RJ's Harry Potter Birthday Party - June 22, 2013

We have been reading the Harry Potter books to RJ at bedtime for a little over a year now.  He was interested in the series when I had been reading it for the first time last year (I know, I was late to the party!) and we gave it a try.  We're currently in the middle of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (Book 6 for the uninitiated), and RJ is still completely enthralled.  He has several of the Harry Potter lego sets, was Harry Potter for Halloween, loves playing the Lego Harry Potter game for the Wii and frequently carries around something resembling a wand in his ongoing pretend play.  We even spent one morning a few months ago building quidditch hoops from Logan's straws and connectors set so he could play quidditch in the yard (wearing my cousin Dave's quidditch cape of course!).  He even drags his best friends along for the ride, convincing me to make "Ron" and "Hermione" their own robes for Christmas presents!  So it comes as no big surprise that he wanted his birthday party to be Harry Potter themed.  Luckily, there is A LOT that one can do with such a theme, and RJ is a lucky kid to have a mom who is also a Potterhead!

RJ's friends first received Hogwarts Acceptance Letters as their invitations, along with the evite that I sent to their parents.  His friend "Hermione" even sent her RSVP back using an owl she left on our porch!  This wonderful brown owl was originally named Hedwig, despite its coloring, but when I finished his stuffed snowy owl, the owl was renamed Errol, since RJ reasoned that Hermione probably borrowed the Weasley's owl!  In any case, they've written back and forth a couple of times, and I'm hoping that "Errol" helps RJ to be motivated to practice his writing over the summer!

When his guests arrived at our house, they entered through the magical brick wall at Platform 9 3/4.

Once inside, they visited Ollivander's Wands to obtain their handcrafted (by RJ and I) magic wands and Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions to obtain their handmade wizard cloaks for attending Hogwarts.

 They might have also spotted Hedwig, Errol, and Pigwideon hanging out in Eyelop's Owl Emporium along the way.

Oops.  I guess Hedwig was busy with Harry when I snapped this. Pig and Errol were there though.

Once they were outfitted for their studies, it was time to sample some courses (after all, this was advertised in our invitations as a Hogwarts Orientation).  In the living room, future Hogwarts students assembled toilet paper roll and fabric owl models in their Care of Magical Creatures class.

RJ taking another Charms class
after the party ended.

In the back yard, students conjured bubble snakes in Charms class, planted pumpkins in Herbology, and created the Exploding Potion in Potions Class.

Periodically, we ran an advanced Potions Class out in the garage dungeon where students were assisted in making "Fred and George's Bruise Removal Slime".









RJ somehow got it in his head that he should teach "Defense Against the Dark Arts" up in his room, of course pretending to be Harry Potter running a "Dumbledore's Army" meeting in the Room of Requirement, which would've been fine if he didn't have the poor leadership skills of a 6 year old, or if we would've been prepared for his expectations, so we could've addressed them realistically.  It worked at first when there were only a few children there, but as more people arrived and he was more insistent on people fulfilling specific roles when they didn't want to or didn't understand what he wanted from them (understandably so), his bossiness was met with either ignoring his requests or outright refusal to go along with his demands.
This ended up leading to a bit of unfulfilled expectations and upset for RJ, sporadically throughout the party, as he also got bossy during "quidditch practice" in our front yard (we had hung three hula hoops from the tree and made sure that we had a couple of black "bludgers" and a red "quaffle" to go along with RJ's golden snitch.  The idea there was to just let the kids run around throwing the balls through the hoops, but RJ, being RJ, was trying to recreate a Gryffindor vs. Slytherin Quidditch match and had a hard time understanding that not everyone wanted to recreate the events of the match in his head.  Given how much effort was put into the party, the fact that he spent some time not enjoying it to the fullest was a little disappointing, but sometimes over-excitement can lead to these things.  However, in the end, he said that he loved his party (and he did participate in other activities), so that's good!


While the children rotated randomly through the classes, our guests enjoyed carrots and dip as well as a tray of Pumpkin Pasties.  Our beverages included Pumpkin Juice and homemade Butterbeer.

Okay, so I was still dressed as
Molly Weasley instead of
Prof. Trelawney, but...

Just before serving dinner, I ran a Divination class/demonstration where we read the future of each student by the color that their clear (all natural with no HFCS) soda turned (a little dried dot of food coloring hidden under ice provided the color surprise).  Children with red liquid would find great love in their lives, children with yellow would find great friendships, children with green would have great luck, and children with blue would have great success.  This was the perfect activity to gather all the children up so that we could announce that it was dinner time in the "Great Hall".

Dinner included traditional Cornish pasties, as well as some vegetarian pasties, and some Cornish pasties with added greens (we were inundated with leafy greens from the CSA - and in a pasty, my kids gobble them up!).  There were even a few with gluten free crust!  Oh, and there was salad (because we were also inundated with lettuce from the CSA).

Soon after dinner, it was time to move on to birthday cake.  I know this is usually an area in which I go completely overboard, but I managed to go even further off the deep end this time.

The main cake was fashioned to look like Harry Potter's second broom - a Firebolt.  As per RJ's request, the cake was strawberry, with chocolate buttercream filling and frosting for the bristle part and peanut butter buttercream for the handle (which actually gave JUST the right color!).  I also added marshmallow fondant details for the goblin metalwork part of the broom and for the Gryffindor scarf RJ wanted featured thanks to his spying my Harry Potter cake pictures on Pinterest.

And of course, if we had a broom, we had to have a snitch, so I made snitch cake pops (chocolate inside, white chocolate coating, with piped white chocolate snitch wings), and snitch cupcakes in two flavors - butterbeer and chocolate with peanut butter buttercream, both with sugar cookie snitch wings.  And I made Gluten-free, vegan chocolate cauldron cakes for our guests with allergies.  And for some odd reason, I thought that wouldn't be enough, so I added on a replica of Harry's 11th Birthday cake from Hagrid, which was chocolate cake with strawberry filling and strawberry frosting.  Guess what?  It was WAY more than we all could have consumed in one night.  Especially when there was also homemade pumpkin cheesecake ice cream.

Once the children were all sugared up with cake, we also let them loose in Honeyduke's, which I set up on the second floor, featuring some homemade Harry Potter sweets (chocolate frogs, peppermint toads, fizzing whizbees, exploding bon bons) and some store bought treats (lemon drops in honor of Dumbledore, Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean (really Jelly Bellies), Flossing Stringmints, and some gummy frogs that Logan insisted on buying in the store even though they were not strictly Harry Potter candy.  Each child got to fill up a bag from the "store" before going home.

As you can see, RJ tore right in to his bag from honeydukes!

Finally, RJ opened his gifts, which were much appreciated!

It was a ton of work, but so much fun for us and hopefully for all of our guests too!

More pictures here.