Celebrate Canada Day with a Flag Cake

by Alison One of our favourite Canada Day traditions is our Canadian Flag Cake. It’s really quite simple, but a big hit. All you’ll need is a 9X13 rectangular cake pan, your favourite cake recipe (even one from a mix), white icing to cover the full cake, red sprinkles and a maple leaf template.

Once you’ve baked and cooled the cake, cover it completely in white icing. The proper dimensions of the Canadian Flag can be found here but for the simplicity of the cake, I roughly divide into 4 parts. The middle two parts stay white (for now) and then my daughter covers the end quarters with red sprinkles. To make sure the sprinkles spread somewhat evenly, I cover the sprinkle jar with aluminum foil and poke holes in the foil.

Place your maple leaf stencil over the middle half of the cake, and cover with sprinkles. We make a stencil by printing a picture of a maple leaf, covering the paper in packing tape and cutting out the leaf with an exacto knife. This prevents the paper from picking up all the icing, and we can usually reuse a stencil for two or three years (after it’s been wiped down).

Happy Canada Day! We'll be enjoying our cake in Seattle this year.

Alison is the mom of two wonderful kids, 6 and 2. She’s recently relocated to the Pacific Northwest but considers Ottawa home. She blogs at Ali’s Adventures.

Flash back : Canada Day craft

We have so many great posts that have gone up that are still relevant so we're bringing some back from time to time. Here's a great Canada Day craft from Sara. by Sara

Now that my four-year old is done preschool for the year I am in craft-planning mode.  I work from home, which means there is a 2 hour window every afternoon that I need to fill when I work and he needs to be kept busy.

We like to decorate our house for all of the holidays and celebrations so our craft yesterday was a Canada flag.  I chose it because aside from sketching out the side bars and his hand (as the maple leaf) it required minimal mom intervention.  We used red paint but it can also be done with crayons, markers, or finger paint, for the younger kids.

1.  Outline the Canada flag on a large piece of white paper.  The outline of a hand makes a great maple leaf!

2.  Cover your table or art space, especially if its new (like our table) and you don’t want red paint everywhere (which I don’t).  Our dining room table is still wearing its badge of green honour from our St. Patrick’s day craft.

3.  Fill in the red spaces with paint, glitter glue, tissue paper, markers, crayons, red stickers, red feathers, or construction paper.

4.  Hang in a place of prominence for all to admire.

Happy Canada Day!

Sara is mom to a 4-year-old firefighter and 2-year-old monkey.  You can find her at her blog, My Points of View

Canada Day with Airplanes

by Alison One of our favourite places to spend Canada Day is at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. It's open from 9 am to 5 pm and admission is free. There's plenty of free parking and also overflow parking at the Rockcliffe Flying Club, with a free shuttle.

There are various activities and crafts inside and outside the museum, but the good thing is there's a lot of space so it doesn't feel crowded. We enjoyed touring the Museum Storage Hangar and chatting with the volunteers involved in the aircraft restoration. Some were great at explaining details in a way that everyone understood. There was also a band playing in the hangar, with a shady place to stand and listen or dance along.

When we went two years ago, there was also a Citizenship Ceremony in the morning. I found it quite moving but my daughter was more interested in the cupcakes and juice boxes, which were offered to all museum goers. This year, the Citizenship Ceremony does not appear on the events ( http://www.aviation.technomuses.ca/visit_us/at_the_museum/events/canada_day/.)

The vintage aircraft demonstrations were a nice opportunity to relax on the grounds. There's also the possibility of a Snowbirds fly-by. I'd recommend packing a picnic and blanket to fully enjoy the museum's offerings.

Alison is a mom of two energetic children, ages 5 and 1. She just started a blog, Ali’s Adventures.

Summer of Awesome: Canada Day

by Lynn

We'll be kicking off our Summer of Awesome tour this year with Canada Day festivities on Friday. Usually I like to blog about activities after we've already done them, so I can speak with some degree of authority and confidence. But since a post about Canada Day would be kind of silly to put up next week - "Thanks a lot Lynn, I'm sure this info will really come in handy in 360 days, if I can find it again" - I'm flying blind, winging it, throwing it all out there in advance of actually doing it.

