Harry Potter Party: Honeydukes Sweet Shop and Flue Powder

No party is complete without some Butter Beer, Cauldron Cakes and a trip to Honeydukes Sweet Shop! 

This is the final post in a series about our Harry Potter Birthday Party. You can read our other posts at the links below:
The Hogwarts Acceptance Letter
Invitation and Costumes
The Guests Arrive
Diagon Alley

The Sorting Hat Ceremony

Potions Class

Divination
The Quest for the Missing Snitch

Quidditch Game

Or just read all our party posts here.

After our quidditch game, we served our guests Butter Beer. 

I used this fantastic and simple recipe from Bakingdom. We have been to Harry Potter World and had the real thing and we thought that this came pretty close. 

Then we had cauldron cakes. I used this recipe from Sugar Bean Bakers. They were a little bit involved but very delicious. If I were to do this party over, I think I would have just stuck some licorice in some chocolate frosted cupcakes, but the cream filling was to die for. If you make this recipe, I do have one tip. I made the cupcakes ahead of time and stored them in the fridge. When I opened the fridge after the cupcakes had been in there overnight, the chocolate licorice handles had broken in half so I had to rush to the store to buy more handles before the party started. I don't know why this happened! But if you want to make them ahead of time, add the licorice at the last moment. 

After the guests had eaten their cauldron cakes and ice cream, we opened presents. Then we unveiled Honeydukes. It has been in the dining room the whole time but covered with a table cloth. 

We uncovered the hutch and let the guests use the rest of the their galleons to choose some treats to take home. 

I had planned it so that each girl would be able to buy a chocolate frog and an edible wand and a few other fun items. We just looked for the most unusual candy that we could find at our Dollar Store and local grocery store. 

We had a special Fill-A-Box section for our Bertie Botts Beans, Lemon Drops, and Cry Baby Candy. We had made cute boxes out of scrapbook paper. We used this pattern from Easy Paper Crafts. 

Then the girls were able to fill the box with Bertie Botts and Lemon Drops for just one galleon. 

I had purchased real Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans here but then I mixed a few boxes of the real stuff with some Jelly Belly's in the jar so we would have more yummy flavors and less crazy ones. And it was less expensive. 

We made the boxes for our Chocolate Frogs using this template from Harry Potter Paraphernalia. 

We bought our frog mold here. We also used the Chocolate Frog cards from the amazing Harry Potter Paraphernalia site. 

The frogs were probably my favorite part of Honeydukes. 

The edible wands were made with pretzel rods covered in white chocolate and then rolled in Pop Rocks. 

I think every one loved Honeydukes! Each guest added her candy stash to the gift bags that they had received at the beginning of the party when they bought supplies in Diagon Alley. 

After two hours of festivities, it was almost time to go home. We took everyone back into the backyard to use our special flue powder to send them home. 

We had purchased magic fire changing powder here. 

Unfortunately our first year guests were too young to travel by the flue network, and they didn't actually disappear when they shouted their destination. But we still had fun watching the green flames and letting every guest try! 

Before they traveled home via Muggle Vehicle we took some last group photos at the front of Hogwarts. Here are the party guests.... 

and here are the Party Planners and Hogwarts Staff. 

This is how we all felt after the party was over....

Exhausted and Crazy.... 

But happy for having had such a fun and memorable time together. I am glad that I have captured it all here for future reference. I hope you have enjoyed reading about our magical adventure and will be inspired to create a special once-in-a-lifetime party of your own. It was worth it! 

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Harry Potter Party: Quidditch Game

It is fall and everyone is back to school! How about a game of Quidditch? 

This is the 9th in a series of 10 posts about our Harry Potter Birthday Party. You can read our other posts at the links below:
The Hogwarts Acceptance Letter
Invitation and Costumes
The Guests Arrive
Diagon Alley

The Sorting Hat Ceremony

Potions Class

Divination
The Quest for the Missing Snitch

After the party guests had found the golden snitch, we headed out to the back yard to play a rousing game of Quidditch. We had hung three hoops and house banners on each side of the backyard. I found a huge role of tubing at a thrift store for $2. Score! My husband was able to cut the tubing into pieces and duct tape each piece into a hoop to make all 6 of my rings.

The banners were simple triangular pennants that I purchased at Hobby Lobby. Then I glued on the coordinating color stripes.

Here is Madame Hooch explaining the rules of the game. Here is how we played: 

Two seekers from each team had to ride broomsticks as they tried to score by throwing the quaffle through the hoops. When a seeker had the quaffle they could take three large steps and then they had to pass it off to another seeker from their team. 

Meanwhile, three bludgers from each team used a large soft plastic ball to try to hit the seekers and stop them when they had the ball. As soon as a seeker was hit with the ball, he or she had to drop the quaffle and it was up for grabs! We didn't really have any keepers to guard the goals since our field was pretty short.

Here everyone has stopped play because my son had the golden snitch attached to a fishing pole and he was swinging it off the deck every so often. If you caught the golden snitch, the game ended and your team won. He would swing it around over the field for a few seconds while the kids jumped for it and then he would reel it back in. Play would resume until the snitch appeared again.

The kids had so much fun with this game that we ended up playing three rounds. It was a great way to burn off all that party energy and get ready for some ice cream and cake!  

