Thursday, November 12, 2009

A Magical Evening With Harry Potter

Like many people in the Muggle world, I was extremely excited about the release of the newest Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Price – the 6th movie in the Harry Potter series. Opening weekend happened to be near my birthday, so my co-worker Rachel , my husband Justin and I all planned an amazing Harry Potter Birthday Party. Some of our great ideas:

Decorations - Snitches
We wanted to create a Harry Potter environment without actually buying “Harry Potter” party supplies….so after much brainstorming we created a lot of great decorations. We made golden snitches by putting two fake feathers in a Styrofoam ball and then spray painting the entire thing with gold spray paint and then gold glitter spray. We made about 20 and displayed them around the apartment – some hung from the air with silver string and others perched around.




Decorations – Hogwarts
I made several signs out of black and gold poster board and gold paint with gold glitter. I put one on the front door of my apartment building that said “Platform 9 ¾” and another on the front door of my apartment that said “Welcome to Hogwarts.” Also, outside by the door, I posted a sign saying “Please Leave Your Brooms At the Door” and positioned a little witch’s broom next to the sign. Inside the apartment, we displayed a sign “Beware of Moaning Myrtle” on the bathroom door.





Decorations – Potions
Hobby Lobby had a sale on glassware and so we picked up several cute, small glass containers to serve as bottles for our potions (food coloring + water). We displayed them on a shelf and accented them with candles.


Decorations - Yule Ball and Candles Everywhere!
Final accents included some glittery silver snowflakes descending from our dining room light to give the party a little "Yule Ball" flavor. And we turned out the lights and put candles everywhere that we could - including some great floating candles in a nice glass bowl. Definitely gave it a nice Great Hall feel. I also found some cheap quills at Hobby Lobby and stuffed them in a vase with a snitch.





Food – Honeydukes
The food serving area was labeled with a sign saying “Honeydukes” where we had a Chocolate fondue station, drinks and other snacks for our guests. We printed little place cards to showcase our creative food names:

Mead = beer
Pumpkin juice = orange cream soda
Butter beer = mix one shot of Buttershot with a cream soda in a mug
Broomstick salad = Vermicelli (noodle) salad
Dragon tenders = chicken tenders
Peppermint humbugs = peppermint candies
And more that I can't remember....

For the birthday cake, my husband made the most amazing "Harry Birthday" cake out of two giant chocolate chip cookies with ice cream in the middle. He made the ice cream filling half mint chocolate chip and half chocolate chip cookie dough. To mold the ice cream, he used our cheesecake pan. After making the giant cookie sandwich he decorated it beautifully with yummy icing.




Party Favors - Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and Wands
I bought two giant bags of Jelly Belly jelly beans and put them in individual clear bags tied with maroon and gold ribbons (for Griffydor, or course). Then I found a logo of Bertie Bott's online and made little circle sticker labels to go on the bags. I put them all in a bowl for guests to grab and take with them to the movie.

We had a couple kids coming to the festivities...and other guests who act like kids...and so we decided to make our own magical wands. We bought a floral arrangement of sticks (basically...) from Hobby Lobby and cut them to a nice wand length (about a foot and a half). We then sprayed them with gold glitter spray to give them a nice sparkle. I displayed them in a vase and let each guest pick their wand.



The party was great - lots of people came for the celebration and we enjoyed the movie - can't wait for the 7th one!

1 comment:

  1. YAY! A NEW POST! Sonya & I read it together and looked through the pictures. Your party looked like so much fun! The cake is incredible! Still haven't seen the movie! :-(

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