If you live in the suburbs of Ottawa, you can have a really good time on Canada Day and avoid the whole crazy transportation nightmare by celebrating close to home. There's Canada Day in Kanata, Canada Day in Barrhaven, and Canada Day in Orleans to choose from. All offer super kid-friendly activities, like bouncy castles, kids' musicians, face painting, and yummy treat foods. There's even a midway (sadly, not free) in Kanata. If you have slightly older kids, you can stay for the evening concerts, featuring SLOAN (one of my most favourite bands EVAH) in Kanata, The Lincolns in Barrhaven, and The Drew Nelson Blues Band in Orleans, followed in all three places by fireworks.

But if you do want to gamble with your life, live on the edge, look death in the face AND LAUGH, there's always downtown.

Image courtesy of Canada's Snowbirds.)

This is our first year ever taking the kids downtown - my husband and I haven't been to the Hill for Canada Day ourselves in over 10 years. Here's our survival plan.

First of all, we have to get there. Driving is insane - getting in and out of downtown is bad enough, but finding parking will take you all day long. It's especially worse this year because the Royal Couple (tm) will be in town, meaning that many more roads than usual will be closed. You can check out the road closures here but basically they could just replace this map with a big flashing sign that says "DO NOT DRIVE DOWNTOWN ON CANADA DAY" and be done with it. If you have no choice but to drive, come very, very early, and try for parking at the Rideau Centre or in the market. But be prepared to walk in from a ways off (not to mention the fact that the farther you park your car, the less traffic you'll have to deal with on your way out).

We're personally planning on taking the bus. I've heard from our neighbours that the buses get full. As in, packed buses racing right by you, one after the other. So we're actually planning on driving out a bit, closer to the terminus of the major bus lines, so we can hopefully get on the bus early enough in its route to avoid the overcrowding. Since we'll be bringing a stroller, a packed lunch for TEN people, and all the usual supplies we need for a day out with the kids, I expect to get a lot of dirty looks on the bus. As long as we don't get into any knife fights, I'm up for it.

Assuming we make it downtown, what is there to see? On the Hill itself, there will be a morning show starting at 9 a.m. (including The Changing of the Guard, which my kids declared to be the most boring thing EVER last year, so this one is definitely for the older, more appreciative crowd), another concert/show at noon (with the Snowbirds going overhead, prepare any little ears for the shock), then the evening show begins at 7 p.m. I just found out that Jian Ghomeshi will be one of the co-hosts of the evening show.

He's my radio boyfriend, so be sure to say hi for me, since we'll be giving the Hill a pass in general. With our super young kids, it's too crowded and they don't have the patience to sit and watch a show, but older kids and teens will probably love the people, the music (Great Big Sea will be playing both at noon and in the evening), and the general feeling of sharing in Canadian pride.

If you're a royal watcher, the young couple will be traveling in an open carriage from Rideau Hall to Parliament Hill between 11:30 and 12pm, then staying on the Hill to watch the midday show. I hear the Prince will be giving a little talk around 1:15 and then they'll do a bit of a walkaround and hand shake around 1:45. If you want to touch the Princess, oh man, I can't even imagine how early you'll have to get there. But how AWESOME would that be for a little girl who loves princesses? It's a toss up - if you brave this one, be sure to tell me all about it.

Most of the action for little kids is over at Major's Hill Park, and across the river at Jacques Cartier Park. Both are open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. (when the fireworks begin) and feature plenty for your wee ones to enjoy. Major's Hill features a stage with bands and dancing performances all day, a display about the history of basketball, and lots of really good food. I read somewhere that there will also be a big screen where you can watch the noon show, featuring close-ups of the Prince and Princess, so if the Hill is just too much you might want to catch them on video. Jacques Cartier Park is where the big fun is - things like jumping castles and crafts, a kite flying demonstration (SO COOL), tons of fun and silly kids performers, and the International Village, featuring instruments and homes from around the world.

There's a free shuttle bus that travels between the two parks, stopping just outside each one. They run often, but there are line-ups, so if you're feeling spry you can also walk across the bridge. More info on the shuttles is at the bottom of this page.

If you need a break in the middle of the day, the National Art Gallery has free admission on Canada Day and might be a nice place to cool off and sit down. If you do manage to make it to the end of the evening, remember that OC Transpo buses are free after 10 p.m., so be sure to use them to get home safely. Watch out for the stroller-related glares, though.

Our plan is to get in (we're budgeting 1 1/2 hours travel time), see the parks, maybe the art gallery, eat our picnic lunch, and then get out before dinner. But if you don't hear from us, send help - preferably a nice open carriage with a Prince and Princess inside.

Lynn is mom to three tombliboos and blogs over at Turtlehead.