Have a Harry Potter Birthday!
© Becky Doland
Everyone's wild about Harry, including me! Even though I haven't fallen into the recommended age group for reading J.K. Rowling's books for longer than I care to admit, I recently picked up the first one - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - and didn't want to put it down. I've come up with a few ideas for throwing a kid's birthday party with a Harry Potter theme. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the discussion area, and together we can create a Hogwarts Party Sourcebook.
Invitations:
This one was obvious - how else should you invite your guests but in the same way new students are invited to attend Hogwarts? You'll need to find paper and envelopes in a yellowish parchment, the heavier the better. Stationery stores or catalogs might be your best bet for that, as well as purple sealing wax and a seal with a letter "H". Use a pen with emerald green ink to write and address your invitations, seal the envelope with the was and the "H" seal, and for a real authentic touch (when possible) take a trip around to each child's home and slip the invitations into their mailbox. That way it will arrive mysteriously, with no stamp.
Decorations:
The first idea I had was to come up with a simulation of the ceiling in the grand dining hall at Hogwarts, which looks like a dark sky, complete with stars. Now I can think of several ways this might be accomplished, depending on how creative you want to get. My first thought, in looking at my own dining room, is to buy black or midnight blue sheets and drape them around the ceiling light fixture, tacking them up in the corners and around the light with clear pushpins - or even small staples if they could be removed so as not to do damage after the party's over. Then add stars. Craft stores, toy stores, and nature stores often carry packages of glow-in-the-dark star stickers that you can stick to the sheets. Of course, you could always paint your dining room (or maybe a basement family room) ceiling to look like the night sky. :-)
Purchase several brooms from a discount store (corn-type with wooden handles), paint them and add a name to each one such as Nimbus 2000, Cleansweep 7, Comet 260, or any other broom names you'll find in the Potter books. Stand them around in the corners of the room.
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