Welcome To Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Last Saturday we were as close to ready as possible for Adelle's Harry Potter Birthday Party. Adelle got all dressed up in her Hogwarts robes.

The first thing we did when the kids arrived was to sort them into houses. My cell phone was tucked up in a pocket inside the hat (on speaker) and Wes did an amazing job voicing the sorting hat. I wish I would have gotten a picture of Adelle being sorted. She was sorted into Gryffindor. None of the kids were put in Slytherin because as Ron says "There isn't a witch or wizard in Slytherin who hasn't gone bad". The kids were all really excited.

From their the kids were separated into the three different houses and we had classes. I wish I would have been able to take pictures, but I was busy being the Herbology teacher. I was Professor Violette. Lydia was Professor English and taught Ancient Runes. Wes was Professor Snape, the brother to the actual Professor Snape, and taught Potions. It was very busy, but it went pretty well. From there Adelle opened presents. Now when I was a kid growing up small presents were usually exchanged at friend parties. Some of the kids gave pretty big gifts. Adelle got everything from legos, to craft kits, to jewelry and dress up clothes.

She even got some more Littlest Pets to add to her large collection.

Then it was time for her to open our presents. We got her the Beedle the Bard book and some other fun Hogwarts books. We also gave her a Webkinz Owl that looks like Hedwig. She was especially excited about that.

I even picked her up a little Lego set that has Lucias Malfoy, Dobby, and Harry Potter.

The present I was most excited for her to open was a wood wand from Alvian's.

It was pretty exciting!

I was grateful the weather was warm so the kids could eat and play outside. We had pizza and the yummy snitch cake.

After lunch the kids opened their potions to find they had transformed from worms to wonderful butterflies.

Adelle was a little hard to keep occupied at times, but overall she did great. She was eyeing the leftovers at the end despite eating her own goodies.

After everything was done we loaded the kids up with their books, potted pumpkins, runes scroll and their treat bag. We were so tired when it was all done, but everyone seemed to have a good time. I am sure Adelle will remember this party for years to come...well at least I hope :)

The Amazing, Edible, Snitch Cake

We thought it might be fun to have a Snitch Cake, just like Harry Potter got for his 17th birthday. I didn't think I would have quite the time or talent to make one myself. I have a friend though, Stephanie Tomlin Withers, who makes cakes as a hobby. You can find her cake blog here http://circusprojects.blogspot.com/. She decided to take on the challenge of the Snitch Cake. She did a great job and Adelle was really happy to have her special cake! I really liked the Adelle's name with the lighting bolt L's.

She made the inside of the cake Vanilla in Hogwarts colors. Even the wings were edible! It was amazing!!

Preparations for the Big Birthday Party

Well we've been very busy this past week trying to prepare for Adelle's 7th Birthday Party. All of the fun and mayhem may have gone to her head a bit, but overall I think we all had a very fun time. We planned for the kids to have their own Hogwarts experience. We planned for them to be sorted into houses and to go to three different classes: Herbology, Potions, and Ancient Runes. Wes wanted to have a little experiment for potions class with doxy eggs (mentos) and soda. He wanted to make sure it would work so he practiced the day before. If you've ever seen Mythbusters before you will probably know what that is all about. You take a 2 litre of soda, Drop in some doxy eggs (mentos) and run for your life. Here is the end result. I wanted to make some Harry Potter treats, especially chocolate frogs. Of course I couldn't enchant mine to hop, but I could make them tasty. I found a candy frog mold online at Amazon and bought some Wilton candy melts. The process was pretty simple. I started making them on Wednesday and kept making them throughout the week. You pour the melted chocolate into the mold and refrigerate them for 20 minutes or so.

The end result is beautiful, shiny, chocolate frogs.

Since I had bought so much chocolate I really thought it would be fun to make chocolate covered pretzel wands. I bought pretzel rods and used various types of sprinkles.

I even took an extra jar we had around the house and labeled it for the party.

Since we would be serving cake at the party I decided to have the kids take their treats home at the end of everything. I even picked up some gourmet jelly beans with all sorts of flavors, sure they didn't have the vomit or booger flavored ones, but I didn't think the kids would mind.

We couldn't sort the kids into houses without a sorting hat. Instead of buying one we made a hat out of poster board and covered it with leather scraps. We had tons of extra leather on hand because Wes has done various projects with leather, including his Aragorn costume a few years ago. Wes used Elmer's glue to stick on the leather. I was sure it wouldn't be strong enough, but to my surprise it was.

