Will and I got engaged in November of 2007 on a magical European vacation with our families.  The day of our engagement, we opened up a bottle of champagne in celebration and I’ve been saving our treasured cork ever since.

Er, um, ok so that’s not exactly how it went.  We did get engaged on a wonderful Mediterranean cruise with our families.  And we did open a bottle of champagne not long after Will popped the question.  And I did save the cork.  And then I lost it 36 hours later.  But, in true glass-half-full style, we just used that as an excuse to order more champagne and do more celebrating.  ;)

But what to do with them?   I came up with an idea that I think is totally genius.  Christmas ornaments!  Don’t you love to go through the ritual of pulling out your Christmas ornaments each year and remembering who gave them to you or who made them for you or where you bought them?  Well now you can remember those special occasions by immortalizing your champagne cork as a festive ornament for your tree.  Here’s how:

Champagne Cork Ornament

1.) Start with a clean, dry cork with the muselet still attached.
The muselet is the wire cage that secures the cork to the bottle (I just learned that term tonight – fancy, eh?).  If you want to work with a wine cork that naturally does not have a muselet, you might try threading some fishing line on a needle and pushing it through the cork.  I haven’t tried this, but it seems like it would work.

2.) Shape a bow using some cute, festive ribbon.
I chose ribbon that’s Christmas-y but it would be just as cute to match the ribbon to the occasion.  So if you opened a bottle of champagne on the day your baby girl was born, make it pink.  It it was the day your hubby got into business school, find ribbons in colors that match the program.

3.) Shape a bow, don’t tie a bow.
I’m using grosgrain ribbon here and it doesn’t exactly make the most gorgeous bow because the ribbon has so much body.  But it’s just too darn cute to pass up.  So, I shaped the two “ears” and two “tails” of the bow and pinched it with my fingers.

Then I used a stretch of fishing line to tightly cinch the center of the bow.  Next, I used a 1-inch long stretch of ribbon and a little crazy glue and covered up my fishing line.  Grosgrain ribbon will fray so don’t forget to singe any loose ends with a lighter so that the fibers melt together just a bit.

4.) Attach the bow.
Bend the muselet back to make a little spot for the bow to rest.  Give it just enough room so it’s snug.  I added a little crazy glue to the cork right where the bow would fit to keep it extra snug.

5.) Make it hang-able.
I used some fishing line to make a loop through the ring of the muselet so it can be hung from the tree!  Our tree is already down for the year so here it is, hanging from a nail in my office wall.  Trust me, this will be WAY cuter once it has a Christmas tree limb to dangle from.

I’m going to try to remember to do this as a follow up from showers, weddings, engagement parties, New Year’s Eve parties, and the like.  Wouldn’t it be such a fun idea to steal a cork from a party you attend and surprise the guest of honor with a little momento at Christmastime?  I could kick myself for not nabbing a cork from an engagement party I went to this weekend.

One of my favorite blogs, Young House Love, does a similar application with the chop sticks from their ritual New Year’s Eve dinner.  You can read about that here. They also mention framing their old house keys in that post but wouldn’t old house keys make great Christmas ornaments too?  Maybe with a sweet little hand-written label that gives the address of a much-loved house and the years that you made memories there.  Such a fun thing to pull out every holiday season.

So Corks for Christmas – totally a Julia Original!  Enjoy!