Reasons to be Cheerful: Cakes, Butterflies and Coming Last! #R2BC #BeMoreWitWitWoo

I am day late joining in with Michelle as we were out all day yesterday at Ambleside Sports! That will be a video and a blogpost so watch this space... Meanwhile here are this week's reasons:
1) Home Baking
Sometimes its the simplest things that make us happy. I love rustling up a simple batch of cupcakes using our tried and tested recipe. This time I used butter and they were so tasty they were gone in a day:

2) Butterflies

I am so pleased with my bee and butterfly friendly garden. Seeing these beautiful creatures flitting about is a delight to behold. There have been a few varieties too as I tracked for the Butterfly Count:

3) Guinea Pigs

As I am constantly putting the boys out on the grass I am enjoying spending more time with them. This time it was Splodge who posed beautifully:

4) Outdoor Theatre

I had a lovely evening just with my daughter at Williamson Park for the Duke's Theatre promenade production of The Three Musketeers. Plenty of laughs as well as sword fights with some stunning backdrops:

5) Being more Wit Wit Woo

I was blown away by the likes and comments when I joined with Swim Suit Saturday to celebrate the life of Kate Sutton:

In honour of Kate Sutton @witwitwoo who died this week at the age of 48 we are embracing her attitude and going out of our comfort zones! So a rare sight me in a swimsuit... #bemorewitwitwoo

A post shared by Becky Willoughby (@lakessinglemum) on Jul 21, 2018 at 1:45am PDT

I embraced this attitude by actually taking part in the mums' race yesterday. I knew I would be last but just went for it... and yes I was about a metre behind everyone else. My celebration was probably a prize winner though! And look I got this as an award for taking part:

Big Butterfly Count

I decided to take part in the Big Butterfly Count after seeing it promoted by Sir David Attenborough. Having an insect friendly garden meant I didn't have to go away from home to spot several species. First up was a Peacock butterfly:

That shows why they have eyes to make them look scary to predators! There were two of them enjoying the nectar:

It was fascinating watching the proboscis being dipped into the flowers:

Beautiful Butterflies

Its been an amazing couple of weeks for butterflies and my parents' buddleia is a honey pot for them all. Here are a just a few photos from Sunday afternoon:

Red Admiral

Peacock

Peacock

Cabbage White

Help I don't know!

Saturday Review: Butterfly House and Feeder

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The lovely people at Find-Me-A-Gift sent me a Butterfly House and Feeder to check out as a way to amuse my kids. The idea is to put up the house in your garden to attract butterflies to feed in the summer and shelter in the winter. It is a very compact little kit that has everything you need except a nail to fasten it up.

Having read the instructions I realised that we had nowhere in our garden that matched the criteria listed on the instructions. It needs to be in a sheltered spot preferably facing the sunrise. Luckily my mum came round and volunteered to put it up on their garden shed which fits the bill perfectly:

The feeding section in the front is painted with special paint to attract butterflies and you need to put sugar solution in the little yellow bowls. The bigger section is for fruit for butterflies or a special mixture for moths. My parents have a buddleia bush so a section of this was placed inside the house too.

My son decided that we ought to stick our fake butterfly from a bunch of flowers on the outside! Its not been good weather for butterflies since the house was put up so I am awaiting further updates as to how successful it has been.

If you want to get your kids interested in helping butterflies or moths to thrive then this would make a lovely addition to your garden. They cost £19.99 but seem to be really well made. Hopefully they will be helping butterflies for many years to come.