Potter Party! (Part I--The Decor)

 Emily's 10th birthday party was a celebration to remember!  She has been really into Harry Potter and so she asked if we could do a Potter party.  How fun!  Pintrest is just swimming with ideas--some more crazy involved than others!  So, I embraced some and modified others!

Emily really wanted to play Quidditch.  And, since we couldn't count on the weather to be fair at the end of November/beginning of December, we had the party up at the church where there is a huge gym to run around in!  (As it turns out, the weather on the day of her party was SUPER warm!  It was crazy!)

Hedwig balloons :-)

A few of the treats that we put in the girls' good bags

My mom had lots of great decorations!

Potions and globes and microscopes--oh my!

The goody-bags (love those free print-outs!)

In the first Harry Potter book, Hagrid gave Harry a birthday cake.
Hagrid isn't the best speller and Emily got a kick out of it so I did the same for her cake.
(And boy, was it an easy cake!)

We had a photo booth station with lots' of funny dress up items for the kids to wear.  Personally, it was my favorite station.

 Along with Quidditch, we also had wand-making, "charms," and "potions."  I used chopsticks and had the kids paint them either gold or silver and then roll them in glitter.  Once they dried, we used balloons and they practiced the spell of "wingardiem leviosa" (pardon my spelling).  So fun!

 "Charms" consisted of making charm necklaces or bracelets :-).

 "Potions" was held in the kitchen.  Cubby ran this one and did a great job of it!  (More on the specifics later!)

 I had the kids all enter through "Platform 9 3/4."  I took an old bed sheet, taped, and spray-painted it to look like bricks and then cut about half way up from the bottom.  We taped it over the doorway into the party!