Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Party
Having a Harry Potter themed party was always a good possibility, especially after spending much time on Pinterest admiring other people's neat ideas. So when Courtney couldn't decide what kind of party to have for her birthday last year, I suggested that very idea. We gathered up our favorite ideas for food and decoration and set to work.
The next step was one I added to give more of a candle effect. I lit some white candles I had and dripped the wax down the side of the rolls. It actually made them look really cool. A tip for dripping hot wax is to not let your candle burn too low. If the wick is too far below the sides of the candle, it will burn the sides when you tip it and get black in your wax.
I tied fishing line around the top of the candle and around a push pin to hold it in the ceiling. Courtney bought a piece of fabric that looked like a cloudy night sky to hang above the dining room table. I sprayed some glitter on it to make it shimmery and attached it to the ceiling before hanging the candles from the fabric.
The set of books and leather bag (which is a shaving kit bag, I learned) also came from Goodwill. If somehow you have never been to a Goodwill, you should go right now! I can't tell you the awesome things I've found there.
I happened to have a rat in my Halloween decor so I pulled it out to be Scabbers. Courtney brought a quill to add to our going-to-school display. The glasses came from Party City simply because I couldn't find round glasses anywhere else. I already had the red trunk; I obtained it in a moving sale several years ago.
For my table decorations in the "Great Hall", I took four vases (from the Dollar Tree) and put blue, red, gold and green beads in them. We didn't actually keep up with house points but they made good centerpieces.
My first step was creating my map. I'm not design software savvy and too impatient to create a map using paint so I decided to draw one. It's a lovely drawing, no?
I decided to draw my pad (just a single floor because my artistic abilities are somewhat limited) on a sheet of printer paper. I then scanned the image into my computer and opened it in PowerPoint. Now, I'm not sure what you guys use to create photo artwork on your computer but I love using PowerPoint. It's easy to insert pictures and arrange them however you like. You can edit pics, add effects and borders, and save every slide as a JPEG or PNG file.
I found an awesome website (http://fontmeme.com/harry-potter-font/) that allows you to type anything and save it in Harry Potter font. It does save as a photo but it's still pretty neat. I typed my room descriptions and added those images to my map. I also found some footprints on Google images to add.
The next steps came from the website listed above and more detailed instructions can be found there. The gist is, you take your map and place it in a baking pan. Make a pot of tea and then dump some of the tea over the map on both sides. Drizzle instant coffee over the top and bake in the oven for about five minutes.
Tip- be careful about not adding enough tea to your map. If it gets too dry the map will stick to the pan (this happened to me) and will rip when you try to take it out.
Once your map is dry, remove it from the pan and place it under a book or similarly heavy object to flatten it out. My final map turned out pretty great. The tea and coffee really give it an aged look.
For bathroom decorations, we of course had to have a Ministry of Magic sign.
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One of the most precarious decorations were my flying keys. They were easy to make, I just ordered a bag of old keys from Amazon and taped feathers to them, but difficult to hang. I decided to hang them in quiet possibly the worst place in my house. Since I live in the basement, I wanted them hanging above the stairs as you walked in. The problem is that the ceiling is very high at the bottom of the stairs.
My most expensive purchase for this party were banners I bought from Lorinas on Etsy. They're hand painted and absolutely gorgeous. They were around $15 each but definitely worth it.
And what would a Harry Potter party be without a Platform 9 3/4? For the wall, I just used a brick style plastic table cloth my mom had leftover from Christmas. You can get this from school supply stores on rolls.
Invitations
I found a template for Hogwarts acceptance letters in my search for awesome invitations. I decided to change the wording around a little to make it better fit our purposes. I printed the letters on some parchment colored paper I had to give it a more aged look. I mailed/hand delivered the letters to all of the guests. Everyone seemed excited to receive the letters!
The link to the original template is: http://www.seanlockephotography.com/2013/07/18/youve-been-accepted-to-hogwarts/
Decorations
After guests are invited, it's time to take care of decorations. It can take time to make your own decor, so it's good to get started as soon as possible.
