The Story of Us: The Kids in my Kitchen: Homemade butterfly feeder

"The Kids in my Kitchen" is part of an ongoing series where I blog a recipe the kids and I made together. Why do I think it's important for my kids to be in my kitchen with me? Read this.

This edition of the Kids in my Kitchen is not about a recipe that we can eat together, it's about using the tools and food in our kitchen for a different purpose.

My daughter loves butterflies. I've you haven't yet, I encourage you to read about her experiences with "Illy", (and the second part) to fully understand what I mean. Awhile back I had mentioned to her that I had been reading about how to make butterfly feeders on Pinterest, and of course, she begged to make one.

Now that the weather is nice and we have somewhere to put one, we decided to go ahead and try it last weekend.

After much consultation with the internet, and checking in with Daddy, we decided our base would be the bottom of a plastic cat litter container.

Thanks Daddy for cutting it down into "tray" form for us...my apologies that this picture is turned sideways.

Pulling from a variety of internet recipes, we boiled and cooled 4 cups of water. Once cooled we added 1 cup of sugar...

And carefully stirred to dissolve.

We had decided to hang our feeder from the new oak Tree in our back yard so we wrapped twine around the tray and secured it with duct tape on the bottom.

Our internet research told us that butterflies like overripe or rotting fruit. Makenna peeled a banana tht we had been keeping to make banana muffins with

she really enjoyed peeling the banana

While Jack placed some stones he had found in the backyard in the tray "so they had somewhere to rest while they were eating"...

We found some strawberries at the back of the fridge that were ready for the garbage, so we cut them up and added those as well

Once we filled the tray to our liking with the stones and the fruit...

We poured in some of the sugar water. We had made waaaaaayyyyyyy to much, and likely used only a cup of it...so I should have done 1/4 cup sugar to 1 cup water.

We very carefully carried our homemade feeder outside, but quickly realized it wasn't going to work to hang it. It was just tip and flip over, dumping everything out. So we just placed it in the crook of the branches.

Then, we waited. and waited and waited and waited.

And, nothing happened. In the interest of telling the whole story, I want to say here, that Daddy, although he indulged us by cutting the tray down, was very skeptical of this whole thing. He was quick to tell me this wasn't going to work and that the landscapers working on our yard were going to think we were crazy when they saw that thing in the tree.

I just smiled and told him to humour me.

And then, last night, 6 days after placing it in the tree, Makenna came bounding in the house to inform me, quite excitedly, that there was a butterfly at the feeder! I hurried outside with my camera, snuck up to the feeder and just as I was about to snap a picture, it flew away.

Makenna was vibrating, she was so excited, proclaiming that Illy had once again, found us. I told her to keep an eye on the feeder, that with any luck, it would return.

About 30 mins later, it did.