A little Christmas and a LOT of Harry Potter party goodies!

My lop-sided Christmas tree :(   I felt so rushed this year with Christmas that I never finished decorating my tree.  The top is a bit bare but I just couldn't stand on the ladder any longer so I gave up.  I also noticed that over the course of the month the tree started leaning more and more to one side but I was also too lazy to fix it.  It literally finally toppled over the day after Christmas so at least it made it through the "big show" :)  As you can see there are also some blank spots in the tree that those are the spots where Libby Rose conveniently took off or knocked down ornaments most of which ended up in the trash can sadly.

 

 

 

 

Libby is still not old enough to really be into opening presents.  She mainly just sat on my lap and watched Ezra open his.

 

 

Herman totally photo-bombed most of the photos I tried to get.

 

 

 

As you can see, he really wanted to be seen!

 

 

 

 

We're a little crazy about luchadores in our house :)

 

 

*And now to Harry Potter*

 

So my kiddos birthdays are so close we have a joint party typically in early June.  Our last party was superhero themed and I had a lot of fun creating different things for it, BUT because I'm so excited for next year's party, in July I started planning/creating for their "Harry Potter" extravaganza!  I am a ridiculously enthusiastic Harry Potter fan and I was soooooo excited when Ezra asked for Harry Potter to be the theme of his next party.  I have created so many things I can't even begin to express my giddiness at sharing it all with you.  I haven't photographed everything yet and even the photos I have aren't great but I wanted to at least give you a sneak peak into what I've made thus far.   At some point I will post all of the files what I created from scratch as well as links for files like these chocolate frog boxes and Bertie Botts beans that I found either on Pinterest are on numerous Google searches.

 

I bought a frog mold from Amazon so I'm going to make my own chocolate frogs.  You can buy then online but they are so expensive.  Much cheaper to just DIY.

 

 

I plan to have different still life sets set up and when I was cleaning out my wallet I found this old saving account book I had from a years and years ago.   Back in the olden' days when there wasn't any online banking and you had to record your deposits and withdrawls.  Well instead of throwing it away I thought it would be perfect for a little Gringotts Bank account ledger so I created a file and printed it on parchment paper and then make it look beaten up a bit with Distress Ink.

 

 

The inside of the book.

 

 

The back of the book.  Most banks for FDIC (no idea what that means) so I just changed it to WDIC for "wizard".

 

 

I found a file for the image of the potions book from one of the Harry Potter movies so I just enlarged it and resized it to fit an old book that I had to create Harry's potions book from The Half Blood Prince. The front, back, and spine are all covered so it looks like a real book.

 

 

Inside of the book I found some images of the pages Harry reads from in the movie as well so I printed those out and cropped/edited as needed then pasted them inside the pages so that I can sort of prop the book open to look like it's the real deal.  All of the scribblings are meant to be Severus Snape's notes from when he was a potions student.

 

 

One of the other things I made from a wonderful editable file I found is a Ministry of Magic ID card.  It's sort of like a passport.

 

 

Front cover:

 

 

 

 

Inside you can edit your child's information and add a photo.  You can also assign them a department so of course I put Ezra down as an auror.  There's even a little place for a signature so I had him sign his own name.

 

 

There is also a section for fingerprints so I just rubbed a marker onto Ezra's fingers and pressed them onto the paper to make it super authentic.

 

 

To sort the kids into their houses I will have them put on the Sorting Hat (ordered from Amazon) and draw a card out of a black bag.  On the card is their House and also a bit about the traits of that House.

 

 

After they are "sorted" they will put on a badge with their House colors.  It's difficult to see here but the Slytherin colors are dark green and silver.

 

 

Each child will also get a Spell Book which has 5 pages of spells and is enclosed in thick parchment with jute twine.

 

 

 

 

They will also get a key with a vault number on it so they can access their gold at Gringotts Wizarding Bank.

 

 

 

The invitations will be enclosed within this folded "Marauder's Map" and will include an fold out invitation (I haven't made these yet) and a ticket for the Hogwarts Express with a list of the supplies needed for their first year.

 

 

 

 

 

I made several Sirius Black "wanted" posters to place around.  I aged them with a tea/water solution. This is from an image I found online and just sized to fit a legal size sheet of paper.

 

 

I am going to have random movie references framed around the house and this is one poster I created to frame.

 

 

I also created several different proclamation posters to hang around as well.  I used some digital stamps that I had as well as some .png files I found for ministry stamps on Google.

 

 

 

This will become a garland of the House teams that I made to put outside where we will have a Quiddich pitch.  Yes, we will be playing improvised Quiddich!

 

 

I am creating a bulletin board that one might find in the Gryffindor common room so I tried to make some signage that students may put on the board.  The image below is  a piece of ratty parchment with secret runes (actually Elvish runes that I found online created by Tolkein and some from my imagination) to convey a message from Harry Potter to the members of Dumbledore's Army.

 

 

 

 

Trevor always goes missing so I thought it would be perfect if Neville had posted a "missing" poster.

 

 

One of the funnest things I made were these telegrams from the "Avian Union".  I had so much fun coming up with clever little telegrams to and from different entities from the books.  This is one of them but I hope people take the time to actually read them at the party because I think they will find them amusing.

 

 

I found some images of the Daily Prophet from Devian Art online.  They were just images and not files so when I blew them up to real newspaper size the resolution was lost but for the most part the effect is achieved.  I just stuffed them with real newspaper to give the same effect.

 

 

I also found this free editable file online and created a few fake envelopes from the Owl Post to use in my Owl Post still life area.

 

 

 

Lots of brown paper packages tied up with strings at this party :)  I got brown craft paper from Goodwill of all places and found these fantastic owl post shipping forms online so I just printed them on parchment and filled in some details.  They also are amusing and all have different handwriting and information to make them more realistic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My favorite and most hated part has been the potion labels.  It's HARD to make labels to fit different shaped and sized bottles!  I didn't find many files online that I actually liked so most I made myself or edited from other sites.  I was very lucky to find 2 different sources that I used several labels from.  I'll include these sources/files/sellers in a later post.  I haven't actually put anything in most of the bottles yet as that will be a day before the party thing but I can't wait to see the end effect!

 

 

 

 

Now I am constantly on the look our for interesting shaped bottles to use for potions!

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly I have my Honeydukes section.  I actually purchased a digital file with labels already made for Honeydukes.  These are just some of the files I've printed off thus far but I still have lots to do and make I just ran out of cardstock :) 

 

 

So stay tuned over the next few months for more from my Harry Potter extravaganza.  I will have stuff from the Three Broomsticks, and more Honeydukes stuff, just lots and lots of awesomeness and hopefully I'll get it all organized so that you guys aren't spending hours scouring web pages and Google like I had to do.  My goal is to get it all in one easy to find place.