometimes it was a castle, sometimes (often) it was a spaceship (Our stuffed animals would play the part of the ship's crew). And the best part was that it could be both at the same time, because it's make-believe. Regardless, we always had a blast. I loved making forts because we all got to participate and since I was the smallest, I always fit better in our forts.

Good times.

What about you, did you ever make blanket forts?