I Remember Laura Blog-a-thon

"There were all the small buttons to sew firmly on, and the buttonholes to be made."

Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Working In Town ~ Chapter 5

JUNE 9 - 15(photo source)
Week two will be featuring buttons. Laura, who disliked sewing once held a job making button holes to earn money to send her sister Mary to a college for the blind. You can link up and share your button collections, button identification and care, as well as button stories. Did you have a favorite dress with special buttons? Did you play in your grandmothers button box? Tell us about your button tales! Click here for information and to link at the host site, Quill Cottage.

"Button, button, who has the button" is a favorite game in my family. Growing up, we would often play this game after Monday night's Family Home Evening. One person hides a button between his/her hands and then goes around to each member of the family in order, sliding their hand between the other's hands while repeating "Button, button, who has the button," and slyly dropping the button in one of the outstretched hands. The trick is for someone to guess who is holding the button after completion of the line. That person becomes "it" or the first to get refreshments if it was time to end. My children enjoy it as much or more than my sister and I did as children!

Going through my mother's button box was a trip through memory lane because she always had cute buttons from clothing we had outgrown. She would take the buttons off before discarding the item. However, she also had a number of buttons from a grab bag she bought once, thinking they might be useful.

I have a collection of buttons that are exactly the same except for differing sizes and colors that I bought for my children to play sorting games with when they were small.

One of my favorite stories about buttons actually takes place in the book Caddie Woodlawn where her cousin comes to visit. This country is quite citified and Caddie longs to take her down a peg or two. One day, when she is wearing a dress with an unheard of number of buttons (I don't remember how many) and bragging about them, they take her out to feed the sheep. The sheep crowd up to her and eat all her buttons. I still love that story and remorse Caddie feels. Is there a child alive who doesn't feel this way at some time in their life?