Photography by John Cullen

Ready to rock a fabulous ‘do that’s perfect for any occasion? Just follow these seven simple steps.

Step 1: Bend forward and flip your hair over your head. Spray with a texturizing spray such as John Frieda Luxurious Volume Anytime Volume Refresher ($11).

Step 2: Using a brush, lightly backcomb hair to make it messy. Flip hair right side up.

Step 3: Create a side part; then loosely sweep hair to the opposite side and into a low side ponytail. Lightly smooth the top layer of hair with your fingers.

Step 4: Tie a hair elastic twice around your hair; then pull your ponytail halfway through the elastic.

Step 5: Wrap loose ends around the elastic to create a messy bun, securing with 2 or 3 Goody Mini Spin Pins ($7 for 3-pack), which twist and hold hair in place, eliminating the need for a ton of bobby pins.

Step 6: Loosely secure any hair that didn’t make it into the bun (such as long bangs) with a bobby pin.

Step 7: Spritz hair with a strong-hold hairspray.

TIP: Heading to a backyard party? Just add a mini floral clip. For an evening affair, try a jewelled pin.

Photography by Loren Kerns via Flickr (CC)

This week, I drove a carload of kids to our local cultural centre for a school field trip. As I was getting the booster seats in place, the kids started jockeying for seating position. My daughter shouted, “Paige, come sit next to me!” “Ok!” answered Paige, “Because I’m your best friend!” And so, the best friends sat next to each other.

Earlier in the week, the same daughter and I were negotiating invites to her upcoming birthday party. One by one, my daughter enthusiastically told me that she would have to invite each girl in her class, because she was her best friend. This insistence, the identification of all her friends as equal, left me feeling melancholy.

It’s just so nice and simple at this age. They are not quite seven. They are all best friends.

I know it won’t always be this way. I know that the politics of friendship will soon start to rear its ugly head, and that the notion of who is—and who is not—a very best friend will change more often than the seasons. Hell, if memory serves me right, she could change best friends more often than she changes her socks.

The BFF thing leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I can remember my very first best friend fondly; she was my schoolmate and my neighbour, and our parents were also best friends. But I changed schools after Grade 2, and a shared street address was not enough to maintain our BFF-dom. From then on, I seemed to roam mainly in small packs, and when your group is of three or four, it’s dangerous and unfair to claim a BFF. Even still, there were times when each of us felt left out, hurt, rejected.

The claim of a best friend can be used to alienate others as surely as it can be used to show affection.

The only other time in my life that I had a BFF was as an adult. A friendship from high school bloomed only afterwards into a relationship that I depended on, cherished, and shared for almost 20 years. And then, two years ago, it imploded.

And whether you’re seven or 37, it still feels terrible. I know I can’t shield my daughter from the hurt that friendships can cause, so I’ll just allow her to invite all the girls in her class to her party, and encourage her to enjoy and respect each of those best friends now, before they all realize how powerful those words can be.

Karen Green recently traded life in the biggest city in Canada for life in the biggest cornfield in Canada. Freed from her full-time job as a writer and editor, Karen now spends her time…writing and editing. And frolicking in the leaves with her two small girls. Karen is a speaker, the founder of Mom The Vote and the author of the blog, The Kids Are Alright, where she has been writing about the humorous and poignant moments of family life since 2005. She is thrilled to be a part of canadianfamily.ca.

Photography by Carlo Mendoza

As you can imagine, taste-testing recipes is hard work. But hey, we’re a dedicated team here at CF.ca, so when someone says “try this cookie,” we don’t ask questions. All kidding aside, it was a real pleasure to sink our teeth into these Chewy Whole-Wheat Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies. They have just the right amount of crunch, thanks to the addition of Demerara sugar, and are perfectly chewy. If you’re spending some time in the kitchen this weekend, be sure to bake up a batch of these yummy treats—you won’t be disappointed.

You’ll find the full recipe and baking instructions here.

Looking for more tasty cookie ideas? Check out these Potato Chip Pecan Crunch Cookies and these No-Bake Chocolate Cookies. Delish!

Photography from iStockphoto.com

Last week we talked about the importance of setting up an emergency account and easy ways to get started. You may see the merit in emergency accounts, but you might also be asking yourself two questions: “Why not just use my line of credit?” and “What if I have debt? Isn’t it better to pay it off and forego any savings?”

1. What’s wrong with using my lines of credit as my emergency account?
After all, that’s how the banks pitch them. At some point, we’ve all received the line about “the convenience” of having thousands of dollars at our fingertips in case the roof caves in or some other problem crops up. All for a low interest rate. With savings rates at an all-time low, most of us do succumb to our line of credit if an emergency arises. There’s nothing wrong with that if you have the discipline to borrow what you need and pay it back in a timely fashion, notes Stephanie Holmes-Winton, a Halifax-based financial advisor.

