Maple Syrup Festivals in Nova Scotia

It's Maple Syrup Season!!

Maple syrup is a regular flavour in our house, My kids adore pancakes and waffles with maple syrup, they even like to eat dinner sausages dipped in syrup too. I often get cuddles with a sweet and sticky maple child. 

Maple Syrup season is a great time to take a family field trip! Get out to see the sap running and celebrate at local a Maple Syrup Festival like the Dean Maple Syrup Festival.

In early spring, sap from sugar maples is collected and boiled down in sugar shacks to produce maple syrup and other delicious maple products.

Annually, promoters and organizers of the Dean Maple Syrup Festival offer tours through the woods to witness first-hand the process involved making maple syrup. After, visitors can enjoy home cooked meals while listening to some of the Valley’s finest musicians perform popular Down East ol’ time favourites.

That sounds like a fabulous day of Science, Music and Outdoor fun mixed together! What a great family field trip!

4 quick tips to make you a maple syrup expert so you can wow your kids with facts:

1.) It takes 40L of sap to make 1L of syrup (wow!)

2) 70 maple producers in Nova Scotia with over 300,000 taps! This creates 170,000 litres of maple syrup

3) Sap flowing in high volumes is called a “run” (and you thought the word only applied to toddlers and marathoners!)

4) Maple syrup is ten million times better than sugar in coffee (seriously, you need to try it and that is my official percentage)

momstown's favourite recipes that go well with Maple Syrup:

How to Make Snow Taffy at Home
Silly Snacks: Wacky Waffles
Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes with Maple Butter
Maple Glazed Squash & Green Beans
Maple & Spice Biscotti

How to Host an Easter Egg Hunt for Kids

How to host an Easter Egg Party? Planning a neighbourhood or small family Easter Egg hunt is easy with out quick 4 steps.  It all starts with fun, and momstown has serious experience on the Easter egg hunt front. Let us tell you, momstown knows how to host a neighbourhood Easter egg hunt that’s fun for everyone. Our annual Easter egg hunt is something that our members look forward to year after year.

This is what you think your Easter Hunt will look like...

This is what it will really look like (still FUN, maybe not so fussy)

Step 1: As organizer, purchase a million multi-coloured reusable eggs.

Take an educated guess about the number of kids that you are expecting, and ensure that you will have at least six eggs per child. Don’t worry about stuffing them with anything, parents are particular about what their children eat...and stuffing them takes forever!

After the kids collect the eggs, have them redeem them at a prize table. They can swap their eggs for a choice of inexpensive spring gifts, like bubbles, skipping ropes, bouncy balls, and sidewalk chalk. The organizer can keep all the eggs until next year, so the only cost, really, is the prize table each year.

Step 2: Assign each age group a colour (or colours).

This will keep the crying of younger kids and the overflowing baskets of older kids down. If only the two-year-olds collect the yellow eggs, and the five-year-olds pink eggs, things will be much smoother. Just ensure that you have enough colours per age group. This trick is also a great tip for keeping the peace in your own family egg hunt.

Step 3: Mud clothes for everyone.

As the saying goes: there’s no bad weather, just bad clothing. Fussy Easter clothes are for inside and calm non-messy activities. A fun Easter egg hunt is neither of those. Bring out the splash pants, rubber boots and washable coats. Or some years, like this year with an early Easter, snowsuits are needed. That goes for parents too! You will have way more fun if you’re not worrying about getting dirty.

Step 4: Every kid needs a basket.

Not a bag, but a basket. Why? Well, that’s just the tradition, and it’s not Halloween with a bag of candy. The eggs are supposed to bounce out when the kids run-it’s part of the memory! Silly bunny ears and drawn-on whiskers do make the pictures cuter, too!

Attention Running Moms: Blue Nose Marathon May 19, 2013

Almost 10 years ago, pre-kids, my husband and I were runners. Well, I was a newbie runner with the Running Room and he was training for his first marathon to celebrate his 30th birthday. He signed up for the Blue Nose Marathon in Halifax - what an experience!

The race heads all over the Halifax region and tours many neighbourhoods. The year we were in town, 2004, it rained the entire time. Cold spring rain. Not the best way to see to Halifax but certainly a real way.

Now it's the 10th Annual Scotiabank Blue Nose Marathon, the biggest annual race weekend in Atlantic Canada and they are both calling for runners and looking for volunteers to help.

momstown loves to connect moms - that's what we do! Our Fitness and Adventure program pillar focuses not just on  child fitness but also mama's. In many chapters we host a Mama Run program to encourage moms to start running, or even Mamas in Motion to help train for races and keep the group fit. This year many chapters like momstown Oakville  have launched Fitness Challenges which find our members in active spots each week like Spinning classes, Zumba dancing or Run clubs.

Our owners of momstown Edmonton have signed up for the BMO Vancouver Marathon on May 5th. They are training for the half-marathon  with 12 other momstown moms to raise money for a the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. They've been running in extreme temperatures all winter to be ready for the spring. Much like those training for the Blue Nose Marathon this spring.

Feeling inspired?


Online registration info can be found here  for the Halifax Blue Nose Marathon.