My brother and his darling family came to town for Spring Break. My niece and I decided to throw an epic Harry Potter party. What spurred this craziness? Well, my niece was super bummed that she was going to miss a Harry Potter that the girls at her church were coordinating since she would be on vacation at my house instead. So of course I told her we would have our own party.
Confession time - I have never actually read any of the Harry Potter books. But I do know how to access Pinterest and ask a lot of questions. My niece has read all the books multiple times so she basically decided what to do and I just helped her make it happen. She is an amazing girl and we had a blast planning, shopping, creating, decorating, cooking, organizing, etc. As a mom of all boys, I treasure these girlish moments!
Some of the parties I saw on Pinterest looked like they took weeks to prepare. Our party only took around 5-6 hours to prepare, including shopping. We also didn't spend very much money and used a lot of items we had around the house.
We invited some dear friends over who are also big Harry Potter fans. Even the missionaries popped by at the end of the party to check things out and we subjected them to our picture taking. We found this idea on Pinterest and just made our own sign using a poster board and sharpie marker.
We bought a cheap, red plastic tablecloth at the dollar store and then the kids drew bricks on it so it looked like the brick wall that they jump through at the train station. We also made a sign saying, "Platform 9 3/4."
We found this fun idea on Pinterest and wrote on my living room mirror with a red Dry Erase marker (lipstick is really hard to remove later).
My sister-in-law made this "Sorting Hat" which is being modeled by my youngest nephew. As each guest arrived, they had the hat tell them which group they were in. We made this with supplies from Hobby Lobby. A small straw hat for under $2.00 and then a few pieces of brown felt at $0.25/sheet. My awesome sis-in-law whipped this thing up quickly and magically with the help of a trusty glue gun.
After the people were assigned to a group, they were given a tie to wear (taped on with masking tape). We printed a simple tie pattern onto patterned cardstock and cut the ties out. We also gave them a crossword puzzle to work on and a wordsearch. First team to finish both won.
We placed battery operated candles around the room and dimmed the lights before guests arrived. We also made some Dream Fluid, Gillyweed, and Truth Serum to display. I just used jars we had around the house and added soda to make one brown, yellow food coloring to another, and then stuck skinny leaves from the yard to make the green jar.
The kids all loved the labeled candy jars (okay, they just liked the candy and didn't care about the labels but my niece and I thought they were super cute).
For dessert, we made broomsticks out of mini Reeses PB cups and edible sorting hats by placing a Thin Mint cookie and a Hershey's Kiss on top (attached with chocolate icing).
We wrapped Hershey Treasure candies with labels that said, "In Case of Dementor Attack, Eat Me!" There was no Dementor Attack at the party but someone all these candies are gone.
My middle son made a Harry Potter face on a poster and we played "Pin the Scar on Harry Potter." We copied the idea from this Pin on Pinterest
Time was limited so we didn't make homemade Butter Beer. We just bought cream soda and some other sodas and taped some fun labels on them that we found for free on this website.
After our indoor activities, we went outside to play Quidditch with balloons. My clever brother managed to make this happen with 6 cheap Dollar Tree hula hoops, a whole lot of masking tape, and a basketball hoop and tether ball pole. He is quite resourceful.
Although we had several Harry Potter fanatics at the party, these two were the biggest fans. They knew all the answers and I was proud to have introduced two kindred Harry Potter spirits. I know they appreciated having the competition with each other. (Notice the cute little photobomber in this picture.) All the party games were fun but that is due to the wonderful friends and family that came. I love every one of these people!
Oh, I almost forgot! We also had a surprise at the party for those who had to use the restroom. Moaning Myrtle made an appearance. I found this idea on Pinterest and then edited a picture I found online so that I could print it out. I'll admit that she's still on our toilet and I may leave her there until someone accidentally pees on the paper ;)
Here's a picture of what inspired us to add her to our toilet.
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