The decorations that probably took the longest to make were the floating candles. I saw several ideas for making this decoration on Pinterest, but this is the one I inevitably chose.
I started off by collecting toilet paper and paper towel rolls. We asked family, friends and co-workers to save them and managed to collect about 30 + in only two weeks.
I painted the rolls white with regular craft paint before hot gluing battery operated tea lights in the tops of all of the rolls. (Tip- There may be a better option out there than hot glue. I am still having trouble removing the hot glue from the tea light candles.)
I tied fishing line around the top of the candle and around a push pin to hold it in the ceiling. Courtney bought a piece of fabric that looked like a cloudy night sky to hang above the dining room table. I sprayed some glitter on it to make it shimmery and attached it to the ceiling before hanging the candles from the fabric.
We had to use a butter knife to turn the candles on, as I didn't turn them on before I hot glued them. It actually worked out better because our candle batteries lasted through the night. The candles looked especially cool when we turned out the lights (they flicker).
One decoration I was especially happy about was Hedwig. I wanted to find a white owl without spending a ton of money purchasing one off of the internet. I decided to check our local Goodwill just to see if they had anything and lo and behold, I found a white owl. I was so excited I did a little happy dance on the toy aisle. It was meant to be, clearly. I borrowed Hedwig's cage from my cousin.
The set of books and leather bag (which is a shaving kit bag, I learned) also came from Goodwill. If somehow you have never been to a Goodwill, you should go right now! I can't tell you the awesome things I've found there.
I happened to have a rat in my Halloween decor so I pulled it out to be Scabbers. Courtney brought a quill to add to our going-to-school display. The glasses came from Party City simply because I couldn't find round glasses anywhere else. I already had the red trunk; I obtained it in a moving sale several years ago.
For my table decorations in the "Great Hall", I took four vases (from the Dollar Tree) and put blue, red, gold and green beads in them. We didn't actually keep up with house points but they made good centerpieces.
Another decoration that took some time to make was my Marauder's Map. I wanted one of these maps, but as I'd already spent a pretty penny on other decorations, I thought I'd try my hand at making one. I found instructions as well as the map cover template here: http://harrypotterparaphernalia.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-to-make-marauders-map.html
My first step was creating my map. I'm not design software savvy and too impatient to create a map using paint so I decided to draw one. It's a lovely drawing, no? I decided to draw my pad (just a single floor because my artistic abilities are somewhat limited) on a sheet of printer paper. I then scanned the image into my computer and opened it in PowerPoint. Now, I'm not sure what you guys use to create photo artwork on your computer but I love using PowerPoint. It's easy to insert pictures and arrange them however you like. You can edit pics, add effects and borders, and save every slide as a JPEG or PNG file.
I found an awesome website (http://fontmeme.com/harry-potter-font/) that allows you to type anything and save it in Harry Potter font. It does save as a photo but it's still pretty neat. I typed my room descriptions and added those images to my map. I also found some footprints on Google images to add.
The next steps came from the website listed above and more detailed instructions can be found there. The gist is, you take your map and place it in a baking pan. Make a pot of tea and then dump some of the tea over the map on both sides. Drizzle instant coffee over the top and bake in the oven for about five minutes.
Tip- be careful about not adding enough tea to your map. If it gets too dry the map will stick to the pan (this happened to me) and will rip when you try to take it out.Once your map is dry, remove it from the pan and place it under a book or similarly heavy object to flatten it out. My final map turned out pretty great. The tea and coffee really give it an aged look.
For bathroom decorations, we of course had to have a Ministry of Magic sign.
.And what would a bathroom be without a warning written on the mirror...
I printed several other signs to post around the house. I Googled wizard signs to find some good examples and made my own versions using PowerPoint. I laminated them so that I could stick tape to them and still be able to peel it off later.
