jQuery will not display my inputs value?
===

I am trying to grab the value from my text input, and just alert it off of the button click for now. For whatever reason the alert is always blank? I've tried many different ways of going about this, but none of them have worked. Please help me SO. :\

As you can see [here](http://jsfiddle.net/uA2we/65/ "JSFiddle").

My HTML:

    <input type="text" id="item_text" />
    <button id="button1">ClickMe</button>

My jQuery:

    $(document).ready(function(){
    
    value = $("#item_text").attr('value'); 
    
    $("#button1").click(function(){
    alert(value);
    });
                             
    });