Let me tell you a little story. A little story about buttons. These four buttons above.

Way back in March when I had my major yarn shopping excursion, I bought these buttons. I spent several days before the trip coming up with a list of all of the projects that I knew I wanted to work on in the coming year. Then I spend several hours that morning scouring the aisles of the store trying to find just the right yarn to match each one. When Steve and the boys showed up I was still somewhat in the thick of it. So, I finished nursing the baby, handed her off to her papa and went whirling about the store like a dervish throwing in the last few things. Back I came to my now restless clan.

“Are you done now?”
“Yes, yes, I think so, let’s go…”

“No, wait, the buttons!”

At which point, everyone (but me) over the age of 1 heaved a collective sigh.
After explicit instructions to Steve that he was not to allow any children to follow me, surprises you know, I scooped up my now fussing babe and hit the huge button display. Squatting and bouncing and singing to the girl while trying to unscrew little tubs of buttons without spilling any, one handed all the while, was proving quite the difficult task. I *did* check the price on the first button I chose and it was a little exorbitant for one little button, but still on the whole a pretty button-ish price. And after that first one, in my fervor I quite forgot, or well, couldn’t be bothered to check any additional prices. The four above were the last ones that I found. I wanted some very special buttons for this particular project and these hand painted ceramic ones where just the ticket. Into the cart they all went and I shuffled the two eldest and very youngest kids off to the bead store while Steve paid. This was a clever diversion on my part to keep the elder boys from spying the raw materials for future gifts. Galen stayed behind with Steve because Galen in a bead store is probably just slightly more dangerous then an entire herd of elephants in a bead store.

So when we finally all met up at the car, I asked Steve for the total and was rather surprised by it. I thought I had been keeping a pretty accurate tally in my head, but some serious failures in arithmetic would not have been at all out of the question with my befuddled postpartum brain. In looking over the receipt I found that not only had I accidentally grabbed an extra huge skein of yellow yarn, but yeah, those buttons I found, a tad bit more pricey then I had anticipated…. As in $6 and $7 a piece. Not exactly in keeping with the frugal goals of the trip.

“Well, those are going back!” says I, as I scan down the receipt, getting to the bottom where is reads: All returns for store credit only. No returns for patterns, garments, or…
buttons.

right.

So, there you have it, $27 worth of buttons, more money, I might add, then the cost of the yarn for this particular project, but with any luck a very happy boy.

And someday, someday…I might just get around to actually sewing the buttons onto that project (that’s been mostly done for, oh…3 months now).