LAST MINUTE VALENTINE'S DAY...BUTTONS?

Button Hearts (for some reason, I called Candy Dots "buttons" when I was little):
These are the easiest homemade Valentines ever - make a bunch in a hurry!
From Martha Stewart [Source]

Try these cute last-minute Valentine's Day ideas I recently found on  (click the red "button" to follow me there, but I'm warning you: pinning all those ideas/recipes/crafts/books onto virtual bulletin boards can be addictive!).  Look what I found to make: Button Hearts,  Valentine Pretzel Buttons, Cute-As-A-Button Valentine Cards, and a Sorted Button Valentine Heart.

At the end of my post you'll also find some fun books about buttons (and about something else, that most of us can't resist!)

Valentine Pretzel Buttons - Lately, when I go and visit my sister's kids, we make some form of these.  It started when a friend gifted them to me for Christmas one year (using the square butter pretzels, Rolo candies, and red and green M&M's)  I can't wait to try this version!

Recipe found HERE

Cute-As-A-Button Valentine Cards - A great way to use all those extra buttons you've collected through the years. I think these are adorable, but to make them with kids, I would just glue or tie on any cute "extra" buttons you have (without first making them into earrings).  The dowloadable card template is free...

Download the cards and tutorial HERE 

Sorted Button Valentine Heart - Look at this little guy, sorting his buttons into a muffin tin and gluing them onto his red paper heart!  What could be more fun?

Check out the finished MASTERPIECE!
[Source - Hands On: As We Grow]

HERE ARE THE BOOKS:

Corduroy, by Don Freeman. Remember the teddy bear in green overalls who lives in a department store and wants a home? One day a little girl named Lisa comes and wants to buy him, but her mother tells her she's already spent enough money; and besides, the bear doesn't look new: he's missing a button. This fact sends him off in the middle of the night to search for it...maybe someone will buy him if he can find his button and fix his broken strap!

All at once he saw something small and round. "Why, here's my button," he cried. And he tried to pick it up. But, like all the other buttons on the mattress, it was tied down tight.

Will Corduroy ever find his button - or a home?

The Button Box, by Margaret S. Reid, Illustrated by Sarah Chamberlain.  This little book takes me back to a rainy day during my childhood, when I remember my mom getting out her Mason jar full of "extra buttons".  My siblings and I spent the afternoon counting and sorting all the colorful buttons. We eventually ended up threading one onto a sturdy, but thin piece of string or ribbon to play "Button Button, Who's Got the Button?" The colorful illustrations in this book show the buttons the boy discovers in his grandmother's button box - how they can be sorted, and where they may have originally come from.

The Belly Button Book, by Sandra Boynton. Okay, well I know this isn't really a book about "buttons", but who can resist bare-bellied hippos and reading aloud the word, "Bee-Bo"?

Did you know Sandra wrote and illustrated a book for us grown-ups, too:  New York Times bestseller Chocolate: The Consuming Passion (you knew I had to work chocolate in here somewhere for Valentine's Day!  That was for you, Carol B-McK!)  It's out of print now, but hopefully you can find it at the library.

From the book jacket: Boynton's apologia for chocolate misses nothing. Myths are debunked: "chocolate is not fattening", she argues, "especially when the caloric expenditure of carrying it home from the store and hiding it from company is factored in". Directions are supplied: "to remove stains, lick them". Plus, "how to grow chocolate at home", a foolproof method for determining if chocolate is in season (does the name of the month contain the letter A, E, or U?), and a recipe for Hippo Pot de Mousse.