A Magical Hogwarts 9th Birthday Party!

Last fall, as a way to encourage my sons to read more, I began reading the Harry Potter series with them every night before bed. I would read aloud from my Nook, while they followed along in a hard copy from the library.

Being that I had just started college in 1997 when Harry Potter came out, I never got into the craze when it was new. So, it has actually been really fun for me to fall in love with the series along with my boys.

For Christmas I got them their very own wands and for Valentine’s Day my mom sent them authentic Gryffindor robes, so it was fitting that this year we decided to do a Hogwarts Themed birthday party! 

They even woke up on the morning of their party, which was their actual birthday, to two brand new owls with a special owl post birthday message from my mom and dad.

Invitations

I started by creating some themed invitations, complete with Hogwarts Express boarding passes and Hogwarts wax seals:

Decorations and Snacks

As per usual, I planned a post-lunch party so that I don't have to do lots of food, just light snacks from Honey Dukes and a cake as part of the House Cup celebration.

On the menu was Chocolate Frogs (made using this chocolate mold and filled with a green mint marshmallow filling following these instructions), Treacle tarts (little mini-lemon pies using this mini-tart pan, BTW these were my absolute FAVORITE treat!), Cauldron Cakes (mini calzones filled with Nutella), Acid Pops (lemon cake balls dipped in white chocolate and covered with pop rocks), Jelly Slugs (gummy worms), Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans (I decided to go with regular Jelly Belly, but I did have a small bowl of BBEFB next to the bigger contain that my friend donated from her recent trip to Universal), and a Basilisk pizza roll. To give it the candy shop feel, I purchased little glass containers and the black food labels from Michael's.

I also had fun adding some extra touches around the house, including owl balloons, a Whomping Willow sign, a Sirius Black wanted sign, Caution Stairs Move Sign, and a surprise Moaning Myrtle in the bathroom! 

1:00-1:20 – Diagon Alley

When the students arrived at our house, marked by a Hogwarts Flag on our mailbox, they were first greeted by Mandina Black* and Agatha Potts* at Diagon Alley. (*All my friends who helped play a part took on a Magical pseudonym for the day.)

At Olivander's each student received a handmade wand in its very own wand box (ideas came from here). I made the wands from bamboo chopsticks and hot glue, then painted them, and tied on an individual descriptor for each wand (instructions). My boys had a lot of fun helping me come up with all the descriptors.

Mandina Black did an excellent job finding all of the students just the right wand. Her enthusiasm was quite entertaining!

At Madam Malakin's each student received a robe. I'll admit, I had planned on making more authentic robes for each student, but I came down with a nasty case of pneumonia a few weeks before the party, robbing me of all my robe making time. So the "robes" ended up being just big rectangles of lightweight black fabric with holes cut out. But honestly, it worked out well, since the day of the party was 90 degrees and the kids who wore their own real robes were burning up!!

At Flourish & Botts, the kids received two textbooks: Care of Magical Creatures and Potions and Spells (instructions), along with a class schedule. 

Once they had all their school supplies, students were transported to Hogwarts through Platform 9 ¾. (Initially I was going to make my own wall out of fabric that the kids could run through, but due to the aforementioned bout with pneumonia, my time was limited, so I found this wall on Amazon.com for $10.79. It was worth the $ to save the time! I just had to print out the sign and tape it all to the front door. They didn't get to run through it, but I think they enjoyed it just the same.)

1:20-1:35 – Sorting Ceremony

I decorated the living room with streamers for each house and had the sorting hat sitting on a stool in the corner. (I didn't love how the sorting hat looked when it arrived, so I removed a few of the "patches" then used spray starch and hot glue to give it more of a face...took about 15 minutes total.) 

Each child would come up and place the hat on their head and hear their sorting poem, when they would then receive their house tie and go stand in line according to their house. The Precepts for each house (first student sorted) were in charge of carrying their house banner with them from house to house. (The banners were made using scrap black fabric, dark fabric iron-ons, wooden dowels, and twine.)

To make the sorting extra magical, I created a pocket inside the hat and put my cell phone in it. Right before the ceremony I called Mandina Black, leaving my cell phone on speaker and placing it inside the pocket in the hat. Madina sat on the back porch reading the sorting song and poems, pressing mute in between so the students couldn’t hear the excess noise. It was really cool. The kids really felt like they’d been sorted.

1:35-2:05 – Potions with Ambrosia Kettle and Divination with Bellatrix Riddle

To begin, two houses went to Potions with me, Ambrosia Kettle, and the other two went to Divination in the dungeon (aka my basement) with Bellatrix Riddle. Then after 15 minutes they switched classes. 

