Harry Potter Magical Birthday Party
For the past two years my family has been fairly obsessed with the Harry Potter books (we listened to them in the car on Audible - I highly recommend them, as the narration is incredibly well done and led to wonderful family discussions about many stirring topics the books touch upon). It was no surprise when my nine-year-old decided that she wanted a Harry Potter themed birthday party with her friends. And admittedly, I was excited to oblige her. There are so many great ideas for this theme, so she had to pick just a few of her favorite elements: J’s picks were Ollivanders Wands, Honeydukes, using the Sorting Hat, and, of course, serving Butterbeer.
We found a great idea for making our own wands using hot glue here, although we ended up going with my daughter’s idea of using pencils. This was a fun activity for my nine-year-old to get creative and make these with very little oversight. During the party, my older daughter (who loves to act and was inspired by a recent visit to Universal Studios’ wand shop) played Ollivander’s assistant and helped “fit” the party guests with a perfect wands. To pull this off we made more wands than the number of party guests. While Scout had the guests “test” different wands, my husband sat on the other side of the room pretending that he was playing with his phone. He was actually using the Nest app, bluetooth light controls, and a magical sounds app to make the guests think that the wands were indeed reacting to them. This ended up being the hit of the party, even when some of the more astute guests eventually figured out how the lamps were actually turning on and off.
Inspired by our trip to the Three Broomsticks at Universal Studios, we served Butterbeer. The recipe we chose to make was made in a large punch bowl by combining 1 2L bottle of cream soda with 1/4 gallon of vanilla ice cream, and adding butter scotch syrup and 1/4 teaspoon of butter extract. It was frothy, delicious and even those skeptical guests seemed to really enjoy the Butterbeer. It was served in personalized glass mugs, which were made by adhering vinyl letters in a Harry Potter font made with my Silhouette Cameo Cutter. If you are a crafter and you do not have an electronic cutter, the Silhouette products are AMAZING!!
Another element that my daughter was insistent upon was that we create a Honeydukes (the Wizarding Treat Shop that Hogwarts students visited in Hogsmeade). Can you really blame her though!?! Luckily I found a great site that offered Honeydukes printables and some inexpensive craft bags from Michaels. The Every Flavour Beans box was a little more labor intensive than the others, but looked so adorable all lined up and seemed to really “wow” the kids. Using the Fiskars Fingertip Knife tool and a cutting mat made it fairly easy. It was the kind of mindless crafting you can do in front of a TV show. Another element that is nice about pre-packaging the treats is that we gave out one of each treat right before the guests left, controlling how much they actually consumed at the party, but still giving the wow factor that candy always creates.
The photo backdrop is always a fun and easy element to add to a party. For this party we just ordered a versatile brick castle hallway backdrop and then added a Hogwarts logo so that we can use backdrop for other events. This one, which was purchased on Amazon, is inexpensive and can be pinned to a wall or used with a free-standing photo booth backdrop frame.
To take their goodies home, we used the Silhouette to make inexpensive personalized canvas totes. We purchased an SVG file on Etsy to create the Hogwarts crest and then the names were made using a Harry Potter lighting looking font sold on the Silhouette site.
We found the adorable cushion boxes with characters from the books on them (Harry, Hermione, Ron, Luna, Draco and Ginny) to use for our necklace favors. We gave each guest a box and inside was a essential oil diffusing necklace. During a “potions” activity, each guest got to come and select an essential oil to put in their charm. Lavender, Peppermint and Citrus scents were very popular.
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