Harry Potter Party - The End

Ron gets caught eating a chocolate frog

I can't believe March is already here and that means I have come to the end of my Harry Potter Party posts.  I have a pretty good feeling that this is going to become an annual event but I think I am going to mix it up every year with more specific themes.  Death Eaters anyone?

I love this pic because you can see Luna's radish earrings.

To alleviate some of my HP withdrawals I started rereading Harry Potter but I am reading the British edition that my husband bought me....2 years ago.  I opened them the moment they arrived and then carefully wrapped them back in the packaging they came in and stored them at my mom's because I didn't want them to get damaged in all my moves.  Then I wanted to wait long enough that I wouldn't be reading book 7 right before the movies came out because it always ruins the movie.  Now that I have finally unpacked them, I am allowing myself to read one every month (I was supposed to wait until March but I couldn't so I allowed myself to read a few pages before bed every night...which was even more torturous).  I am blown away by how little I remember of book 1.  The entire first chapter was new again.  LOVE IT!


Previous Posts:
Games
Food
Butterbeer
Decorations
The Beginning

Harry Potter Party - Games

Couples hard at work, they took it VERY seriously.

My biggest concern while I was planning my Harry Potter party was that everyone would arrive in their awesome costumes and we would end up sitting around staring at each other until midnight so I came up with some trivia as an ice breaker.  I knew I wouldn't be good at thinking up the trivia questions so I turned to my good friend google, and google came through.  There are a ton of sites out there with questions and after quizzing myself (I did amazingly well, thanks for asking) I picked my favorite questions and put them on a single sheet of card stock which I rolled up, tied with black ribbon, and placed in every HP favor wine glass. 

Awesome Luna glasses.

Everyone was excited to start the trivia...until they started reading the questions.  They immediately started complaining that the questions were too difficult.  Well...I was so excited in my making of the trivia that I didn't think about the fact that the questions I answered had a multiple choice option that I failed to include...oops!  They don't know that, so don't tell.  So we decided that they would team up as couples and complete it that way. 

Trivia winners!

Luckily, I had prizes for both a girl and a boy (the girls prize was WAY better).  Team Ron/Ginny and Luna/Tom Riddle tied (or were undecided on the winner due to a technicality so they agreed that Ron and Luna would collect the prizes (which was perfect because I picked up the girls prize with Luna in mind).  Ron received a homemade Head Boy badge and Luna won a pair of awesomely perfect Luna glasses that I found at Party City!

 The other thing I had planned was a Harry Potter themed version of celebrity (my new favorite party game!).  I have heard of many different ways to play it so allow me to tell you they way that I play (aka the correct way).

1. Every player is given 3 slips of paper on which they will write the name of a famous person/character (for this game they were restricted to HP people
2. The slips are placed in a hat/bowl/jar and people divided into 2 teams (we did girls vs boys)
3. Each player has one minute to give clues to help their team guess as many names as possible, each name is 1 point
4. There are 3 rounds, each going through all the names once 

Round 1: say anything you want except for what is written on the slip
Round 2: charades, act it out, no sounds
Round 3: you can say 1 and only 1 word so choose wisely, by this time you have already gone through all the names so it isn't impossible but the stickler is if you pick a word that sucks and they can't figure it out you have to stand there until your minute is done.  Some people play that you can skip it and count that point against you but I think my way is more fun 

Ginny getting down and dirty with round 2 I think she was doing a crab for Crabbe and Goyle...Goyle was the word

Lupin...no one can remember what he was acting out!

As you can see from the pictures above, I had the Harry Potter movies playing in the background which was actually really fun during the trivia because couple answers came up. 

Harry Potter Party - Food

Oh delicious food...I decided to keep the food simple and not stress too much about the Harry Potter theme.  I just chose a few things to highlight and the rest were your normal party munchies.

My friend Tonks was amazing enough to make chocolate eggs for the occasion and they were so happy...all that was missing was the Dumbledore card.

This picture was taken the next morning, which is why there are bananas on the table...I couldn't let my guests go without breakfast.

