harry potter party

Party plans have begun swirling in my mind for a Harry Potter party to celebrate the 1st installment of the 7th movie scheduled to be released November 19th.  I was thrilled to see the abundance of cute ideas over at Hostess with the Mostess.  Check out Jen's great ideas here and here.  I'm especially loving this idea...

For others searching for more ideas for their own movie release party, a Potter themed birthday or better yet a way to celebrate a family trip to Universal's new Wizarding World of Harry Potter (oh how I wish I was heading there with my family in June) here (scroll through all the posts) are some more ideas from some of our past wizard shindigs that I've posted about previously on Little Ant Design.


Here are some never before posted photos of our very first Harry Potter party that we threw to celebrate the release of the last book - Deathly Hallows in 2007.  We held the party open house style with people coming and going through the night and ended the party with party guests heading over to a local Borders to await the midnight release of the book.  


Look at my cute little guy, dressed up as Dobby the house elf, taking 1st place in the Borders costume contest.

Now some more pictures of the festivities at our home...

I turned my kitchen/dining room area into the potions class.  A cheap piece of plywood was stained to cover my tiled kitchen counters for a bit more authentic Hogwarts feel.  Labels were made for bottles that I had been collecting and filled with various "specimens"  This are also served as the drink station so I labeled sodas, drink mixes (Kool-aid, powdered Gatorade, etc), juices and other drink add-ins with interesting names and guest were able to concoct their own potions.

In an effort to keep the kitchen from ruining the potions class atmosphere I added a "stone wall" behind the drink area.  I had this left over from an Indiana Jones Halloween theme I had done prior but this is an easy DIY project.  I simply bought sheets of insulation foam and using a wood burning tool that I picked up at a local craft store I carved the stones into the foam.  The foam usually comes in pink or blue - use the blue.  Add some paint to get the weathered look you want and you have instant stone walls.

Other areas inside the house were...

Ollivanders wand shop - a little bookcase that jewelry boxes labeled with wand labels that I made on the computer.  Guests used these boxes to hold wands that they made during the evening.  Wands were made using wooden dowels and varying sized balls (with holes drilled them).  Guests took the balls and glued them to the end of the dowels to create wand handles.  I wish I had pictures.  I am notorious for not taking pictures of my parties so all the pictures you see here were taken by my brother or other party guests.

Trophy Case - here various Quidditch and other awards were displayed as well as containers that held the house points.


We also had an area full of Honeyduke's sweets.  Guests could eat some Bertie Bott's every flavor beans and guess the flavors.  We also had lots of yummy treats to make up for the grass and boogie flavored beans.


Outside we had...

Herbology class - guests were able to snack of food here.

We also had a pensieve that contained floating orbs filled with deep thinking quotes from some of the Harry Potter characters.  Guests could pull these out of the fountain to read them.  I didn't think this would be too big a deal but guests enjoyed this - the kids especially.


I wanted a place for people to congregate and chat so we set up a Yule Ball area.  We were supposed to have snow falling down on our guests but we could not get the snow machine to work.  I'm still irratated about it all these years later :)

Out near our fireplace we set up the Divination Class.  Here guests could make their predications about what would happen in the last book as well as read their fortunes with tea leaves.

There you have it - a few pictures from one of my favorite themes for a party.  To see a few more photos from that night you can go here.  I can't wait to throw the next one.  


I'm always looking for ideas so if you have thrown your own Harry Potter party or know of some other great HP ideas (like those from Jen at Hostess with the Mostess) please let me know.