The Invitation:
I looked around the web and after talking to X was informed he wanted the invite to be an acceptance letter like Harry receives in the book. So with some help with my very talented husband we came up with some really cute letters along with a 'Ticket'. I was even able to get ahold of a wax stamp kit with the Hogwarts crest from Amazon.com.
No HP party is complete with out Platform 9 3/4. I'm in love with our sign. I still haven't taken it down.
Our living room was set up with portraits of famous wizards, a potions cabinet with a pensive and some other items you may find in the wizarding world. We used battery powered faux candles everywhere since we had 23 nine year old boys.
The kitchen was decorated with Devils Snare (made from crinkled up craft paper) and winged keys that hung from the ceiling. I found the keys on Amazon and the wings here.
I didn't get a good picture of it but our den, which has a fireplace, had letters coming from the fire place and owls attempting to deliver letters to Harry like in the first movie.
Even our bathroom 'The room of requirement' was dressed for the occasion.
The kids went thru a sorting hat ceremony in the living room. I was lucky enough to score a hat that actually talked and had a moving mouth from a friend that had a HP party years ago.
The boys were sorted and then they received their robe, wand, broom, and
a shirt that had a tie ironed on. We also had HP glasses and scars in
case someone really wanted to dress the part. I used my grandmothers old camel-back trunk to put the loot in.
The robes were made from 5xl Hanes t-shirts that I found on sale. I modified them using a tutorial from this blog. We found house crests and used Avery black iron-on transfers to apply them.
Then after everyone was settled in the kids had a big surprise. Harry and Hermione showed up! They went thru a sword fight some spell making with the boys then played Quittage with the boys for a couple of hours. I found them thru Action Events and they were truly amazing. The kids and adults loved them and they were absolutely fantastic.
We then had dinner in the great hall! We decked out our ceilings with some starry night room roll that I found on Amazon.com. This was a bit tricky for us since the center of our dining room has an absolutely huge skylight and is 12 feet high at the top beam!
The candles were created out of paper towel rolls, hot glue, paint and remote controlled tea lights. We hung them from fishing line which you can see in the second photo. I also made the banners from felt. I found crests of each house (on the web) and printed them on black Avery iron-on paper.
Of course the great hall wouldn't be complete without gobbets and silver plates. The snacks consisted of : Hufflepuffs (cheese puffs), Troll Bogies (pirates booty) and other assorted finger foods.
Dinner as close to the great hall start of term feast as we could get: Chicken Legs, Corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, and rolls.
The Drinks: We had Butterbeer (recipe from Pinterest), Pumpkin Juice (apple cider with bit of pumpkin for color), and Poly-juice potion (Lemon-aid colored green) to drink. The Poly-juice potion was a big hit.
The cake: X-man saw something similar on the web and begged me to reproduce it. I did the best I could. The secret is this really awesome marshmallow fondant recipe I found here on Pinterest.
We also had a candy buffet complete with chocolate frogs, Bertie Botts Every flavored beans, candy wands, jelly slugs, fizzing wizzabies and cockroach clusters.
Harry and Hermione stayed and sang Happy Birthday and presented X-man with a gold Gallon.
We also had our home made photo booth up as a Azcaban 'prisoner processing' booth. The kids and adults had loads of fun in there too.
X-man really enjoyed his 9th birthday. It was a lot of fun to create!
Till next time,
Jen
