A Harry Potter Party!

So you remember how I said I was making 192 Halloween cookies? (I’ll be getting to those, don’t worry) Yeah…well…right in the middle of that, I took a quick ‘break’ to head to my parent’s place to put together a Harry Potter themed birthday party for my sister who turned 13 this weekend (and by the way – HOW did that just happen!? I mean…she’s old enough for facebook now! Weird…). So I just put my 192 cookie work on hold for the event. Let’s just say I received the Best Big Sister Award. Again ;) PS: I better be able to deliver said cookies on Tuesday despite the Hurricane “Frankenstorm” Sandy hitting us this week. I’m just sayin’.

Anyway. Harry Potter. LOVE. So I had sooooo much fun putting this together. Seriously. Where do I even start?! Well, I guess to start I made some ‘authentic’ Hogwarts letters for the invitations (and I don’t have a picture, GAH!) And we delivered them by Muggle mail (my Owl was sick that week). The girls arrived at Platform 9 ¾ with their tickets – enclosed in their Hogwarts letters – to board the Hogwarts express for their special mid-autumn session at the wizarding school.

We also had a fun surprise guest!

While the girls waited for everyone to arrive, they chatted and worked on a Harry Potter crossword my mom got from a librarian friend.

So excited the party is happening! I know this picture is blurry…But I thought it was cute anyway…

Once everyone was there, each girl was ‘chosen’ by a wand, which they got to paint

After wand painting, they were sorted into their Hogwarts houses. We ordered these plastic rings with the house crests on them from Amazon and the girls drew their house out of our Sorting Hat :) We may or may not have rigged it to suit the birthday girl and a friend who was the only one who actually wanted to be in Slytherin ;)

Once they were sorted, we divided them up for the two activities. They made fleece scarves (in their house colors)

And they played a Harry Potter board game – also from my mom’s librarian friend – and they each won a pet Nargle!
*Sidenote* Nargles are kind of the ‘snipe’ of the Harry Potter world…as in they aren’t real…even in Harry Potter. Confused yet? We picked Nargles because there is no description of them in the book, so we could make them look however we want. We found a cute idea on another website and modeled ours after theirs. Cute huh?!

As the last few girls were finishing up their scarves, others took to studying their Hogwarts issued spell books and began dueling. That got interesting ;)

Then there were presents!

And a very exciting gift from Mom and Dad to the birthday girl: her very own iPod touch!

Finally, there was shopping at Honeydukes. This was my main attraction. My pride and joy of the party: my Honeydukes dessert table. (And yes, for you diehards, I did take some creative liberties. Work with me here ;)
I found a file online of the Bertie Bott’s boxes, as well as a template for the chocolate frog boxes that worked GREAT for this project.
These were probably the favorite. We bought a frog mold that I used to make them out of chocolate and they turned out so awesome and the boxes even came with collector’s cards of famous witches and wizards!

We gathered everyone around for some group pictures

Had to have a shot with the ‘Headmistress’ Mama

And of course, me. The party planner ;)

Then they chowed down on all that fun candy and we put on the first Harry Potter movie, which they watched until it was time to go home. I also made homemade ice cream cookie sandwiches (instead of a birthday cake – I know, like we NEED more treats?! ;) at the request of the birthday girl. Chocolate chip cookies with double cookie dough ice cream in the middle. Made from scratch. So delicious. ;)

All in all: SUCCESS! But let me tell you, by the time we put that movie on, I. was. Exhausted. ;)

But there was more party fun to be had! It was the ward Trunk or Treat that night at my parent’s ward, so we of course went to that 30 minutes after we sent off the last birthday guest. But lucky for us, we had ready-made Harry Potter décor for our trunk! Complete with the Harry Potter movie soundtrack. I know. Cuz we’re that good. And I gotta say, we definitely had the best decorated trunk in the parking lot ;)

And then finally, I got to go to bed

Party Status: A magical success! ;)