Show and Tell Saturday: Harry Potter Party Stuff

I've mentioned before that I work with the teenage girls at church. This past Wednesday was our start of the year activity where we welcome in the girls turning 12 (the program is for girls 12-18) and talk about what we're going to do for the year. This year we decided to go along the route of Harry Potter. 

About 2 weeks before the event we handed out invitations to the girls based on this idea (for any non-Harry Potter people, in the books the mail is delivered by owls deliver):

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/71283606575087223/  

We worded our invitations to be like the Hogwarts acceptance letter, printed it out on off white paper, rolled it up and secured it with a clear hair tie. For the owls we blew up the balloons, drew on the owls with permanent marker, and then just stuck the end of the balloon in the hair tie to attach it to the invitation. They were all pretty excited to get their owl invitations! 

For the front display table we used things we found around our houses...and it pulled together famously! We'd been so focused on the treats and what we were going to say in the program that we forgot about decorations until that day. We were so tickled to be able to just go around our house and grab things on our way out the door, and then to have it pull together so perfectly. We had old books (some 100+ years old), "owl" cages, a graduation tassel, a nice pen set in a wood case, a feather quill pen, candles (we can't light candles in our church building due to insurance reasons, so they remained unlit), pressed flowers, an old kaleidoscope (because it looked awesome!), a sword (for the sword of Gryffindor) pictures, and other odds and ends. Since it was a church event we added in pictures of Jesus and religious books as well (if you want more on the scoop of the whole program and how we tied it into church-we worked hard to keep it church appropriate and leave out the wizardry part-you can check that out here). 

After the program we had refreshments off the Honeydukes Cart (the treat cart on the train that takes the students to Hogwarts). We got that idea from this pin we found on Pinterest:

http://catchmyparty.com/photos/1429138

Here's our Honeydukes cart/table:

Here's what we had on the table:

Magic Wands:

Pretzel sticks dipped in melted chocolate and rolled in sprinkles (from this site). These were SO yummy. I loved the salty against the sweet along with the crunchiness.  

Chocolate Frogs:

Here's a size reference for you. 

I ordered a frog mold from Amazon to make these. I figure with a little boy in our lives now, a frog mold will be fun (chocolates, jello, ice, etc.), so I just got it for me to have at home (and it really was a decent price). I got the 2lb bag of melting chocolates made for those chocolate fountains and that made 32 frogs. These disappeared fast! 

 Anti-Dementor Chocolates:

Hehe...I just made a connection...a dementor's "kiss" sucks out a person's soul...a chocolate kiss protects it apparently. Bahahaha, love it.  

Jelly Slugs:

Gotta love gummy worms. Those have been a favorite since I was a kid!

Levitating Lemon Drops:

Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans:

Jelly Belly sells actual every flavor beans, but at $2.25 for a small box we couldn't afford enough for everyone. So we just got the regular assortment of Jelly Bellies and used those. 

Fizzing Whizbees (aka caramels): 

 The recipe for these can be found here. Super easy and yummy!!

Butterbeer:

I didn't get an actual picture of the butter beer. But it pretty much looks like cream soda with whipped cream on top...because that's just about what it is. We used this recipe for our butterbeer. We thought the flavor of the extracts was way too strong. Most of the adults didn't like it, but the kids thought it was alright. If we were to make it again I'd just use butterscotch flavoring and not add as much as the recipe calls for. 

So there's the basics of our Harry Potter Pin Win! It was so much fun, we all went away happy and excited. Can't wait for October/November when we get to try pumpkin juice and the pumpkin pasties at the end of the year activity. Mmmmm!!!