Grandmother's Button Box

Do you have beloved ornaments from your grandmother's Christmas tree? What a treasure. Have you ever crafted something for your home out of an item worn by a sweet grandparent? I know when my husband's father died a few years ago, my husband's sister made us all a wonderful wall hanging out of my father-in-law's old flannel shirts and presented them to us for Christmas. It's hanging in my husband's study. But I really had never thought of crafting items for the Christmas tree out of things passed down from grandparents. A reader (actually two readers of this blog) shared a holiday craft--making treasured ornaments out of things passed down from grandmothers. Today I'll start off with Judye's story~

​The Button Box

Did your grandmother have a button box full of a variety of shapes, sizes and colors of buttons? My grandmother had such a box which came to me. One year, my grands and I got into the button box and made Christmas decorations. The grandkids loved searching through the button box and looking at all the different kinds of buttons. We talked about their great-grandparents, what their lives were like and why they even needed to have a button box. Together we wrote up a little family story about the button box.

For the tree decoration, we took a cinnamon stick, cut some pieces of fake greenery to glue on the cinnamon stick and added buttons as the decorations. Each child got to select the buttons that they wanted on their tree. This was a great way to pass along some family history and give them a memory to hang on the tree. My grandchildren had plenty of wild and crazy buttons on their trees!

Judye's grandmother's button box.

The sample Judye bought as inspiration for her ornaments.

History of the button box~

Judye's parents and my parents were children of the depression. They were raised at a time where you saved and recycled EVERYTHING! If the shirt or jacket was threadbare, you removed the buttons before you tossed the shirt. The buttons went into the button box. However in my case, it was a button tin. Another friend reported that her grandmother had a button jar. Then when you lost a button, your mother would send you to the button box to see if you could find a match. I even remember sewing with my mother-in-law and needing buttons for the pattern. Often my mother-in-law would say, "Oh, don't buy buttons. I think I have some in my button can." 

When Judye shared this story, I remember my mother's button can vividly. It was a little rusted around the rim and so when you tried to take the lid off, many's the time it would POP off, and buttons would scatter all over the floor! Loved the little trip I took down memory lane when Judye told me about her grandmother's BUTTON BOX!

A fun Christmas craft with your grandchildren~

Maybe it's not too late to make such ornaments with your grandchildren. Or some other Christmas decoration. I've seen people take wooden trays and decoupage favorite Christmas pictures on it. How fun to get that out year after year and serve hot chocolate to your grandkids and reminisce about the photos. I know my readers have tons of ideas. Please share! That's how I got this story about THE BUTTON BOX!

Stay tuned for tomorrow's blog! It's another one about crafting Christmas ornaments with treasures from your grandmother. The writer is a blogger too and she called her essay, "Hanging up Heritage." Watch for it.

And keep those ideas and Christmas crafts coming! We all love it!

Kids' books about button boxes:

"The Button Box" by Margarette S. Reid

"The Button Box: Lifting the Lid on Women's Lives" by Lynn Knight (not sure of the age level on this one)