As I write this, Canada Day was yesterday, and what an odd Canada day it was. We have recently had some fabulous Canada Days. Last year I went with my brother and sister and their families to our local historical village. We celebrated Dominion Day, and found the inspiration for my Old-Fashioned Lawn Game post. I can’t even recall we did in 2018, but 2017 was the most EPIC Canada Day ever, because it was Canada 150! My sister’s family came downtown with my family in the morning, and we celebrated until the fireworks were done, about 10:30! Then my little family went home, and ate pizza around the kitchen table, about four hours after the kids’ bedtime. It was magical!

But yesterday…yesterday was…different. We had absolutely no plans, nowhere to go, no one to see. We basically spent the day in our backyard swimming in the kiddie pool, having a fire, working on our garden. We stopped for a pizza lunch in the basement with a movie. We rarely watch movies in the middle of the afternoon, especially on such beautiful days, so that actually ended up being pretty special too. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire for supper, and finished off our solitary, quiet Canada Day with a walk around our neighbourhood, ending way past bedtime, just to make it a bit more special.

In preparation for Canada Day, the girls and I painted our nails. I made little red maple leaves out of adhesive vinyl on my Cricut, then we painted the big toenail white and all the rest red. Once the polish dried a bit we added the maple leaf on the white toenail. Here’s a picture of my middle daughter and I enjoying our Canada Day fire.

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The kids and I made this Canada flag sign on Monday. We had the section of board already put together, originally from our fence, so the first thing we had to do was paint the red and white background. I had already cut out a maple leaf decal on my cricut, so once the second coat of paint was dry we stuck on the stencil, and painted two coats of red paint. Once that was dry we peeled off the stencil. The stencil pulled a lot of the white paint with it, which I thought gave it a nice weathered look. I thought about rubbing the stencil on my couch, or t-shirt, or something to get some lint on it so it wouldn’t stick as much, but I thought the weathered look might look nice. And I’m very happy with it. I’ve been wanting to make one of these signs for years, and if I’d known how quick and easy it was, that I could pull it off (with the kids helping!) in an afternoon, I would never have waited so long!

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One more thing I did, that I didn’t take a picture of 🤦‍♀️, was make an adhesive vinyl decal for my daughter’s shirt. When going through all the family to make sure we could dress for Canada Day, we discovered that my older daughter doesn’t have any Canada clothes. So I made her a Canada flag out of adhesive vinyl, the same stuff I used for the nail decals, and the stencil for the Canada flag sign. She chose a white shirt to stick it on for the day. This was a very cheap way to make a Canada Day shirt for the day. I used this same technique to make shirts for my St. Patrick’s Day Party.

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I know July 4th, our American friends’ holiday, is in two days, and I expect things will be a lot quieter for you guys, too. How did you spend Canada Day? How will you spend Independence Day?

Happy Canada Day!

Happy 4th of July!