But therein lies the problem: disciplined debt re-payers are an anomaly. Instead, most of us give into the temptation factor and delay repaying. The thinking goes like this: We need $2,000 to repair the car. Since we’re tapping our line of credit anyway, what’s another $1,000 to book that cottage for a week? So we end up further in the debt hole versus if we already had that $2,000 in cash savings.

2. I already have some debt. Isn’t it better to apply any money earmarked for savings to their debt?
Here’s the thing: people without any savings are more likely to abandon debt repayment strategies once an emergency hits. As Holmes-Winton says, life is always changing and emergencies of some kind will crop up.

Picture this scenario: all your savings goes to your debt. Then your roof caves in to the tune of a $12,000 bill. Since you have no cash savings whatsoever, you plop down your credit card and watch any progress you made with debt repayment disappear. You feel defeated and wonder what’s the point of bothering to save in the first place. That’s why it’s far better to save and pay down your debt simultaneously.

Deanne Gage has written about all matters financial since 1999. She writes, edits and strategizes out of her Toronto home that’s partially under construction. Besides money issues, she enjoys running fast, jazz music and drinking a quality glass of Merlot. Her two-year-old daughter is quite familiar with money: she borrows it from mom’s wallet for her toy cash register.

James Winter and his wife—along with their kids and nephew—put together this excellent version of the music video for “Sabotage,” in tribute to the late Adam Yauch, aka MCA. The Beastie Boys member passed away on May 4, 2012 of throat cancer at age 47.

Photography © 2012 Alliance films Inc. All Rights Reserved

Like 90 percent of women, I bought a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting (Workman Publishing) as soon as I found out I was pregnant the first time around, nearly a decade ago. More than 15 million copies of the book have been sold in the 27 years since it was first published. The title alone is in every mother’s lexicon. Now the book—billed as “America’s Pregnancy Bible”—has now been turned into a feature film. Call it the Coles Notes version of the 616-page tome.

I’ve only watched the trailer for the movie, which is “inspired” by the book and looks mostly to take nuggets from the guide and weave its advice into the intertwining stories of five expecting couples. Personally, I don’t want to get my expectations up, but when I saw the trailer, I thought, “Yeah, I’ll probably go see that.”

There are a couple things holding me back from anticipating a great film, however, namely other motherhood movies, such as I Don’t Know How She Does It, featuring a frazzled mother juggling work and family. The movie, I found, was unfunny, to be nice, and depressing, to be perfectly honest. Watching it was like spending a really bad day with, um, yourself. Could we relate to this mother? Sort of. But did I laugh? No. As far as pregnancy flicks go, Knocked Up was funny because it was potty humour. Nine Months sucked as hard as a baby sucking on a soother. Still, if What to Expect is more in the vein of He’s Just Not That Into You, how could I not go see it with a girlfriend? After all, it’s hard enough to get a man to go see a chick flick, but a rom-com about pregnancy and babies? (I’ll pay any woman $20 if she can drag a man to this movie on a first date!) Anyone who has been pregnant knows that nine months can seem like a lifetime. So, I suppose the worst that can happen seeing a movie about pregnancy is that you lose 90 minutes of your life—that’s nothing compared to carrying a baby and labour.

The cast, I’ll admit, is stellar and includes Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Matthew Morrison, Elizabeth Banks and Chris Rock, to name a few. Still, the movie posters, which you can find online, feature photos of the stars alongside quotes like, “If I knew I’d have a rack like this, I would’ve gotten knocked up years ago.” (Somehow, it’s kind of annoying that Cameron Diaz has never been pregnant—and has said she is on the fence about having kids. And even if she were carrying triplets, somehow I can’t see her looking anything but gorgeous.) Then there’s Elizabeth Banks announcing, “I’m calling bull$#!%. Pregnancy sucks.” There are sure to be lines about Baby Brain and hemorrhoids and super-sized nipples. But is that funny, or tired? Still, with our mommy brains, does it really matter? The funniest part of the movie looks to be the pack of stroller-pushing fathers who aren’t afraid to own up to their lack of daddy skills, saying lines like, “I picked up the wrong baby from daycare.” As one guy proclaims, “There is no judging in ‘dudes group.’” These dads are okay with their incompetence, and that is fresh.

I’ll admit I never got through the book. (It should be called “1,000 Things That Can Go Wrong With Your Pregnancy.”) Ten years ago, I’d probably have opted for the movie. Now, expecting again, I’m hoping that a night out at the movies will bring on a few laughs, especially if they can turn this book into a Bridesmaids. But what I’m most looking forward to is seeing who is in the audience. Will it be wannabe moms? Or moms-to-be dragging along dads-to-be to show them that pregnancy and motherhood aren’t always a walk in the park? All I know is that if you think washroom lines are long after a movie, imagine the rush of pregnant women racing for a stall after this one. Now that, no doubt, will give me a chuckle.

Will you see What to Expect when it opens this weekend? If you’re looking for another great flick about parenthood, check out 5 of Our Favourite Pregnancy Movies and let us know if we missed your fave.

