Over the last couple of months with ALL our summer travels, we have listened to the first four Harry Potter books. (I don't think I'm ready for them to do the last three... I think they're too scary for the girls just yet.) The girls have loved them (of course, because they're amazing), so when Miss A suggested a Potter party for her birthday, I was happy to say yes. I'm going to write down the details, because I'm pretty sure this is only the first.
For the cake I used whoppers as bludgers around the edge (I'm a bona fide novice when it comes to cake decorating...) and Miss A made a broomstick out of a pretzel and licorice. I used wire and golden straws I got at target to make quidditch hoops. And I used some of the floo powder I made from two shades of decorating sugar to make some grass. I wrote with those gel things.
For activities the kids could make a spell book, I had printed out some spell sheets I found, of course, on pinterest (
Here is a link to my HP party pinterest page.) and a bunch of HP coloring sheets and the kids could arrange them in little photo books.
Also I had a jar of golden straws and chop sticks the kids could decorate for wands, with spellotape, I mean washi tape.
I had, of course, being a terribly good fabric hoarder, all the fabric I used for tablecloths.
And we decorated a lot with stuffed dragons and owls we already had. And we put out all our HP books for decoration, and to hold the cake up.
We had a lot, too much, junk food. Cockroach clusters (chocolate peanut clusters) Bertie Botts every flavor beans (jelly bellies- I'm not into eating anything vomit flavored), licorice wands, pretzel wands, bludgers, ton-tongue toffee (starbursts), butterbeer fudge (recipe on my pinterest page), pumpkin juice (ditto recipe), and cauldron cakes (really yummy chocolate cupcakes using my sister L's secret cheesecake filling). And, a token veggie tray which no one touched.
All the labels and fonts are on my pinterest page.
We had made the rounds of the thrift stores and found graduation robes for everyone to wear.
Our wonderful across the street neighbors are also heavily into HP, and they gave Miss A a hand-whittled wand, a cauldron, and a hand crocheted snitch.
She also got some cool craft kits, and Miss I painted her a picture of her favorite animal.
A word here about Miss A's attire. She has admired this cape in target for weeks. And I know it's silly and fluffy and pointless, but I got it for her. Because do you know what? She's ten. She's not a skanky 18 year old. I was just so pleased that target has clothes that fit my large little girl that are little girlish. It's getting hard to find such things, so I really am grateful when I can.
Some more decoration photos.
I put candles everywhere for ambiance.
Miss M remembered the merpeople in the second task, so we hauled out our mermaid collection as well. And an old stuffed cat to be Crookshanks.
Miss A and Miss M had fun blowing up balloons and drawing owls on them. It's such a relief that they can blow and tie balloons, because I honestly can't.
Miss A drew Fawkes on his perch.
Miss M drew Dobby, and our neighbor Miss EK did a potions class advertisement. I printed off some spew fliers.
And this is Miss M's Winky. See the puddles of tears?
I did a basilisk sign to keep kids out of the upstairs, and one for Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.
The girls had the idea to make Hagrid's pumpkin patch.
All the kids were supposed to go out and play quidditch. I made these hoops out of pvc and our old hula hoops and everything. But... the day of the party I could not for the life of me get them stuck down in the ground. The kids had fun the day before throwing the quaffle (red gertie ball) through them from the swingset anyway, while they took turns holding a hoop up, but the day of the party was so incredibly hot and muggy and terrible, that they mostly stayed inside and played.
Oh, also we braided Miss M's already quite bushy hair so it would be extra bushy like Hermione's.
Miss A made her name out of basilisks.
I had planned for the kids to mix up potions using random stuff from the fridge and put it in cute labeled bottles, but I ran out of time and ganas. So I stuck the labels on the drink cups instead. Which helped everyone remember which cup was their's so it worked well.
That's it! Of course pinterest is now showing me all this other HP stuff, so I'm getting a whole bunch more ideas for the next time around...
