DIY Asthma and Allergy Set: Allergy Alert Bracelet

I just created the replica bracelet from the American Girl asthma and allergy set! It's so great because it's very easy to customize. Now your doll won't have to worry about no one knowing her allergies.

Get some construction paper. The leftover from the EpiPen post works well. Cut out a 1/2 inch by 4 1/2 inch rectangle.

 Wrap the rectangle loosely around your doll's wrist.

 Fasten with a brad. Be careful not to scratch your doll. If you're having trouble, just put the brad in the other way.

 Now cut out small squares of paper; make them smaller than a half inch. Draw your doll's allergies on them. Color in the pictures and write their names.

 Use a glue stick or double-sided tape to attach the pictures to your doll's bracelet.

Now your doll is almost ready to feel allergy-protected when she goes out into the world! I'm working on documenting the rest of the set. Allergy pills will come next.

Baby Girl

DIY Asthma and Allergy Set: EpiPen

American Girl recently released an asthma and allergy set containing inhalers, allergy pills, a bracelet, an asthma action plan, a bag, an inhaler spacer, travel tissues, allergy nose spray, and an EpiPen. Dude and I have asthma of different kinds and our mom has food allergies, so I decided to recreate the kit for my doll. I started with the inhaler (picture and link at the bottom), which I found on a doll crafts website. Then I made up a design for an EpiPen. I've shared it below. 

 Cut out a 2 by 4 1/2 inch rectangle of red construction paper. This will be the EpiPen.

 Tape two craft sticks (not jumbo sized!) together.

 Wrap the paper around the craft sticks and glue the paper together. Don't glue it to the craft sticks.

 You should have a hollow tube when you're finished.

Using a hot glue gun, smear some glue on a piece of wax paper. Make the smear big enough to cover one open end of your tube. 

 Place the tube on the glue and leave it there until the glue dries. When it's dry, carefully peel it off the wax paper and pull the extra glue off the sides of the tube. The end should be filled in.

 Repeat on the other end of the tube.

 When your tube is completely filled in on both sides, it's time to decorate. Grab a black Sharpie and a silver Sharpie.

 Decorate the EpiPen in any way you like. If you've never seen an EpiPen, feel free to copy my design.

I made this inhaler based on the inhaler tutorial at American Girl Ideas. I made my doll's red because mine is red.

I'll be adding more to my DIY asthma and allergy kit soon. I hope you enjoyed this installment!

Baby Girl

DIY Doll Braces

I know many people who have or had braces. If they want braces for their doll, American Girl is the only place to look. The only problem with the set was that it was just too pricey for anyone who was looking for a cheap mouth fixer for their doll. Hand-making braces is a simple and free alternative.

Before you make the braces, you need to collect some simple items. You probably already have them:

• A sheet of stickers with enough space between the stickers for the doll's mouth
• A pen
• A pair of scissors

I used the leftover sheets from a Paint by Sticker book to make my doll braces.

Take the sticker sheet and find a large gap between stickers. Hold the sheet up to your doll's mouth and trace the shape of the opening using your fingernail or the bottom edge of a pen. Once you have the shape of her mouth etched into the sticker sheet, draw the outline of the braces on it. Draw two dots near the middle and connect them with a line. Add one line curving up to the edge of the mouth on one side. Copy on the other side.

Now comes the hardest part. Take the scissors and carefully cut around the braces. If you're worried about taking them off, add a small rectangle attached to the braces. Once you've cut the braces out completely, fold the rectangle in half to form a tab. Stick the braces on your doll's teeth and tell her to wear them proudly!

Did you make braces for your doll? Did you use a colored pen for colored bands? Tell me!

Baby Girl

Our DIY Backyard Playhouse

This post is all about yet another thing we built or added to our backyard. We helped our parents build a playhouse with a swing set. We only had to buy a few boards for the stilts and framing, but other than that we already had all of the wood needed.

