Button Day

May 9 we celebrate buttons. Big beautiful buttons, small petite buttons, all sorts of buttons. The very first buttons to come about were used for ornamentation and seals. Buttons have been found in the Indus River Valley in China and also in ancient Rome. Some of the oldest known buttons date back to 5000 BCE. These early buttons were made from curved shell and found in the Indus River Valley. Button holes did not occur until the 13th century. Button holes first appeared in Germany and spread throughout Europe. Buttons of today are made of hard plastic, metals, seashells and wood. Artisans, artists and crafts people create button out of raw materials or found objects such as fossils.

One hobby in America was button collecting. In 1938 The National Button Society was founded. Today the National Button Society has over 3,000 members in four continents.

Cookies can be presented in a number of ways -- it's just a question of threading together some new ideas. 

These tools will be needed:

Cookie cutter
Drinking glass
Skewer
Ribbon
Buttons (optional)
Boxes
Tissue paper
Wrapping paper

1. Prepare dough for gingerbread or sugar cookies, and cut out round shapes with a cookie cutter. 

2. Add an inner ring by gently pressing a glass into dough. Poke four button holes into each cookie with a skewer, and bake. 

3. Stack several cooled cookies, and thread a thin ribbon through the holes. Line boxes with tissue paper, arrange cookies, wrap, and sew ribbon through buttons for added effect.