Even Dumbledore enjoyed watching the match!

The last activity at our party involved cauldron cakes, butter beer and Honeydukes Sweet Shop! Stay tuned for our final post in our Harry Potter series. 

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Harry Potter Party: The Quest for the Missing Snitch

This is the 8th in a series of 10 posts about our Harry Potter Birthday Party. You can read our other posts at the links below:
The Hogwarts Acceptance Letter
Invitation and Costumes
The Guests Arrive
Diagon Alley

The Sorting Hat Ceremony

Potions Class

Divination
At the end of our Divination Class, Professor Trelawney told the party guests that the words "Lemon Drops" would be important in their future. Just then a Ministry of Magic interdepartmental memo (i.e. a paper airplane) arrived in the Divination Tent. The kids unfolded the airplane and learned the startling news that the Golden Snitch had been stolen! The memo asked the guests to help find the missing snitch so that they would be able to play Quidditch before the party ended. The only clue that the Ministry provided was that the Golden Snitch was last seen in the Gryffindor common room.

Luckily just outside the Divination Tent was the portrait of the fat lady guarding the Gryffindor common room.

It was so cute to watch the kids stand in front of the portrait wondering what to do. After a few minutes, one of the kids shouted, "Lemon Drops! That has to be the password!" And sure enough the fat lady swung open to let the party guests into the playroom.

Inside the playroom the kids encountered a very dangerous Fluffy who was barking ferociously. (My son was outside the room playing some dog barking noises on a cell phone.) Don't you just love our Fluffy! We found three stuffed dogs at a Thrift Store. Then we cut off the bodies of the two littler ones and sewed the heads to the shoulders of the big dog. We attached fishing line to the dogs' heads and were able to manipulate Fluffy like a marionette puppet. So he moved and barked! His puppeteer was hiding behind the curtain on the other side of this little balcony just outside our playroom.

Hidden in the room was a recorder and some simple music.

After a few minutes the kids found the recorder and began to play it. Fluffy immediately went to sleep and started to snore. The kids had to climb up the stairs past Fluffy and jump down through the trap door behind him.


The next challenge involved navigating the devil's snare. I just tacked strips of burlap and fake leaves down our hallway and the kids had to climb over and under the fabric to get past the snare.

Once they had navigated the devil's snare they had to play wizard checkers! The girls competed against Bellatrix LeStrange in a fun game of checkers made with felt squares and paper plates. I had just pushed the paper plates inside out to give them the proper dimension.

Once they made it past Bellatrix they came to a chest that had a padlock that needed to be opened with a key. The kids knew instantly that they needed to find the flying keys. 

To make our keys we had printed these gorgeous wings drawn by Linda Smith. 

Flying Key Wings

The wing patterns are found on page 3 of her pdf. document. I printed the page of wings on several pieces of vellum and then hot glued them to some old fashioned keys. 

This is the key that fit our cool looking padlock. I bought the padlock here. 

Here are the girls opening the padlock to retrieve the Golden Snitch.

They got it! And now we were ready to go and play some Quidditch! 

Check out our next post about how we created a super fun Quidditch game.

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Harry Potter Party: Divination

This is the 7th in a series of posts about our Harry Potter Birthday Party. You can read our other posts at the links below:

The Hogwarts Acceptance Letter
Invitation and Costumes
The Guests Arrive
Diagon Alley

The Sorting Hat Ceremony

Potions Class

After we had created and tried our potions, the party guests were led downstairs to Professor Trelawney's Divination Tent.

The tent was absolutely magical and so simple to make. We simply set up an outdoor shade awning that people use on the beach or at their campgrounds in our family room in the basement. Then we draped the sides of the tent with lace table cloths and purple plastic table cloths that we bought at a dollar store.

(I took these photos without the purple table cloths so that I could show inside the tent a little easier.)

Inside the tent we put a rocking chair for Madame Trelawny and a small side table for her tea cup. We also had a reflecting ball that would normally go outside in a garden doing double duty as her crystal ball for seeing the future.

We lit the tent with the decorative lights that my daughters usually have around their beds. The final touch was the lava lamp stolen from another teenagers room.

On the floor we put lots of pillows for the guests to sit on. In the corner are some peacock feathers that my daughter inherited from her great aunt Kathryn.

Professor Trelawney welcomed each guest into the tent. My daughter's college roommate Geri made a perfect Madame Trelawney. She used some funny Einstein glasses from our dress up trunk to complete her ditzy, spaced out look.

She had each guest try to decipher the symbols in her brewed tea leaves. I love to look at the kids' faces as she made predictions and then spoke cosmic words of wisdom to each of them.

Look at Katie in the picture below! Professor Trelawney must have just prophesied about her imminent and beautifully tragic death!

Just before our Divination class ended, Professor Trelawney made a supremely important prophesy.
She told the kids in her most intense and dreamy voice, "The words Lemon Drops will be important in your future. Yes, remember the words Lemon Drops!" Little did the guests know, but Madame Trelawney was once again right! The words Lemon Drops were important in our next activity which was the Mystery of the Missing Golden Snitch.

I will blog about that soon. I predict you will check back at this blog in a few days and find just the post that you are looking for. I hope my prophesy comes true!
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