Sunday, January 28, 2018

Harry Potter Birthday Party

Come join us on Platform 9 3/4 and all the way to Hogwarts!
My middle son turned 11-years-old on Monday.  By the end of his special day, he had gotten his Hogwarts letter and was ready to join the magical world!
This weekend, we watched him as he got on Platform 9 3/4 for a magical ride to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!
He invited all of his friends to come and join him in a Potions Master Class with his favorite professor, yours truly.
As the letters were sent out by our trusty owls, packages kept arriving and magical spells were deployed.  Some went better than others...
As our guests arrived, they were sorted into their houses by our sorting hat.
 Each kid sat down and the sorting hat placed them in the house which they best fit.   
This was done by putting their hand into a basket of Lindour chocolates in the colors red, green, yellow, and blue for the house colors.  
As the kids tried on the hat and picked their chocolate, I yelled out the house.  If they grabbed red I yelled "Gryffindor!", blue and I yelled "Ravenclaw" and so forth.  There were only enough chocolates as their were boys, so each house got 4-5 boys in it and we used those houses during the potions class later.

Gryffindor Tower was decorated for the Quidditch match, but the spiders just kept coming in...
"Follow the spiders!  Why can't we follow the butterflies!" - Ron
The Quidditch match went well.  Gryffindor won by catching the Golden Snitch, but Slytherin finished the game with an astounding 160 points! We had 20 kids at the party this afternoon, and they all loved this game!  I really want to have another Quidditch match some day soon. 
The feast came after the game...
Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, golden apples, oranges, rounds of corn on the cob, rolls, and pumpkin pasties.  It was a true feast, Hogwarts style!
The potions master class came after lunch.  The potions classroom was stocked with Skell-Gro, Wartcap Powder, Dragon's Blood, and Bubotuber Puss so we could create all sorts of magical concoctions.
The class included several advanced potions, one including dragon's blood which is particularly rare:

(video of dragons blood potion)

The final test was with slug repellent cabbage juice and Wartcap Powder.

(video of the Cabbage Juice potion)

Little details were all over the house.  Books and owls and Halloween style candies.  Which were all devoured by the guests and ghouls alike.  ;) 
Hagrid made his cake, it wasn't too pretty, but it was made with love.  
The boys decided to hang out in Gryffindor common room and Ravenclaw tower as they had their cake and Butterbeer. 

We made Butterbeer by putting cream soda, butter flavoring, vanilla ice-cream, and some buttered rum flavoring.  Then we topped with whipping cream and golden sprinkles.  It was really good!

Ok, my friends, normally I talk about how easy parties are and how fun it is... and this was fun!  SO fun.  But this party took WORK.  A lot of work.  My son and I started planning this party in October when we found Hogwarts clothes for each of us and dressed up for Halloween.  
I have spent two months planning and chatting and creating with my kids.  We made the potions classroom a week ago.  We set up Gryffindor common room in the living room days ago, we've created Monsterous Book of Monsters out of two separate things and tested all the potions before we did the class.  We spent weeks on this and it was so very fun!  But this isn't the party where I say "this was so easy and it was so cheap!" What it was was a ton of work, but oh, so much fun!  For now, I will be sitting and knitting for the next few days....  It's a recent skill I have acquired...  
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2 comments

MsKayJ said...

Oh my goodness! I's so glad you posted a disclaimer at the end of that! LOL! What a fabulous party! I totally took inspiration from all your other parties when we did my 9 year old's Narnia party. It was definitely one of my favorite birthday's ever. We pulled out all our christmas trees and borrowed some from friends. Then we took all our folkanimals and tucked them in the branches. We reused a plastic Frozen background that included a frozen waterfall! The lady at Target did a fabulous job on the cake and we turned our kitchen into Aslan's battleground tent. We used fake snowballs for a snowball fight, and I hauled out my wedding dress to be the nicest white witch ever. Every single kid came dressed up without any major encouragement from me. It was so amazing!

Val in the Rose Garden said...

I adore it when the guests get to be part of the theme! It makes it so much more fun! -Val

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