Of course I had a bowl of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans.  I was actually surprised that people actually ate them.  I kept hearing random comments after someone was daring enough to try..."yeah, that color is safe, its apple" and "blech, that was dirt! How do they actually get it to taste like dirt?"

Sample if you dare.  And yes, those are HP trading cards.  I had no idea where they came from, I just found them in a closet right before the party and decided to throw them out there.

I picked up some white chocolate (even though I hate white chocolate but it was to only one with a gold wrapper) Lindt chocolates and added wings to make them snitches...

Catch them before they fly away...

And finally, I re-watched the first movie before the party and it gave me the idea for the cake!  Don't judge how messy the writing is.  It is hard to write with the tiny frosting tubes and I didn't write the words until just before serving it (so a long time after I had started drinking...). 

Homemade ice cream cake!

And now I really want some more of that cake...

Harry Potter Party - Butterbeer

Cheers!!

Ahh Butterbeer!  You can't have a Harry Potter Party without it!  I was torn between wanting to make the recipe similar to the park (although ours would include alcohol), making it how I imagined it to taste, and making it drinkable for a wide range of people.  What we ended up with was a bit of a compromise between all three but less of how I imagine it when I read the books because I don't think I will ever come close to that without magic.

I mentioned that I was going to be trying recipes to my step-brother and his wife (Ron/Vaughn and Ginny/Ryanne) and they invited my husband (Mike) and I over to have a sample party.  I couldn't say no to that!  I searched many, MANY sites trying to plan the recipes that we would sample and finally thought I found the one that we would use.  It was simple (only included club soda and butterscotch schnapps) but knowing that we would want to sample a few I brought a variety of possible mixers to their house.  There was one recipe that I was going to stay away from because it was too detailed and I didn't have the brain capacity after all the other planning (I mean, it included using a candy thermometer...come on!).  When I got over to their house, Vaughn had made the the recipe I was trying to avoid and I ended up having to make it at the party because we altered it but still used all the parts of the recipe.

Making the whipped cream topping

The best site that I found for the recipes is Wizarding World Park.
Scroll down to the bottom and "Butterbeer Recipe #1" is the one we used - minus the cream soda (you'll see) and substitute dark rum for the rum extract (it was New Year's...we weren't wasting our time with extract).  The "brown stuff" that I refer to later is the brown sugar/butter recipe and we topped it with the whipping cream and rum and then stirred it in to make a nice frothy head.

And now...this is how we created the recipe that I made for the party...with our super special secret ingredient...

Once upon a time...sometime in November...4 people stood around an island in a kitchen sampling beverages.  It had been a long night, full of mistakes and bad horrible mixtures.  Until...

Mike: Aak this is nasty
Jess: It's too sweet
Vaughn: What if we take out the brown stuff and add only 1 shot of schnapps but added some rum...

Before the whipped cream topping

*stir*taste*sip*

Mike: This tastes like ass
Jess: Add whipped cream?
Vaughn: No, add some more schnapps
Jess: Vaughn, you're drinking out of Mike's cup
Vaughn: Which is my cup...oh who cares...
Jess: Yours is the 49er one, Mike's is this bluish one
Mike: They are all bad, let's dump them out and start over
Jess: It needs more carbonation, but not something too sweet
Ryanne: How about champagne?

At this point we'd had enough to drink to think this would actually turn out well.

*stir*taste*sip*

After the whipped cream topping

 Jess: Oh God no!
Mike: That's just not good at all

Jess and Ryanne drink some straight champagne to clear the palette.

Jess: It's still too sweet.  We need something with carbonation but we need to be able to add the schnapps and some brown stuff and not have it be too sweet.  What if...hey...guys...what if we use beer?
Ryanne: That's what I said in the beginning!!
Jess: Just...like Coors Light
Vaughn: Hang on, I have some in the garage
Jess: Shocking...
Mike: Oh I'm excited about this...

*stir*taste*sip*

Jess: This is it
Mike: This is actually good
Ryanne: And I said beer from the beginning.
Vaughn: What if we add some of the cream stuff to the top?
Jess: That's even better!

