DIY | Secret Forest & Stump Set

 I have a soft spot for cozy little nooks and secret hide-a-ways. It likely goes back to the types of books I read in elementary school. I read The Boxcar Children and then wanted to live in a boxcar. I read My Side of the Mountain and then I wanted to live in a hollowed out tree. Our house in Hepurn had a small attic door inside of my closet... I tried to pimp it out as a little getaway... but it was too hot :) At my grandparents once their dog started barking at me all "Lassie" style and had me follow it through the bush until it brought me right onto the steps of a little house/fort totally camouflaged by trees. It was so cool and apparently my 3 Uncles' old "club house".

Anyways, you get the picture. I want my kids to have small spaces they can call their own as well and so I embarked on creating them a secret forest!

Here it is! Pretty secret looking hey?

We needed some appropriate furniture for the Secret Forest and I had seen a little stump set in a forest on Pinterest a while back and now I finally had a place to put one! I just needed stumps.... Enter the Wagstaffs to the rescue! They had just cut down a gigantic tree and their yard was littered with stumps - woo hoo!

I picked these two for the chairs. To prep them I hacked all the twigs and branches off.

They were sapping quite a bit and I didn't want my kids continually sticky so I figured I'd try and seal them with a spray varnish. Any area that had been cut, I sprayed.

 After they were dry I heaved them into the Secret Garden... you can see a peek of them here.

Here's a view from the side entrance. A few weeks ago I cleared out all the dead branches and cut a few new ones to make a cozy little enclave.

 The seat covers are lemon potholders! It was Erin's idea. We saw them at Wal-mart in Minot and she thought they'd be the perfect size for our stumps (she made a stump set too) and they were!

I thought the Secret Forest needed a little sparkle so I went on the hunt and found a bag of silver Christmas decorations that I didn't really need anymore so I hung them here!

Hopefully my kids will have great memories of their secret space... though I may need to hang the bug zapper in there - the mosquitoes love it as much as I do!