Christmas Tree Teepee

This year I really wanted to make a Teepee Tree for my girls to play in. The idea is that the kids can play inside of the Christmas tree for a month and then Santa puts the gifts inside of the Teepee on Christmas morning.

I really had no idea how to build it, and I couldn’t find any satisfactory directions. So I decided to go at it one step at a time (which took much longer than I wanted and was very much frustrating at times).

I started by purchasing a 5 foot Teepee. I put together the Teepee and saw that it was saggy since I wasn’t able to attach the corner stakes that go into the ground that hold it firm.

I decided to get some 1/2 inch PVC pipe to form the bottom boarder of the inside of the teepee. Since the teepee is 5ft x 5ft I made the PVC square, but the corner pieces that hold it together add about and inch on each side; so I had to cut an inch off of my 5 foot pieces.

Next I folded the flaps back, but I needed something sturdy to attach my garland to. So I got 2 six foot pieces of PCV pipe and a three foot piece to form a triangle door for my Teepee. I attached the six foot pieces to the three foot piece with 90 degree corner pieces. (The PVC pipe is much cheaper at Lowes or Home Depot.)

I used zip ties to attach the triangle PVC to my 5 foot square PCV. I also zip tied the top of my PVC triangle to the top of my teepee poles.

I used 250 feet of green Christmas garland for my teepee. I place the first row of my garland all the way around the teepee, securing it in the 4 corners with a safety pin where the tent stake goes through.

After the first wrap or two around the entire teepee, I needed to wrap the garland around the PVC triangle opening to my teepee every time I came around to the front to create the opening.

I noticed that the garland was sagging, so I used binder clips on the corner teepee poles to hold the garland tight.

I continued wrapping the garland back and forth around the teepee using the clips on the corners until I got to the top of where I wanted the door opening to be.

The PVC triangle doorway was showing quite a bit of white pipe through, so I wrapped some smaller pieces of garland around it to cover the pipes.

I then started wrapping the garland all the way around the teepee top to close up the top of the door.

I had extra garland and the top of my tree looked a little scrawny, so I used the rest of my garland and wrapped the top part of my tree t more times. Then I wrapped the top of the teepee poles with the last bit of garland.

For the lights, I just zig zagged them back and forth on the side of the tree that showed. I used the binder clips that were already on the tree to keep the lights in place. When the lights got to the top of the tree, then I could wrap the lights all the way around the tree.