So this year Tanner requested a Harry Potter party. I was so NOT excited about this theme. Although I had read the books, I am by no means a "hard core" fan. So lets just say it took me a little while before I really got into it, but when I did I will say I got carried away (even for me). So for all the mamas out there who need to plan the same party, here are some ideas.
So when the kids arrived, we headed to
Diagon Alley to
Madam Malikins and they were fitted with their very own Gryffindor robe. I had planned on only making a cape, but the robes actually took less fabric and only took a little more sewing time, so I sewed 12 robes. They each took me about 45 minutes, but they only cost me about $1.30 in fabric each. I also printed out a Gryffindor crest on iron-on paper for each robe.
Each kid also got some Harry Potter glasses. For these I purchased cheap disquises with the nose and mustache and I just cut off the unneeded parts, and they only cost 20 cents each. Then they got a lightening bolt tatoo for their foreheads.
Then it was off to Ollivander's for making wands. I bought black customizable pencils from Oriental Trading that said Ollivanders Wands on it. I had pipe cleaners that they could use to wrap around the wand. I popped out the erasers so the kids could put either a red pheonix feather or a dragon scale in it to power their wands, and we hot glued it in. As we were finishing up the kids were able to run around the yard and practice with their wands.
Look at this cute wizard. We called him Dumbledore.
Here is the birthday boy.
Look at all these future Gryffindor.
Platform 9 3/4I bought plastic sheeting with brick print on it and taped it to the door and cut it up the center, so the kids could walk "through" the brick. The 9 3/4 sign was made with card stock and paint.
Inside we headed right to Hogwarts for classes.
Divination ClassI know they don't look perfect but these are suppose to be crystal balls. My sister so nicely pointed out that they would have looked better with clear ballons and this is true, but I had white balloons already so we did white. Inside each crystal ball was a fortune the kids one by one would pop the balloon and red their fortunes. I think all the kids really enjoyed this.
Next we did
Charms Class. This did not go as well as I would have liked. I "taught" the kids 3 different charms. Expelliramus (disarms opponent), Ricktasempra (tickles your opponent) and Tarantellegra (forces your opponent to dance). Each kid had a chance to perform a charm of their choice on Headmaster Mommy.
Potions ClassEach kid was given a small cauldron (bought from oriental trading) to mix potions in. I also used some everyday stuff but them in containers and labeled them magical sounding names. Ex: Lemonade=Acid, Red Hots=Petrified Frog Hearts, Honey=Elder Tree Sap, Sprinkles=Brown Spider legs, etc.
We did 2 different potions. 1 was for Felix Felicious (Liquid Luck). I totally made this up using some of the above ingredients. I made sure to use ingredients that would actually taste alright so they could drink this one. The next was a
pop rocks potion which I found online. This was pretty cool. Although other then the Pop Rocks crackling, I didn't notice much other change. Obviously the kids enjoyed this. All boys love to mix gross things together.
After a "hard day of classes" we headed over to Hogsmeade for some fun.
Honeydukes At Honeydukes we played a game involving Bertie Botts Every Flavor Jelly Beans(which I bought at Toys R Us). They had to randomly pick a jelly bean (3/4 of them were disgusting flavors like boogers and vomit), if they could chew and swallow the jelly bean they scored a point. Some of those kids had no fear and ate everyone. Yuckity Yuck. This game, I think went very well. I gave each kid a little spit cup, just incase they didn't like their jelly bean.
I sent each kid home with a bag of jelly bellies (I bought a big thing of them at Sams Club and then put them in Bertie Botts bags that I bought really inexpensively on Ebay).
From Honeydukes they also got Chocolate Frogs. I bought my frog mold on Amazon.com. I had planned on just putting them in a little baggie with their wizard card, but then I had seen someone online made
these cool boxes, so I had to do it too.
The wizard cards...I kind of lost my party planning steam by the time I got to these, I just ended up making them black and white and everyone got Dumbledore.
Quidditch
We played muggle Quidditch.
I made these broom stick (the broom part was from the dollar store and the handle was just a wooden dowle which I painted blackish brown and wrote either Nimbus 2000 or Fire Bolt on it). I also had yellow and red sashes for the the different teams so they could tell who was on their team.
Here are the goal posts. I had another set of these on the other side of the yard. I made these out of dollar store hula hoops. They had to throw the Quaffle (red playground ball) into one of the hoops to score 10 points.
So each team had one seeker (the one who finds the Snitch-I had a snitch key chain, which I hid in the yard, the one who found it got 50 points for there team), a keeper (the goalie), 2 chasers (the ones who score) and 2 beaters (the ones who throw the bludger).
If they got hit by a bludger (I had bought these small balls and painted them black, but apparently the paint didn't want to stick to the ball so it was a mess and I ended up just using some mini beach balls that we had at the house, they weren't black and that bothered me a bit, but the kids didn't seem to care), they had to drop the Quaffle.
I had to put this picture in because it is the only one of me dressed up as Headmaster Mommy.
If the kids would have listen to the rules a bit better I would have been happier about how this game turned out. Plus we had 2 kids get in a fight, serious poor sportsmanship going on. You would have thought Harry and Draco were having one of their "issues".
After Quidditch we headed over to the Leaky Cauldron for Butterbeer (cream soda, butterscotch syrup and vanilla ice cream), cake and ice cream.
The CakeI had a hard time deciding what to do for a cake. Not because there are a lot of ideas out there for Harry Potter cakes, but because in my opinion I just didn't like any of them except the really cool ones that were so not a possibility for me. So I decided on Hogwarts and still was nervous that it would just look like a castle and not Hogwarts. I printed off on cardstock some House flags and the Hogwarts crest just so people knew. I baked 2- 10 inch and 2- 8 inch square cakes for the body of the castle and Wiltons Romantic castle set for the turrets. I wrapped the whole thing in marshmellow fondant (which I made myself). It was a lot of work and took me about half a day to make.
Here is Tanner blowing out his candles.
We ended the party with present opening and goody bags. For the goody bags, I just used black colored paper bags which were filled with more lightening bolt tattoos, Bertie Botts, Chocolate frogs plus my mother-in-law had given us a truck load of Harry Potter stuff she had been "collecting". So the kids got to pick from bookmarks, coloring books and bumper stickers. Plus they got to take their robes and brooms.
It was a fun party, but I am glad I don't have another birthday till November.
