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The Button Jar
I've been in love with buttons my whole life. Any size, any colour, any type. This, I largely blame on my grandmother's button jar. A large mason jar that sat on top of the chest of drawers in her dressing room...it was full of buttons....big ones, small ones, pretty ones, plain ones. New ones....old ones, labouriously clipped from bits of worn out clothing , before they went into the scrap bin. I loved to play with the buttons in the jar. Somedays they were a pirate's golden lucre...a hidden treasure as I ran my small fingers through them...other days they were just buttons, but I would lay on her bed and sort through them... trying to imagine what articles of clothing they had come from and who might have worn them. Every button had a tale to tell and a story behind it. My mother had a button jar as well...although her's was a metal tin that I suspect my dad had saved from work. There were about four of these in her sewing basket...all labeled with masking tape...printed on each one in black marker...various words....snaps, hooks and eyes, zippers, and buttons....I loved to play with these buttons as well. There were even several still on the button cards. My favorite ones were the ducks....flat white buttons with colourful ducks imprinted on them in yellow and orange, wearing little sailor hats. Those were my favourite ones and I longed to have them on a garment of my own, although in reality, by that age I would have looked rather silly in a sweater with yellow duck buttons on it! Imagine my joy many years later, upon having given birth to my oldest son, when my mother presented me with the gift of a handknit sweater adorned with those same yellow duck buttons....I have a button jar myself, although mine is a papier mache heart shaped box. In it I have tons of buttons and, like the child I once was, I still like to run my hand through it and feel their cool smoothness, trickling through my, not so small anymore, fingers. I love collecting buttons and anytime I see a packet that are unusual or colourful I am wont to buy them and add them to my collection. Quite often, when I buy a blouse or a sweater, it is because of the buttons on it rather than the garment itself. I, too, clip buttons from old clothes before they are thrown away. Sometimes I use them on crafts and sometimes they come in very handy when a button is lost on something being worn...but mostly I just look at them, and dream about the tales they have to tell...where they once lived....and who once owned them....the magic stuff of a little girl's dreams...
Here's something else I got from my Grandmother....
*Thimble Cookies*
Makes 2 dozen
These are one of my very favourites. Grammy used to make them, and Mom too. They're called thimble cookies because of the dint in the centre which a thimble is perfect for making. I never make a single batch - you can double this recipe. Use different jams in some of them for variety - I like raspberry and apricot.
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1 egg white
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup jam or jelly
Preheat oven to 180*C/350*f.
Cream butter, add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add egg yolk, and beat well. Stir in vanilla.
Add flour and stir until combined.
Roll mixture into balls the size of a walnut. Roll balls in unbeaten egg white, then in chopped walnuts.
Make a dint in the top of each cookie and place on a greased cookie sheet, and bake 5 minutes. Remove and redint the tops of the cookies, then continue baking until done - another 5-10 minutes. They should be slightly brown.
Fill the dints with a teaspoon of jam or jelly while they are hot, and remove to a rack or plate to cool. At Christmas time these are really pretty filled with red and green jams or jellies.
Written by mariealicejoan Blog about this entry |
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A button jar! Boy does that bring back memories! My mother had one that also had hat pins in it and my baby teeth, of all things! She gave it to me before she went to live in a retirement village. It remains sadly in the states with my ex.
We call these cookies "Thumb Print Cookies". We make them for Christmas. Yum! I haven't made them since I've immigrated, but I think I might run them past my husband before Christmas. I'll leave the beloved nuts off, though, as my 90 something MIL is coming to stay with us for Christmas. The nuts get under her dentures! Oh Oh, too much information! LOL
Susie
http://journals.aol.co.uk/susanebunn/ItAllStartsAfter50/ -
BTW, I have added your link to my favorites sidebar. I hope you don't mind. Bea
http://journals.aol.com/bgilmore725/Wanderer/ -
Buttons and cookies all in one entry! Amazing, that's what I say! No, really, you could call those cookies Button Cookies. I collect buttons, too. I suppose everyone has a jar of buttons, but does anyone besides me take the buttons off of old shirts that are about to be discarded? I mean, say you have a torn up, greasy old shirt that has lived past the rag days, or past the car washing shirt days... and you no longer need it laying around for any practical use. It's time to throw it away. I take the buttons off before it even gets to be a car wash rag, but that's how I "recycle" the shirts. I'm going to photograph my buttons and make an entry on that topic one day, too. You have fournd a heap of sentiment in your buttons. Loved it. Bea
http://journals.aol.com/bgilmore725/Wanderer/ -
I've still got my Mums button jar, a little depleted now but still with many of my favourites in; a lot are worth a fair bit of money nowadays, especially the ones like you say of the ducks (we had some too), and as for the lovely little mother of pearl ones....so delicate! Those cookies look yummie, I will be trying them out very soon!!!
11/10/06 16:55