Harry Potter party

On 27th December we had a Harry Potter party.

This started with Hogwarts acceptance letters (invitations) sent by Muggle post.

 

Sealed with a Hogwarts seal and wax (bought from Ebay)

 

The letters were addressed with New font, downloadable and easy to find on Pinterest. It's wonderful that so many people have done the hard work first to find fonts and everything needed for a Harry Potter party! :)

Each letter had instructions to turn up dressed in robes (no Muggle clothes) and included a printed Hogwarts Express ticket.

For the day itself there was a display of potions in appropriately grubby bottles with a variety of carefully selected contents.

Other potions featured in Madame Rosmerta's Bar.

Honeydukes was also represented with a fine selection of sweets

And Floo powder ready and waiting by the fire

Guests were (L-R) 

Back row- Harry, Hedwig, Dobby, Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, Rita Skeeter, Prof Trelawney, Ginny Weasley, a Dementor and Harry (number 2).

Front row - 2 golden snitches, Voldemort, Bellatrix Lestrange (x2), Luna Lovegood.

Some very inventive costumes here!

First stop was Ollivander's Wand Shop with a light to test if the wand was correct (the wand chooses the wizard after all!) If it was the 'right' one, the light came on with the Lumos spell.

The wands were collected by my husband (Dumbledore!), sanded and varnished.

Then the games began!

We had Hogwarts Bingo to introduce people to each other - we had to go round and collect each other's names for our own Bingo sheet.

Then we were sorted, not by a hat but a bag, which had coins in for each house.

Sorting coins

Team games were 

Duelling (each team has to name a magical creature in turn, then a Hogwarts Professor)

Library quiz - naming quotes from the books and completing quotes

Accio Butterbeer - dropping a wand into a beer bottle from a chair, not as easy as it sounds!

Cards in the cauldron - a very simple party game of aiming to get cards into a cauldron; 10 points for the cauldron and 5 for getting them on the paper round the cauldron.

Charms & spells - matching the spells to their descriptions.

Who's in the Cauldron? was the final game. A team game based on Charades where one team member draws out a name and has to describe them without saying the name. Round two is miming the person - very difficult when they are all connected to Hogwarts! Round three is one word to describe the person!

We even had a suitably Hagrid-style birthday cake.

A lucky dip gift for the end of the evening, filled with a Harry Potter keyring or necklace. The bags were made from Marauders' Map paper.

Great fun was had by all. It was a lot of fun planning and arranging everything, and on the day everyone chipped in to help get it all in place. 

We had some pumpkin pasta to eat, but that was insignificant compared to the laughter all through the evening. As I've said before, all the ideas were collected from Pinterest, and I have created a board called Harry Potter themed party. 

And finally, a sad little picture from the morning after! 

(Hope it's not too traumatic for Harry Potter fans!)

#harrypotter