We built a small staircase with two stairs to get into our playhouse. We put it on stilts so snakes wouldn't get in. There are six stilts, two sides of the stairs, and two ends of the swing set, so we used ten pavers underneath the wood. It doesn't rot if you do that. We also used six fence stakes to hold it down in case of strong winds.

 Our mom wanted a Dutch door on the playhouse so we wouldn't need a complicated door latch.

The two pieces of the door are both thin squares of wood framed with thicker pieces. We painted the inside with chalkboard paint.

The outside of the door is a simple latch that is easy to open but still holds the door closed securely.

The inside has a latch to hold the two doors together. To get out, we simply open the top, reach outside and open the bottom door, then reattach both doors together before closing them.

The size of the platform before wood was added to the sides was six by eight feet. The inside after it was finished was smaller than that, so we purchased a five by seven foot outdoor rug for inside the playhouse. There's enough room inside for a table and two chairs. We also bought outdoor pillows for the chairs. I've even slept in it overnight! (Dude came with me!)

We had a falling-down play set that we salvaged wood from, but we also kept two of the swings. The large beam across the top was a board from a house.

The windows were also from a house, and they come in handy when it's hot because we can open them. Another thing we bought to build the playhouse was a few sheets of galvanized steel roofing. We screwed it onto some boards separately before attaching it to the playhouse. I also had to staple some netting up in the top corners because birds kept flying in there.

We have so much fun in our playhouse! Do you have a play set or playhouse that you built? Tell us about it!

Baby Girl

My Favorite Planner Tools

(Although this post has no pictures, the links bring up quite a few pictures and reviews of each product. All links go directly to Amazon.)

This blog is devoted solely to one of my favorite things: planners! Unfortunately, I get a different planner every year, so I really can't say which one was my favorite, but I have a lot of favorite planner "tools".

One of my favorite brands of pens is Paper Mate. I use the Flair .07 mm pens, but there are other fun varieties you might like to try. I like the Flair pens because they have so many bright colors, and, although they slightly leave marks on both sides of thin paper, they don't stain the surface underneath.

I use Student Planner Stickers in my planner, and I love them! One review mentioned that they printed crooked, but mine are perfect. I love all of the colorful and fun designs; I also like the fact that they could works in a boys' planner. There were all sorts of colors and designs.

For Mother's day this year, I got my mom the Busy Mom planner stickers by Denise Albright. My mom loves them. I was worried when I ordered them because a bad review said they printed wrong, but our mom's were printed correctly.

Other pens I like to use are the Pilot FriXion Erasable Pens. They are pretty good pens, although sometimes the pens randomly don't write for a little while. Other than that, they are amazing pens! The erasers work amazingly well, and I recently found out that heat erases the ink and cold brings it back.

What do you use for your planner? Tell me!

Baby Girl

An Interview with Ranger

Our dog, Ranger, got an interview with our frog, Squirmy. I can't understand their dialect (and I'm assuming you can't either) so I added subtitles for your convenience.

This video was created using pictures of our pets in Windows Video Editor. The music is part of the program.

Do your pets do funny things? Take a video of it and email it to us!

Baby Girl

Our Favorite Books

This post uses pictures from some of our other book review posts, but mostly because I'm updating our favorite book opinions.

Dude isn't interested in Percy Jackson anymore, but he likes the book Jinx's Magic. Baby Girl (Me!) likes the Wings of Fire books. I've read the first twelve books two times each!

Dude still likes Fox Trot and Garfield, but Baby Blues comic books are high on my list.

I still like National Geographic Kids, but Dude doesn't receive LEGO Club anymore.

I'm the only one of us two who still likes to break out the little kid books, and all of the ones pictured above and below are still often read.

Fly Guy books are still fun to read too, because the drawings are always cool to look at.

Dude hasn't read this book in a while, but he enjoys books like My Side of the Mountain.

We still love reading as much as we used to, we just enjoy different books now.

What are your favorite books?

Baby Girl