Harry Potter Birthday Party

My son turned 10 this year, and the last Harry Potter movie came out, so what better way to celebrate than with a Harry Potter birthday party? I got tons of ideas from Pinterest, then I decided what I could make work in my house.

The first thing that I made was the sign for "Platform 9 3/4", which I placed by the door (I picked up the file that I printed here-she has TONS of other great printables for a Harry Potter party). The frame was a simple oak frame that I repurposed with black chalkboard spray paint and hi-gloss spray (or you could just use a gloss finish spray paint) but I used what I already had.

My Sign:

The next thing on my list...wands for the Wizards! I found an AWESOME and easy tutorial for making them from cardstock, hot glue, and spray paint-and I love how they turned out!

Ollivander's Wand Shop:

As you can see, I also made "Hogwarts Completion Certificates, but I will show those later ( I gave them out at the end of the party).

As any Harry Potter fan knows, the wizards doesn't choose the wand, the wand chooses the wizard. So, we blindfolded the kids and the let the wands do the rest of the work ;-).

(birthday boy had to put a spell on his sis!)

Now there are lots of ideas for Harry Potter party activities if you google it, but the kids opted to ride four wheelers and play Harry Potter video games.

We had a Sorting Hat Pita Bread with Felix Felicis Spinach dip:

We had a Honeyduke's Sweet Shop:

 A closer look at the spooky sweets:

We had lots of yummy treats: Acid Pops (sour pop rocks), Drooble's Best Blowing Gum (eyeball bubble gum from the Halloween section-also a nod to Moody Mad Eye), Chocolate Frogs, Slytherin Snakes (sour gummy snakes), Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans (I couldn't find these, so I just used gourmet jelly beans), Cockroach Clusters (chow mein noodles covered in chocolate), Golden Snitch Cake Pops, and Edible Wands (chocolate licorice), and Nimbus 2000 Broomstick treats.

I made the sign with some googled clip art and cardstock:

There were lots of fun treats there, like Nimbus 2000 Broomstick Treats:

Instructions to make these HERE.

Golden Snitch Cake pops (I got the idea for these here):

I used vanilla almond bark, and mixed golden yellow and lemon yellow food coloring in for the candy coating.I made the wings from a shimmer cardstock, and cut them out with my Cricut.
For the cake, we had a "Hagrid Cake," like the one that Hagrid brought Harry in the first movie, messy pink and green frosting, misspellings, and all.

Here is the cake from the movie:

And, Evan's cake:

(this was the easiest and most fun birthday cake I have ever made-it was so freeing to make it messy on purpose!)

There were Chocolate Frogs:

Which I made with a candy mold from Hobby Lobby, and printed out the labels for.

I also made a banner:

I printed out the Gryffindor house crest for the ends, along with some Harry Potter artwork that I altered in PSE, I cut the letters in red and gold (Gryffindor colors) for the banner from the Parry Hotter font using my Cricut and SCAL, then tied it all together with pieces of black tulle.

Here's another look at the banner and table:

There were "Magical Color Changing Drinks" for "Potions":

(these were easy-I put food coloring in the cups, then the ice cubes, so that when we poured the sprite in, it changed colors)
And, of course you can't have a Harry Potter party without Butterbeer!:

I used this recipe for Magically Easy Butterbeer-  I did have an "oops" moment here-I overbeat the whipped topping and turned it into butter-luckily, I had bought a back up of Cool Whip, so a crisis was averted! It was really good (kind of like a cream soda float)-I'm sure that it would have been even better with the topping it was supposed to have ;-)

Of course, there was singing and candle blowing:

Cards :

(What 10 year old boy doesn't love a whoopie cushion?)

and Presents:

He got lots of Nerf stuff, a video camera, a Super Soaker, money, books...

When it was all over, all of the kids got "Hogwarts Completion Certificates":

This is what they looked like:

I printed them out on vellum, one at a time, and immediately sprinkled them with UTEE and heat embossed-then I rolled them all up like diplomas and tied them with golden yellow grosgrain ribbon.

It was a fun party, and hopefully it made my little man feel special! Everyone really seemed to enjoy themselves!

I am linking up to: