Just this past weekend I hosted a birthday party for my son. Can't believe he's already 2! Where did the time go? I took the opportunity of the Harry Potter 20th Anniversary recently and made the party a Harry Potter theme. Guess what? It's actually Harry's birthday this past Sunday too! What a coincidence ;) I'm gonna show you today how I pulled everything off!
Almost all of the decoration I personally made myself with help from Google and Pinterest. There are so many creative people out there that I admire so much! Every decoration I made was like mini projects on their own and I had so much fun with them!
The banner above I made simply with Microsoft Words. I wanted to have the banner with Gryffindor house colors. I just searched "Gryffindor color flag" and this just conveniently came up. I copied and pasted the picture 13 times (there are 13 letters in "happy birthday"!) and added word art of the "happy birthday" letters on them. Didn't take me that long at all. Then I simply cut them out and taped them on 2 pieces of black yarn cut the length I wanted on the fireplace. On hindsight, I totally should have had "happee birthdae" instead like how Hagrid spells it! That would have made it more fun!
The Hogwards Express 9 3/4 sign was another easy picture find thanks to Google. I typed "9 3/4 black sign" and multiple sign showed up. Originally I was just going to have a horizontal one taped on the wall. But since I have an accent brick wall at home, I thought having a more authentic sign like the one in the movie would be cool. With the sign sticking out of the wall, I needed something more structured. I took some cardboard boxes and cut them out the shape of a printed sign. I then hot-glued it perpendicularly to another small piece of cardboard. Voila! It became a decent looking train station sign! Hanging it was a bit tricky since taping didn't work well. I ended up putting a small thumb tag between the cracks and made a small hole on the sign so that I could hang it.
The Hogwards flag took quite a bit of patience! I knew I couldn't find one with a super awesome resolution because of copyrights. I took the best/biggest picture of it that I could find and blew it up with Photoshop. I printed it in small sections and taped them together. It turned out a lot better than I thought! Most definitely if you look very closely, you can tell it's paper taped together. So I decided to put the food table right in front of it to keep people from walking too close. Problem solved ;)
I added some detail to the fireplace with these little cuties from IKEA. Small decorative flasks, bottles Here and candle holder Here with feathers I found at the dollar store. It gives my home a little bit more like a Hogwarts classroom!
This is an authentic ward I got from Harry Potter world at Universal Orlando! It's been sitting on the fireplace since we got back from our trip in June. Looks a bit lonely on its own so I decided to put a baby Hedwig on top of it! I squee'ed just looking at it. It's so adorable. Thank you TY for making such loving stuffed animals!
I didn't have flying owls unfortunately at the party so this is the best I could do. A mobile made of Acceptance letters for Harry! I used a template here. All I needed to do was type in the name and address, cut it up and hang with fish wire on a large craft ring from the dollar store. Aren't they lovely?
A way to keep folks from enter my hell of messiness upstairs. A simple find on Google again, cut and hung with black yarn.
A good feast is what every Gryffindor loves! We had a potluck and there was so much food, but here's what the table looked like before more food came in! *laugh* I had the table set up with the Gryffindor house color. I used a black table cloths with a red one folded as a runner. I taped a printed Gryffindor flag at the end of the table as added detail.
I used a triple planter from the dollar store as a utensil holder. The tin made the table look a bit more rustic, which I loved. The plate 4-tier stand is second handed but it works so well for parties like this. It saved me a lot of space too on the table!
The beverage dispenser set from London Drugs is at a very affordable price. I had citrus water and pumpkin juice in them. I love how they had a chalkboard plate for me to label what's inside. Here is the recipe for the pumpkin juice I made.
Costco Wholesale is also a friend at parties! Appies and food bought in bulk made things so much easier and cheaper. I made pumpkin pastries to go with the theme (recipe here). The mini chicken tacos were so cute and the spring rolls were actually pretty delicious! The honey garlic chicken wings could have been better! Next time I would use finely cropped garlic instead and add more salt for the marinate. Recipe here. I bought a pre-marinated pork ribs because I ran out of time and threw it in the Instant Pot to reduce the cook time. Turned out not too bad I suppose?
Party City is an awesome party supply store was a recent-found gem. What's better? It's 10 minutes from home! There I found these cute containers for my Honey Duke Shop candy bar and beautiful fun plates and napkins. They were perfect for my theme!
T&T Supermarket is doing so much better with their bakery. Look at this beautiful cake! I looked around for a Chocolate Gateau as it was mentioned a couple times during Harry's feasts at Hogwarts. Most of the chocolate cakes I found didn't have the glazed finish and they were quite pricy. This cake was both within my budget and fits my style! They called it "Ganache". It's not exactly a chocolate gateau but I think it passed as one... And it was chocolaty and yummy too! This I had them write on the cake "Happee Birthdae" just like Harry's cake from Hagrid!
My fur babies also seemed to have enjoyed the party too! We had so much fun and we thank our guests for coming again and spoiled our little wizard. Happy birthday to my little pea!