For potions, we had the students follow two potions recipes from the book. The first, Essence of Dittany, was a topical potion that they couldn’t drink. It was basically the old vinegar (hippogriff saliva), dish soap (troll blood) and baking soda (ground dragon bones) trick with a little hidden food coloring in a mini cauldron. The kids added the ingredients then watched it bubble over.

The other potion was Veritaserum, made up of dragon blood (cherry juice), phoenix tears (lemon juice), and Mandrake Root oil (orange juice) that they drank from shot-beakers I found at Party City. I used glass containers with labels from Michael's and little pipettes to help make the whole thing feel more realistic.

In Divination, I covered a table with a starry fabric and then placed a $3 fish bowl in the middle filled with dry ice (which was surprisingly cheap and easy use) for the crystal ball, then my friend Bellatrix Riddle did the rest delivering some grotesque fortunes in typical Madame Trewlaney fashion.

I have to say that ALL of my friends dressed up and really played the part of their characters, but Bellatrix’s costume really stood out, complete with a Turkish evil eye necklace! I laughed for probably 2 minutes straight when she walked in. I can’t believe I can’t find a better picture of her anywhere!

2:05-2:15 Care of Magical Creatures with Adina Morningstar

Next all the kids headed to Care of Magical Creatures. They had to use their Care of Magical Creatures textbook to search for the creatures hidden in the Forbidden Forest (aka my side yard), and then sort them into containers as being dangerous (venomous or poisonous) or non-dangerous, using the book’s descriptions to decide where they belonged. It was actually impressive to see how seriously the students took this task and how great they all worked together to solve the puzzle.

2:15-2:30 Defense Against the Dark Arts with Amaya Shadow

Next, the students headed to Defense Against the Dark Arts with Amaya Shadow, who also did an amazing job personifying her super creepy role. Here the kids took a whack at the Dementor piñata (instructions) while yelling Expecto Patronum. I gotta say, I did a PERFECT job on the piñata, as it was just sturdy enough for every child to get one good whack and finally busted wide open when the honorary Head Boy (an older brother who tagged along and helped out tremendously!) took his whack after all the students had had a turn.

2:30-2:50 Quidditch with Ludo Bones

Then the students headed to the Quidditch Pitch, which I had made using 6 dollar store hula hoops and some PVC pipes.

We made the rules for Quidditch simple:

1. Your broom (made from a stick, some hay, and twine) must stay between your legs at all times.
2. Get the quaffle (red soccer ball) into your team’s goal by passing it from player to player, but no player can take more than four steps with the quaffle before passing.
3. Anyone may pick up a bludger (two mini basketballs) and throw it at a player holding a quaffle. If a player is hit by a bludger, they must drop the quaffle and freeze for 5 seconds.
4. Keep an eye out for the snitch (gold spray painted golf balls with white felt wings hot glued on) at all times! The game is over when the snitch is found.

I made 4 snitches. We had two teams play one another for approximately 3-5 minutes, and then I’d throw out one of the snitches to end the game. Then we’d switch teams so that all teams had a chance to play one another. I let the kids who found the snitches take them home.

2:50-3:00 House Cup

I wasn’t planning on doing a House Cup, but my boys found a cheap one at Party City and begged to have one. I was going to keep score, but the party was too overwhelming once it got going, so in the end, I announced it was a tie between all the houses and just let my birthday boys keep the cup.

To celebrate, we all ate cake and drank some butter beer (I got the cute little cups from Party City. They were actually marked as coffee cups, but I think they made great beer steins).

Overall, I think the party was a success, and am pretty sure my boys will remember it for the rest of their lives!

SPECIAL THANKS: I could NOT have pulled off this party for 24 kids all by myself! Extra special thanks to all of my friends who helped out. Thanks to Mandina Black (who flew nearly 700 miles just to attend with her little wizard) and Agatha Potts for staying up late helping me make the cake and acid pops, then getting up early to help me set up the castle. Thank you Adina Morningstar for the authentic Hogwarts decorations and Bertie Every Flavor Beans, and for being my #2 in potions class in addition to your own class. Thank you Amaya Shadow for helping me make the Quidditch brooms, bringing along the instrumental Head Boy, and taking such wonderful pictures when I was too overwhelmed to remember! Thanks to Bellatrix Riddle for listening to me lament, making me laugh, and going all out on your Divination role! And of course, special thanks to my Super-Wizard Ludo Bones for putting up with my crazy ideas and helping any way I asked you to in bringing them to fruition, especially when I was bed ridden and delirious with fever crying about how there would not be enough time to get things done. Thank you all for being part of Thing 1 and Thing 2's village! Mwaw!

