Each year, I know a little more and buy a little more to be better prepared and this year I went all out. My tent was all sorts of tricked out and with my brother-in-law's skills at rigging a tarp, our camp was just about as good as a camp could be.
Welcome to our camp! You can enter through the east courtyard...
into what started out as our afternoon lounge and turned into the foyer.
Our courtyard faced east so we thought we'd hide from the afternoon sun here and from the morning sun in the other half. But it turned out that the morning lounge didn't get that much afternoon sun so we just kept our chairs over there. Unfortunately I never got a good picture of our setup over there, but it's very similar to above, except without the rug.
Oh, yes, we had a rug.
My brother-in-law brought a few broken-down boxes to use as a rug, but as you can see in the picture above, the edges kept flapping up and tripping us (read: me) so he took some white duct tape and made a grid pattern
Pretty cool, right? I brought the white duct tape thinking it would be good to highlight any stakes or guy lines that could be tripping hazzards, but we ended up using it for a different type of tripping hazzard. And got a fab carpet at the same time.
So those were the public spaces. Moving on to my tent.
I've always been jealous of other campers' tapestries and fun colors. In previous years, we had an old, solid gray shower curtain and a poorly tie-dyed sheet which worked great at blocking the sun, but didn't add much to the overall aesthetic of our camp. Last year I bought a small tapestry, but I wanted more this year.
It all started with an on-sale striped shower curtain I found at Target. Then I added a polka dotted one bought cheap on Amazon along with a navy paisley tapestry. And then I remembered that I had some navy & white polka dotted fabric that I used as a tablecloth for a Labor Day party I had when I first moved into my house. I added a few tarps and was set!
I set up my Coleman Sundome 5 tent underneath my 12x12 Sierra II EZ-Up and hung the various fabric all around. The super bright shower curtains went in the front
and check out my paper lanterns from World Market! We hung them from our various EZ-Ups along with some battery-operated Christmas lights my sister brought. Really made the space special at night and we always left one on for the last person who came home.
On one side I had the large tapestry and one piece of the navy polka dots and along the back I had one of the tarps to really block my tent from the people camping behind us. The second piece of navy polka dots was just wide enough to cover the mesh on the last side of the tent, but I wish I had a few more pieces so it would have gone all the way down. If the wind caught the fabric in the right way, one could still see inside my tent. But it was fine because that side of my tent faced my friend's tent and not some stranger's.
See - the whole point of all this fabric was so I wouldn't have to close up my tent to sleep or change clothes. This tent is great for summer camping because it has two almost fully mesh sides, but that's not so great when you're camping at a festival. I didn't want to have to put the rain fly up every time I wanted to change my shirt so I went with the fabric. Bonus was that the cotton still let the air flow in.
Now, how about coming inside?
I loved how big my tent was for one person. There was plenty of room for my cot and for all of my supplies to have their own space. Next to the bed, I used the plastic tub as a nightstand, but also kept all of my tent equipment inside. Great when I realized I needed another bungee cord. And it kept my fan at the perfect height and I was able to easily grab my eye mask and flashlight when coming home in the wee hours of the morning. Along the long wall, I had space for my clothes, toiletries and then my pile of stuff to bring into Centeroo each day. And then all of my shoes were neatly lined up right inside the front door.
Best part was that since my tent was so roomy, I was actually able to keep it organized!
My happy little home in the middle of a farm in Manchester, TN made me actually think about camping for real, not just at a music festival. Craziness, right? But if you came home to this every night, wouldn't you want to spend more time here, too?
Want to see more of what I bring to camping festivals? Check out DebbieRoo!
