ANOTHER Harry Potter Party - Adults and Children

Since the final movie of the Harry Potter series just came out a month and half ago, and because my mom is a huge Harry Potter fan - or "Potty" as we call it, I decided to throw her a Harry Potter Party. I did one for my son and also helped my sister throw one for her older son, but his one needed to be different. We had invited adults and children so it needed to be fun for both. I decided to go on the premise that everyone coming would be Hogwarts Alumni, rather than the tradition house sorting and Hogwarts classes. The wizards and witches would arrive by floo powder rather than the Hogwarts express. So here is a breakdown of the party.

INVITATIONS: I found examples of the Daily Prophet online and turned it into my own. Icreated it on Scrapbook Max.
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Since my mom was going to be going as Professor McGonagall, the headline read: Professor McGonagall celebrates 60th birthday! It then read like a newspaper article on a celebration dessert feast at Hogwarts, and invited everyone to come to the bi-centennial Hogwarts Wizarding Tournament, and included the time and date. I found a great article about the heros who lost their lives during the final battle with Voldemort and I used that as the second page. The 3rd and 4th pages were made of of little articles I found online as well as classifieds. It was 11 x 17 and printed double-sided and folded.





I then used some small glass bottles (syrup bottles from the Cracker Barrel, washed out) and made a floo power label and mod-podged it onto the bottle. I made some gray sugar candy to fill it with.
These were delivered with the daily Prophet invite.

Sugar Candy Recipe:
Put 1 cup sugar into the blender and blend on high until it is a fine powder. Add 1 koolaid packet, and blend in. (I used grape because I wanted a grayish powder ) Add a few drops food coloring to get the desired color. (I used 3 drops od red and 3 drops of blue.)

DECORATIONS: Because we wanted people to arrive by "floo powder" we built a fireplace to the side of our house. We covered it in stone plastic, added a mantle (a wall shelf we had) and put books, candles, and a cauldron on the mantle. This was the entrance to party and the guests walked into the fireplace. I used the Hogwarts sign I had made from my sons previous party. I printed a large banner for my mom's party. It read, " Happy 60th birthday to a truly magical lady."
We had invited the guests to dress up in their favorite Harry Potter Characters. Upon their arrival we took pictures of them in front of the fireplace.

We took some more of the stone plastic covering and covered the entire fence, making it look like the grand hall. I printed some large house crests and glued them on colored butcher paper to make the house banners, and hung them on the stone. We made 50 golden snitches and had them hung above (we used these for a game.) We had a broom that moved by itself. The tables were set up with benches, just like in the grand hall.

Shown here with the HufflePuff Banner

I printed up "Wanted" signs and had them posted all over the party. " It read, "Have you seen this -cute little - Witch? It had her birthday in the numbers on the front. It said underneath, "Approach with exteme caution, but don't forget to wish her a happy birthday!'" And at the very bottom it siad in small print, "no need to notify the ministry of magic." I also had someone put this up at the school where she teaches.

TEAMS:
I made up 4 teams and crests for the party. They would be the owls, the centaurs, the dragons, and the thestrals. Each team was a different color. Blue, red, yellow, and green. Each table was decorated in these colors from the tablecloths, to the cups, to the napkins. I created a crest for each team and printed up a large sign, along with badges for each team. After the guests arrived they were sorted into teams. I had 4 large glass steins with the team badges taped to them. This was to put marbles into to show who was winning.

Teams could earn points (marbles) - whoever ended up with the most would win the silver cup. I bought a large wooden cup and painted it silver and then I bought small silver trophy cups at the Dollar Store for each person on that team.

SORTING:

I bought golden rod paper from Steve Spangler Science online. This is a special paper used for science experiments. I cut them into small pieces and I wrote the first letters of the 4 teams on each of the different pieces of paper with wax. The guests drew a pieces of paper and squirted it with a spray bottle mixture of water and baking soda. The paper turned red, but where the wax letter stayed white, so the team they would be on "magically" appeared. I put a badge on them and they went to their team table.

GAMES & ACTIVITIES:

1. Hogwarts Test - I printed up a Hogwarts test. It had listed the letters A-Z. They were to think of something from Harry Potter that began with that letter. Each person who completed it won a marble for their team.

2.Door Prizes - I came up with words and scramble them (potions, wizards, and spells) whoever could unscramble all 3 was entered into a drawing for a door prize. They worked on the Hogwart's test and the door prizes while other finished getting sorted.

3. Costume Contest: I made ballots so that each person could vote on the costumes. We had funniest, most authentic, best overall, best couple, and best group. My family went as the Weasley's.

4. Bertie Botts Challenge - I bought 8 different flavors of "jelly belly" jelly beans. 6 people from each team had to eat the jelly bean and guess which flavor it was. They got marbles for each correct guess. Then we moved on to the Russian Roulette Challenge. I bought the real Bertie Bott's every flavor beans. Anyone who was brave enough to reach into the bag and try one, got an instant point. If they got a gross one, they got an extra point. We were lucky (or unlucky) enough to get pepper, soap, grass, and vomit.

We then opened up the Honeydukes store and The Three Broomsticks Inn. This is the dessert feadt buffet that we had prepared.

My cousin's, Jennifer, is super talented and awesome. She made all the food, authentic from the books and movies. We had Butter Beer, Pumpkin Juice, Hagrid's Rock Cakes, Treacles Tarts, Pumpkin Pasties, Cockroach Clusters, Butterbeer Cupcakes, Cauldron Cakes, Treacle Fudge, Ton Tongue Toffee, and and assortment of candy.

Acid Pops - Suckers rolled in pop rock candy.

Cockroach clusters - chow mein noodles and raisins in chocolate.

I purchased several glass jars at the thrift store, labeled them, and filled them with the candy.

I tried to find candy that was a close to possible as the real stuff. Some candy I made up fun names for. We had chips and salsa, popcorn, and gilly -water on the table too. I bought these cute mini cauldrons from partycity.com and everyone could fill them with the candy.

Next we played FIND THE REAL GOLDEN SNITCH:We made 50 little golden snitches and hung them from fishing line. (forgot to take a pic and they were so cute) They pulled open to reveal a number and one of them had a star in it. (my mom made these to open because of the snitch Harry Potter had that said, "I open at the close") Guests would send a seeker from their team to pull down one of the snitches. They would open it a tell me the number. I had printed up 50 Harry Potter trivia questions and would read the number they chose. If they could correctly answer it their team got a point. If thry couldn't answer it, it was passed to the next team and they could answer it for 2 points. Once they found the one with the star they got 10 extra points and the game was over. (It could also be played until all the snitches are gone.)

COSTUME CONTEST AWARDS and SILVER CUP WINNERS: We had someone tally up the votes for the costume awards. I had printed up award certificates and presented them to the winners. They also were able to pick a prize for the prize table. Then I drew 10 names for the door prizes and awarded those prizes as well.

Here is a picture of the wands my husband made the day of the party for our costumes.

We made these with directions from this cool site.
http://alisonswonderscraporium.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-to-make-harry-potter-wand-tutorial.html

The party was so much fun.

I hope you can use some of these ides to make a fun party of your own!
Thanks!

Momma