Happy Birthday - Harry Potter Style

Today is Katie's 22nd birthday! This year she requested a Harry Potter themed birthday party. It was SO MUCH FUN!!! We had a blast preparing everything and we were happy with how it all turned out.   I found some great ideas on various websites, had some help from our friends that are huge Harry Potter fans, and Katie also came up with some creative additions. 

We created a potion area with fun things like dream fluid, gillyweed, and blood worms. 

 The Transfiguration (aka "photo booth" area) was lots of fun. Katie made banners in each of the colors of the four Hogwarts houses to act as a background. Our friends Arien and Kyle made this fun cut-out to look like the Azkaban prisoner shot from the movies. 

   

This was the first year Katie requested cake (she usually asks for berries and cream or some type of cookies). I was excited - soy-free and gluten-free spice cake with cream cheese frosting, and sparkling candles!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATIE!

   

Of course, creating Honeydukes was my favorite part. Honeydukes is the candy store in the Harry Potter series. We had chocolate covered gummy frogs, Bernie Bott's every flavor beans, hippogriff patties, fizzing wizzbees (pop rocks), lemon drops, jelly slugs (sour gummy worms), and Professor Umbridge's tea cookies (really just a gluten-free version of my favorite almond sugar cookies - simply substitute gluten-free all purpose flour for the cake and all-purpose flour in the recipe). Katie made quidditch broomsticks out of paper bags and sticks from the back yard, filled with candy, of course. They looked so good!

    

Arien and Kyle enjoying the fun.

Even the kids got into it!

We also had Ollivander's wand shop where people could create their own wand out of a chopstick. We played pin the scar on Harry (rather than pin the tail on the donkey). Preparing for this Harry Potter birthday party was very fun. I can't wait to see what Katie comes up with for a birthday theme next year!!