My 8 year old and I have been reading Harry Potter books together every night since Christmas. We’ve made it to book 4! When I asked what theme he wanted for his birthday this year, he didn’t hesitate; “Harry Potter!”
How I Hosted A Harry Potter Birthday Party
I hit Pinterest and started a board for all the ideas I liked and began forming a plan. I decided I wanted awesome favors and a prop photo station. And then I had the brilliant idea to find a magician! Here is how I put it all together.
Check List
Cake
Food
Decorations
Games
Favors
Entertainment
Gift
Then, I started working my way down the list.
For the cake, I decided to hire a lady in town. I sent her photos of cakes I liked online and gave her my budget. She created this adorable cake and the owl is a plastic figurine that now lives in my office!
For the food, I wanted to go pretty simple. We did pizza from Little Caesars, chips, fruit, and veggies. We don’t often eat chips at our house, so that’s a special treat.
Decorations were time consuming, but fun! I decided to go pretty all out for this party. I bought the happy birthday banner and flag banner, the Platform 9 3/4 backdrop is a shower curtain, and the table clothes are just plastic party table covers. I love Oriental Trading for party supplies, and usually use both them and Amazon to find cheap decor. I MADE the keys with wings and the floating candles.
These floating candles look great in the photos, but they were very time consuming. They are just paper towel and toilet paper tubes with hot glue drips and orange paper flames. I spray painted them, which didn’t work, and then hand painted them. It took forever.
For the flying keys, I bought a bag of little metal keys on Amazon. They were super pretty. Then I printed these wings and cut them all out and glue them onto the wings in different positions. Last, I tied fishing like to the keys. They really turned out amazing and I’m planning to hang them in the kids’ bedroom.
For games, I sprung for these photo props and the shower curtain back drop. I also bought a pack of bean bags and made a bean bag toss Quidditch game.
I had too much fun with the favors! I hired out local chocolate shop, Bright’s Candy to make CHOCOLATE FROGS. They turned out adorable. I printed out collector’s cards and stuck them in the bag with each frog and the kids loved it. I printed labels for Every Flavor Beans and packaged bags of mixed Jelly Beans. I used left over Easter egg candy packaged into little containers to make Dragon Eggs and printed little labels for the top. The kids got to each pick a wand I had made. Instructions for those are here. There were also chocolate coins in the cauldron, HP plastic glasses, witch’s broom pens, and wizard bookmarks.
I felt like the whole party was coming together well in the weeks before the big day, but I felt something was missing. And then it hit me! MAGIC. I needed a magician. I put out a mad Facebook plea. I got one option as a result. A costume store in Walla Walla had a magician/clown. Costume Creations. He was busy the day of the party. So I changed the day. Because this party was going to have a magician.
He did several tricks and made balloon animals and the kids really enjoyed it. Desmond spent the whole show trying to figure out all the tricks. The kids heckled him hard, but he didn’t let it bother him. He impressed us all by ending the show with a trick where he made a quarter disappear and reappear across the deck.
All said and done, this party cost me a lot of time and about $500. It was great to get to do everything I wanted for this party. Neither kid is going to get a big party like this again soon, but they appreciated it and they will definitely remember it!