My dad built a scaffolding (wooden board that reached from a ladder one on end to a coffee table sitting at the top of the stairs) and climbed out to hang them for me. I still owe him one. Also, the keys are still hanging and probably will be for some time. :)
One of my internet purchases for this event is my Sorting Hat! I found it on Amazon and couldn't resist. This is actually a puppet, btw, not a hat. We put the hat front and center with house cards from Harry Potter trivia and used the cards to choose teams for games.
A cool idea I found on Pinterest was to make your own dementor and patronus. I found my patronus in my grandmother's Christmas decorations. For my dementor, I put a black cape on my cardboard cutout of Spike.
Another cool idea I found was to make your own pensieve. I thought it would be a good idea to let everyone write down memories of the birthday girl and place them inside for her to look at later. I used a plastic bowl I bought at the dollar tree and skinny plastic spray bottles (that used to contain tablet cleaning spray). I happened to have the spray bottles available to me and couldn't find any other small plastic containers that wouldn't leak. They worked out pretty well though.
My most expensive purchase for this party were banners I bought from Lorinas on Etsy. They're hand painted and absolutely gorgeous. They were around $15 each but definitely worth it.
And what would a Harry Potter party be without a Platform 9 3/4? For the wall, I just used a brick style plastic table cloth my mom had leftover from Christmas. You can get this from school supply stores on rolls.
Food and Drinks
We didn't have a ton of food at our party. We started at 7:30 so we thought it would be better to make mostly sweets and drinks. We did; however, have one non-sweet food, which we titled Polyjuice Potion. (Ro-Tel dip).
On the sweet side of things, we had plenty to munch on at Honey Dukes. We had Cauldron Cakes (blueberry cupcakes with honey buttercream), Pumpkin Pasties, Treacle Fudge (peanut butter fudge), Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Chocolate Frogs, Peppermint Toads (we just melted chocolate, mixed in some mint flavor, and put it in a mold in the freezer), Chocolate Wands (pretzels dipped in chocolate), Jelly Slugs (gummy worms), and Acid Pops (regular ole suckers).
We also had Courtney's awesome birthday cake!
For drinks we decided to make Pumpkin Juice, Butterbeer, and two of Courtney's own concoctions. One was a blackberry sangria (Dementor's Kiss, we called it) and the other a cocktail we called Veritaserum.
Fun and Games
Each of us ordered a wand from Etsy for the party. They came very well made and with a cute little card that told what the wand was "made of".
Another craft I made was a wizard wanted poster. I knew we had to have one for photo ops. I decided I wanted a sturdy frame for my poster so I bought a larger frame from Goodwill. I took the picture out and spray painted it gray. I borrowed Hillary's letter cutting device and cut out the letters I needed and hot glued them to the frame.
The guys' favorite game of the night was Quidditch Pong. Courtney's dad made us three goal posts that we sat in the middle of the table. We played like regular beer pong, extra points being gained for getting it through the hoops and into a cup on the other side (harder than you might think).
We also played Harry Potter Scene It and had a Horcrux scavenger hunt. Courtney picked out 7 objects that had meaning to her but that went right along with Harry Potter and his search for Horcruxes. She had a Braves cup, her high school class ring, a Georgia Bulldogs' cap, a book about the art of getting even, Daryl's ear necklace, Perry the Platypus and David (our friend).
Our friends first had to figure out what they were looking for (ie. a ring, a cup, a "crown", an animal sidekick, a book, a necklace and one of them) and then search the basement for the objects. It was quite entertaining to watch.
Some of us dressed in costumes for the party (us girls mostly) because we love dressing in costumes and this was the perfect party for it.
Back Row- Random mean muggin Slytherin, Random Slytherin/Horcrux, Random Slytherin wearing the wrong house colors, Pansy Parkinson, Moaning Myrtle, Hermione Granger, Hufflepuff chick, Rowena Ravenclaw, Random I-mean-business Ravenclaw
Front Row-Harry Potter, Cho Chang in mourning, Bellatrix Lestrange, Nymphadora Tonks
All in all we had an awesome party that all of our friends enjoyed and Courtney had a memorable 26th birthday!
~Mallory
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