A Super (Mario) 8th Birthday Party!

I got my sons Super Mario Wii for Christmas this year. I have to admit, it was quite the "sherrif's badge" because I have always LOVED the Super Mario series. It's really the only video game I really love to play to this day. In fact, we had lots of marathon game playing in the months that followed (much to my non-video-game-playing husband's chagrin). So I was very excited this year when the boys agreed to doing a Mario themed birthday party!!

As always, I started by creating some invitations in photoshop:

I like to do parties between lunch and dinner, so that I don't have to do lots of food, just light snacks to go with the cake and ice cream. 

This year I would tell the kids to "power-up" on snacks for completing the challenges, so I did snacks based on the power ups. Powdered doughnut holes for the Freeze Power and cheese ball puffs for the Fire power.

Sugar cookies with icing for the stars and marshmallows dipped in chocolate candy for the mushrooms.

I went back and forth on what I wanted to do for the cake, but honestly, I started running out of time...so I decided to do a very simple cake. This is a two layer 9x13 vanilla cake (this is my white cake recipe I love...light and moist) with buttercream (my fav butter cream recipe, but I use 1/2 butter and 1/2 shortening to make stiffer), and marshmallow fondant (recipe here). The little characters I got off amazon.com. I found an assortment of 18 two-inch characters for $8 with free shipping.

AGENDA:

2:00- 2:15 - Costumes and snacks

All kids will receive their two sided Mario/Luigi visors (instructions here) and a fake mustache (I got 36 for $5 off amazon).

Supplies: red/green posterboard, elastic, gluestick

(Side note: I made Thing 1 & Thing 2 these personalized Mario shirts to wear for the party using solid color tees and iron on t-shirts for dark tees.)

2:15-2:45 Pin the mustache on Mario.

I designed the poster in photoshop and then printed it off for $6 at the university library's over-sized color plotter. Finished dimensions 24 in X 36 in.

Supplies: Mario Poster and black felt with adhesive back mustaches (approx 2 sheets at .99 a sheet at Joanne's), and bandanna.

2:45-3:15 Yoshi Egg Hunt

This past Halloween, Thing 2 was Yoshi. So, I just had him throw on his Yoshi costume and read the instructions for the game. Meanwhile, we had hidden 48 brightly colored eggs filled with gold coins in the backyard.

Supplies: Plastic Easter eggs, chocolate or plastic gold coins

3:15-3:30 Defeat Bowser's Castle
In the game, before you defeat Bowser, you have to defeat his castle full of bad guy traps. In this case, the kids had to beat the Chain Chompy pinata.

Supplies: Beach ball (Everything is a $1 sells these), newspaper, and pinata paste (flour, water, and dash of salt), crepe paper, foam sheets, glue, bat/stick, and candy

3:30-3:45 Cake

In the past, I always forget to do ice cream, but it was super hot this year! So I definitely remembered!

Supplies: Cake and ice cream

3:45-4:00 Defeat Bowser

Once the kids had "powered up" on cake, Bowser came out! The kids had to play a Red Light/Green Light type game (they could only run when Bowser wasn't looking at them) to run up and grab one power up at a time from the yellow 1-up boxes he was guarding. For not really being a Super Mario fan, my husband did an EXCELLENT job capturing Bowser's movement (crouched and slow) and growling sounds. Hint: This game is best for older kids. We had mostly 7 and 8 year olds at the party, but there were a few younger kids, and they were FREAKED out! My 4 year old niece would not run up, even after my husband raised his mask to show her his face. She said "No!"

Supplies: Bowser costume, prize boxes (cardboard covered in tissue paper), power ups on construction paper

But what my husband didn't know, was that after all the power ups were stolen, I yelled for the kids to "ATTACK BOWSER!" and they all tackled him to the ground!! He was a great sport!

All in all, I was happy how the party came out. My only major issue (besides the fact we were having AC issues), was that the games didn't take quite as long as I expected...so we finished about 30 minutes earlier than planned! What I'd do differently: 1. add one more game, 2. add a few layers to the pinata. (I used the same # of layers as the Death Star Pinata two years ago...but they are all 2 years older and much better hitters! Two years ago all the kids got 2-3 turns to hit the pinata, but this year only half the kids got a second hit before it busted open!), 3. some of the kids were *cheating* and grabbing multiple power ups during the Bowser game. I would station one adult to help manage the stop/go aspect of the game and one adult to collect the stolen power ups before the kids could re-run to grab one, making it more fair for the other kids that were following the one-power up rules given.

4:30-6:30 Naptime!

Clean up can wait! This momma took a long nap!!