DIY Toy Horse Bridle and Reins

We were given some horses recently, the kind that fit with the 18" American Girl Dolls.  My 7 and 3 year olds have loved playing with them and are now wanting to ride a real horse.  My 3 year old son, especially wants to ride a horse since he's the only one of the kids who hasn't done that yet.  Well, there was that one time over the summer at a local petting zoo when he sat on a horse then cried and wanted to get off because the kid in front of him got bucked off.  Luckily that didn't prevent him wanting to ride a horse again.  

Enough horse riding talk, back to my DIY.  Recently my son has been wanting to ride a horse with reins. Maybe it's all the pictures of Santa in his sleigh holding onto the reindeer reins, but my son asks everyday to ride a horse with reins.  So I thought maybe for Christmas I'd get his toy horse a set of reins.  Well, I could for about $20, or I could DIY them myself and he could play with them right away.  

A quick Pinterest search yielded only one result.  Really, is there only one person who has figured this out and shared it?  Luckily one was all it took.  I was able to follow her step by step directions and make a bridle and reins for our toy horses.  HERE is the link to the step by step directions I used to make this bridle and reins.  Jessica from American Girl Fan does a great job of spelling out each step with pictures and I had no trouble following along.  It took maybe 10 minutes to make one and my kids love them.

Luckily I had all the supplies on hand:
Scissors
Tape measure or ruler
parachute cord (I had some from THIS paracord bracelet making kit)
duct tape

My son chose green paracord and black duct tape, and my daughter chose pink paracord and flowered duct tape.  I love the bright colors and how we could customize them to be much cooler than a plain old brown store bought bridle.  I made the reins about twice as long as suggested in the tutorial because my kids wanted to ride the horse, but if it's for the dolls, they don't need to be that long.

Looks like he loves it.

 And here's my daughter's horse modeling her new bridle.

Of course my daughter couldn't wait to try it out.  Yeehaw!!

It's not too late to make these in time for Christmas.  

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