While I'm sure his bum is cute, I'd prefer that it be his head that comes out first. Photography via iStock Photo.

My countdown clock is on like Donkey Kong. But my baby doesn’t seem to know this—at least, not as of my last check-up. He seems content to stay with his head up, with his feet down, and relatively high up in my tum. He still has time to flip, and most babies do (most babies flip around in the final weeks of pregnancy, and only three to four percent of babies actually don’t end up head down).

While I won’t know for sure where he is until my next appointment, that hasn’t prevented me from looking up every single possible way to encourage him to flip around so that he can arrive in this world head first.

Thus far, I have tried the following:

• Playing music to my lower abdomen to lure him into position. (The Band, Beatles and Bach have not wooed him into position yet. Must try something that doesn’t start with B next.)

• Hanging out on my hands and knees with my bum up and my chest down from time to time. Not an attractive posture, but some claim it’s effective, along with various other exercises.

• Sitting forward on my chair with my knees below my hips and my back straight whenever I remember to do so. This is meant to give him more room to move, but it runs counter to the need to have my feet at hip-level to help with the swelling. If ONLY I had hyper-extended knees! I could then keep my knees below my hips and my feet at hip level! Sigh.

Of course, should he refuse to budge in the next little while, there are other options.

An external version performed by a doctor—during which a baby is externally manipulated into the correct position—is the most common, and has a decent success rate (nearly 60 percent). The American Pregnancy Association also cites a chiropractic option called the Webster Technique, meant to open the pelvis and relax the uterus to encourage flipping—according to one study, it has an 82 percent success rate. But I have never been to a chiropractor, and I have my reservations about trying something so new to me at this stage in the game.

I also read somewhere online that one woman had success just meditating and asking her baby to flip. So there’s always that option.

I suspect that the best option might be to give him some more time and hope that he’ll flip when he’s darn well ready to do so. But if a bit of Bach and a few pelvic tilts might help, I figure why not give it a try?

When did your baby settle into a head-down position? And if he/she was a reluctant flipper, did you try anything that you think worked for you?

Photography by Jill Dubien

With our long and cold Canadian winters, we can’t wait to break out the BBQ in the spring. We’ve had some pretty nice weather this week—perfect weather for making burgers. The kids already love burgers, but this just added a little more fun to a regular dinner night. These bear burgers were really simple to make and only took minutes to assemble!  If you’re looking for a really easy way to make dinner more fun, this is definitely it.  This is how I made these “beary” cute burgers:

What you’ll need:
• A cooked hamburger patty
• A whole wheat hamburger bun
• 2 small circular whole wheat crackers
• 1 small radish
• 2 black olives
• Mozzarella cheese
• Whatever toppings your kiddo likes on their burger (lettuce, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard, relish, etc.)

Directions:

1. Assemble your child’s burger and put whatever condiments/toppings they like on it.

2. Place the two small whole wheat crackers between the bun for ears.

3. Cut your piece of mozza cheese in a circle on place on the top burger bun for the bear’s nose/mouth.

4. Slice your black olive. Use three slices for the eyes and nose. Slice another piece into two thin strips for the mouth. Place these olives on the top of your burger bun.

5. Finally, thinly slice your radish and place two slices on the top burger bun for cute little bear cheeks.

6. Serve to your kiddos and enjoy the giggles and smiles!

Jill Dubien is a working mom who loves to craft and cook with her kiddos in her spare time. She has an awesome and supportive husband and 2 wonderful kids—a daughter who is 4 and a son who is 3. Before she had kids, Jill couldn’t cook much of anything except toast and cereal, and really despised being in the kitchen. People who know her personally find it extremely humorous that she is now the self-proclaimed “Queen of fun food.” Jill blogs at Meet the Dubiens, where she shares lots of fun foods and crafts for kids.

Photography by Phil Roeder via Flickr (CC)

Wondering how your child is doing at school? Leading educators gave us some tips on how you can assess if your child is managing her workload or if she’s struggling in some areas. Here’s how:

• Learn the curriculum for your child’s grade. You can find out more about this from your child’s teacher or online. (All provinces have each grade’s curriculum handbooks for parents on their websites.)
• Collect a variety of measures of academic achievement, including report cards, test scores, teacher comments and samples of your child’s work.
• You will discover a lot about what your child is learning in school by talking with her. Ask her to give you detailed information about what she is studying. Assess whether or not she can effectively explain important concepts the class is learning in math or science.
• Read out loud with your child, listening for how fluently he reads sentences and decodes unfamiliar words. Once you’ve finished reading, check his comprehension: Challenge him to summarize what he’s read and explain what it means in his own words.
• Evaluate your child’s attitude toward school. If your child is excited about what she is learning in school, it’s likely that she is learning a lot. Be careful to distinguish between being excited about school and being excited about learning. Some children love the social aspects of school but aren’t engaged academically.

Here’s hoping that your Mother’s Day is full of surprises!