Party Time!

The party was another great success! The guests were sorted as they came in, I made little flag pins for them to wear out of scrap fabric so they would know who else was in their house. All the food served was from the Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook. It's a great book because it references where in the series that particular food is either eaten or mentioned. We served meat and veggie pasties, Kreacher's french onion soup, irish soda bread, pumpkin juice, butterbeer (alcoholic), pumpkin bread, Hagrid's rock cakes and golden snitch cakepops. With the cookbook I was able to make little reference labels for all the food. The alcoholic butterbeer was really good, and super easy; we used this recipe.

 

After everyone ate, we moved to the common room for games. We played Harry Potter Jeopardy and pictionary/charades. The four houses played against each other and a Head Girl/Boy was chosen as official answerer. I use powerpoint to create my Jeopardy games (you can find tutorials online) and plug my computer into the tv so everyone can see. Gryffindor won Jeopardy but Hufflepuff gave them a run for their house points at pictionary/charades.

 

All in all, it was a fantastic night with all of our Harry Potter friends!

Other Decorations

For decorations in the house, we decided to give each room a theme. The dining room was the Great Hall, complete with house crests (made by my very talented sister). And for the night sky, we hung clear twinkle lights on the ceiling and covered with black tule.

The front porch was platform 9 3/4. Complete with brick wall, steamer trunk and train sounds. I had some scrap MDF from another project so I painted the Hogwarts Express sign. My advice for getting nicely painted letters is to print them out the size you need first, then use them as a stencil for a painting guide. We put a cd player in the steam trunk that played various train sounds. There are lots of sites online that have free sound bites to use.

         

         

Our dementor hung out in the sorting hat room. The windows were frosted (of course) and the china hutch held some 'props' like a time turner keychain, a wand, a pygmy puff, marauders map and other things we had collected. 

The main room, where the party games took place, was our common room. We put down a few rugs, brought in big chairs and couches and made the room cozy. 

We turned the bathroom into Aragog's cave. Complete with Aragog himself, watching you from above. A trail of spiders ran around the room and a quote from Aragog was written on the mirror.  

         

Lastly, we made up the goody bags. Designed to look like brooms! It just takes 2 brown paper bags, one cut up on the outside and a whole one on the inside with all the goodies. Instead of a wooden stick for the handle, we dipped pretzel rods in chocolate ('chocolate pretzel wands') and had them stick out of the bags. We also included Bertie Botts Beans (just plain Jelly Belly's), chocolate frogs (made with a chocolate mold) and a little rat to take home.

The Dementor

What's a Harry Potter Party without a dementor? Exactly! So Ana and I brainstormed for a while to come up with some great ideas that came together perfectly. Using this site as a reference, we made a packing tape head and arms (which we decided to paint black). Then, with the use of a wire tomato planter we attached to a table and some branches from the yard we made a skeleton shape. The next layer was the trash bag cape. We just cut up and taped together some black trash bags, then tattered the sleeves and bottom hem to give it a wispy floating feel. The top layer was cheesecloth, also tattered and dyed black. I'd say it was a pretty successful craft project!

                                  

       

Invites and Sorting Hats

The invitations have been sent and the excitement is building! The general idea for these invites was a Hogwarts acceptance letter with a ticket to Platform 9 3/4, similar to these, but I kept the letter simple, more true to the original text. All of the fonts are available here and very easy to work with. I was also fortunate to borrow the Hogwarts wax seal from a friend, it was the perfect finishing touch! (FYI extra postage is needed when mailing with wax seals)

I was also inspired by the above blog to make my own sorting hat; so with some felt, an old hat and a little imagination I came up with this! I'm quite happy with the results. We plan on sorting everyone as they arrive. 

Harry Potter Party - the planning

We've been talking about it for years and it's finally time to throw a Harry Potter party! We have some big shoes to fill with the great success of our Twilight party but I think we can do it. It won't be held until October so we have a few months to craft, collect and create our decor, favors and games.

As with the Twilight party, we try to be as money conscious as possible so we craft and repurpose as much of what we have as possible. Of course planning in advance helps with making the most of coupons too! The invitations are first on the list and as soon as they're ready we'll post pics!

Party Time!

After months of being psyched to throw our first Twilight party, it was finally time for our closest friends and fellow Twilight fans to arrive. Our sit down buffet dinner was first. With the Twilight movie and commentary playing in the background, we enjoyed great conversation and a delicious meal. Next came the games. We played Who Am I?, Twilight Saga Jeopardy and Charades/Pictionary. And what fun we had! We gave Twilight replica knit mittens and hats as prizes. Patterns for Bella's mittens, La Push hat and Angela Weber's hat can be found on Ravelry.

We've already had requests to throw another party next year for Breaking Dawn part 1. With such a successful first go around, we may just do it again! Thanks again to all the other party blogs out there for their inspiration and I hope we can help inspire other first time party hostesses too!

Preparations

Friday and Saturday were dedicated to baking, cooking and decorating all in preparation for the party Saturday night. Our menu was Italian inspired with chicken parmesan, spaghetti, garlic bread and caesar salad with Vampire bites (mini red velvet cupcakes) and Wolf Kibble (white chocolate trail mix) for dessert.

Decorating was most definitely the fun part with candles, tulle, and white twinkle lights (red, black and white of course). A lot of our inspiration was from Hostessblog along with the great quotes and labels.