The end result was wonderful! We even affixed a little, leather pouch inside the tip of the hat so we could slip my cell phone in it on speaker for a special trick.

Wes had more preparations for potions class. The night before he made several batches of jello and put them in small containers. He had something special planned. When they were set up he placed a gummy butterfly on top of the jello. The plan was to have the kids make a special potion in their class (jello) and to place a gummy worm in the potion. Later they got a container back with a gummy butterfly. Many of them believed that they had magically transformed!

We made special potions jars for the gummy worms, potion powder (jello powder), and doxy eggs (mentos). We borrowed a book from the library, Harry Potter Film Wizardry, and we were able to copy some of the labels for the jars.

We decorated the living room with crepe paper. We made sure to use Gryffindor colors.

We printed off the Hogwarts House Crests and more pictures from the Film Wizardry book and began to transform our little house.

We made "The Standard Book of Spells-Grade 1".

One the first page the kids got to circle which house they were sorted into.

There was a page for Herbology 101. We planned to plant jack-O-lanterns (pumpkins).

We also had an Ancient Runes page. Funny enough we actually used some Tolkien dwarf runes.

Wes filled up pages for his potions class and the experiments he had planned.

Everything was as ready as it could be before the kids came over. Wes, Lydia and I even dressed up as professors in cloaks. Adelle couldn't wait!

Harry Potter Birthday Party Invitations

Adelle decided she wanted a Harry Potter Birthday Party this year for her and her friends. We were all pretty excited about the idea. Wes has been reading Harry Potter to the girls every night and they are almost finished with the entire series. Each time they finish a book in the series they then watch the movie that corresponds with the book. Needless to say, there has been a lot of Harry Potter around here. Wes decided to make the invitations look like the Hogwarts acceptance letter in the book and movie. The lettering was green. Adelle's read "Ms. Adelle Oates..Room in the Basement" and then our address. Most of the kids she invited were from her class so they said "Desk in Mrs Yates class". I don't think it was the best idea to deliver the invitations at school, but we didn't have any of the kids addresses. Adelle is in an advanced reading class that has kids from all over the valley. Some kids were disappointed they didn't get invitations (our house is only so big). Adelle even got punched in the stomach by some dumb kid. Anyway, lessons learned. Back to the invitations. Wes used sculpey to make a Hogwarts H to use as a stamp. The hard part was finding material to use for the seal. Candle wax is too brittle. We didn't want to go pay for real sealing wax, so we ended up melting crayons and dripping it onto the envelope. We then covered the seal with sparkly nail polish to try and help it stay together better. Honestly, this part probably took way too much time, but the end effect was pretty neat.

Instead of just printing out a map on map quest Wes decided to make the invitation map look like the Marauder's Map. It looked pretty neat.

The actual invitation had McGonagall's signature from the book. Wes scanned it so he could include it in the letter. It said they were invited to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for a special party. It said that the School was disguised as a muggle house and then gave our address. Wes even included an equipment list. The kids had to bring a smock or apron, their very own wand, and informed the students they would be receiving a book of spells at the party.

We were very pleased with the end result. This was just the beginning of the madness yet to come :)

Celebrations for my Singing Sensation

After the choir concert we couldn't resist going out for ice cream, even if it was chilly. We had fun laughing and chatting. Lydia was relieved that everything went well and she was grinning ear to ear. Wes and his silly fries. Adelle enjoyed her cherry topped ice cream cone.

Violet surprisingly didn't do too bad at the concert which was wonderful. Granted we bribed her with graham crackers and then fed her ice cream afterwards.

I love these moments when we can hang out together and celebrate! Lydia actually has two more performances this next week. One for the younger grades and one for the older grades at school. I hope she won't be too nervous. We talked about some ways not to be nervous when singing. I told her what has helped me most is to imagine no one else is around. Also, since she was singing a song from a musical I told her she could imagine she was Cosette. She said it helped. She was amazing!

Lydia's Choir Performance and Solo

Lydia's grade school choir had a performance tonight. It was so much fun. The choir director really has put so much time and energy to make the choir a success. They did such a variety of songs ranging from musicals, to American classics, to current radio tunes. They even had a song where the turned of the lights and had glow sticks. Lydia really seemed to enjoy it!

Lydia did a marvelous job on her solo! She sang Castle on a Cloud from Les Miserables We are so proud of her. Here she is singing. Check it out.