And there you have the extremely scientific way we created our recipe for Butterbeer.

Final recipe:
1 can beer
2 T "brown stuff"
1 heaping scoop whipped cream mixture
stir

The secret ingredient.

Harry Potter Party - Decorations

Earlier this week I told you about my Harry Potter Party and all the amazing characters who showed up.  Now I get to tell you about my decorations.  I had so much fun trying to make the party feel like a Harry Potter Party and not just some party where we dressed up like Harry Potter characters.

I was really excited to have an actual reason to buy HP things and not have my husband constantly asking why we needed them so I figured it would be the perfect time to buy these amazing movie posters I found.

I'm in love with my posters! Yes they stayed up permanently after the party.

If you can't tell by the picture, the one on the left is from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and it has the boats pulling up to the castle and it says "the magic begins soon" (that's my favorite part) and the one on the right is from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and it is the castle on fire with the words "it all ends here" (that is my second favorite part and holy crap I can't wait for the last movie!). 

I made little hats for the house elves to find so they could be free.  I originally meant for them to be used as a wine glass rings so we wouldn't get our glasses mixed up but I figured out something else.

The table with all the party favors.

I picked up wine glasses from the dollar store for everyone and used my husband's paint pens (the red and gold were dried up - come on those were the most important colors!) to write "HP 2011" and a lightening bolt and then all the guests were able to write their names on their glasses as they arrived.  My husband (Ron) thought it would be stupid to use the character names instead of our real names (he thought he was too cool for all this...he also thought he was too cool to die his hair red but I convinced him otherwise) but as soon as my step-brother showed up with Ron's wand he was all into it!

 

My wine glass with my name on it.

My work friend (Tonks) told me I should hang candles from the ceiling.  At first I thought I would never be able to pull it off but it turned out to be so amazing!  I found some reasonably priced flameless candles, fishing line, and some awesome mini hooks with the easy remove tabs and I was set!

Lights on the ceiling of the Great Hall

Advise on hanging lights from the ceiling...

1.      don’t let the husband take them down 

2.      If the husband tries to take them down, he will take off part of ceiling so don’t let the husband take them down

3.      don’t place them in a spot that has apparently been patched and then repainted before you moved in

4.      don’t drop them...although they seem to be plastic, they will shatter

My Harry Potter Party!!

It has now been a month since my Harry Potter themed New Year's Eve Party and I still haven't posted anything about it (which is just pathetic) so I am designating February as the month of my Harry Potter Party!  Let me start by telling you how this all began...

Last year, while I was sitting in NC 3,000 away from all my Harry Potter obsessed friends,  I decided that I really wanted to throw a Harry Potter themed Halloween party.  I mentioned it to another HP obsessed work friend this year after I moved  back to CA and we started throwing around ideas.  Initially, I wanted to have it on Halloween but that conflicted with too many other parties so I planned on having a Christmas party.  I began imagining all the glorious, snow-covered Harry Potterness but December quickly became so busy that there was not a good weekend to have the party.  Eventually December 31st was decided on and I set out to finally throw this awesome party. 

Since I started planning this party over a year ago, I spent a lot of time on the internet checking out anything I came across.  I had a pretty good handle on my decorations but I was really hoping to find some games and recipes.  The thing that I found and was disappointed about was that anything for an adult Harry Potter party was few and far between.  Don't get me wrong, I loved checking out the cute ideas for the kids parties but they just weren't what I was looking for.  In all my searching (ok...most of it was spent looking at the incredible results of a google image search of "Harry Potter cakes") I did finally come across a handful of amazing sites.  I was so excited when I finally found Britta's amazing Hogwarts Celebration.  Britta's site is so detailed that I didn't even care about using any of her ideas, I just wanted to read through it all over and over until I could pretend I was at her party.  I would constantly mosey on over to her site when I was overwhelmed and just wanted to be inspired with how awesome a Harry Potter party could turn out.  In the end, we had a blast and how could we not with these guests...

From left to right: Ron Weasley, Tom Riddle, Luna Lovegood, Harry Potter, Fleur Delacour, Ginny Weasley, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, and Hermione Granger