Harry Potter Party & A Recipe for Butterbeer

We enjoy Harry Potter.

The boys have a friend who just finished the book series for the first time and hadn’t seen any of the films.  Loving a themed party as we do, of course we made it into a full fledged 2-day movie marathon.  All the kids in the state have a couple of days off of school in October, so our date was set.

I did a lot of searching online, and found some pretty incredible parties.  Ones where you actually felt you were in Hogwarts.

Our Harry Potter party was nothing like them.  I wish.  But with work, school, and college visits, we shot for a much more do-able party.  Authentic, no. Loads of fun, and something anyone can do…you bet!

Harry Potter Party Decorations

Our guests were greeted out front by a couple of dementors.  I was so pleased to find these at our local Dollar Store.  I only had to make a few minor adjustments and they were perfect.

They started out with white skeleton heads (which I colored black with my trusty Sharpie) and had white fabric on top of the black (which I cut off).  I picked up some additional black mesh fabric (also at the Dollar Store) which I draped over the top.

These free wanted poster printables I found online (do a Google search and you’ll find lots).  Do you expect them to move when you look at them?  I did…every time.  We posted several around the house.

Our front bathroom had spiders heading out into the Forbidden Forest and this inspiring quote from Dumbledore framed on the counter (you can find it below).

Moaning Myrtle was hiding in the back bathroom.  She was easy to find and print out, just doing a Google image search.

Honeydukes Treats and More

We had a snack table filled with candies from Honeydukes and a lot more.  I made the labels (you can find them below).  Because this was a two day affair, and we had people coming and going throughout, I made a little sign to remind everyone to not go too crazy and eat everything up in the first half hour.  (I also didn’t put everything out the first day, to ensure that our table wasn’t empty on day two).

Besides Bertie Botts, we also had:

We also had Golden Snitches and Dementor’s Kisses.

Cookies with House color frosting options were also available.

Our Pumpkin Juice was mostly apple juice with a little splash of pumpkin juice (from Trader Joe’s) and a dash of cinnamon-sugar.  And the Polyjuice Potion was Kool-Aid.

Instead of having guests write their names on cups to keep track of, I went through the stack and labeled each cup with a character’s name.   We had everyone from Harry to Lucius Malfoy to Buckbeak.

Butterbeer

No Harry Potter party would be complete without Butterbeer!  We opted for the cold variety.  We mixed a little butterscotch flavoring into cream soda and topped it off with a creamy mixture of whipped cream, marshmallow cream and more butterscotch.  A little sweet…yes.  But everyone agreed it was a yummy treat.  (You can find the recipe below).

Two days and 19 hours of movies is a lot!

We started about 10am each day.  Besides snacks, we had a plan for meals.  I provided one meal each day – easy crock pot recipes.  And we asked guests to bring money to order pizza once each day also.  We had, I think,  a total of about 15 people in and out over the two days.  The kids took breaks between some of the movies and went outside to throw the football or play some basketball (we thought about setting up Quidditch, but couldn’t get a hold of enough hula hoops).

Check below for the butterbeer recipe and printables.

Printables

Click here for Honeydukes Printable

Click here for Other Snack and Beverage Printable

Click here for Manners Sign Printable

Click here for Dumbledore Quote Printable