Plates, Proclamations and Prophecies - Fifth Year Harry Potter Party Decor

Sorry, I never posted pics of our 5th year Harry Potter party decor from back in Nov.  It was all about Umbridge, the Ministry of Magic and OWL's.  Among our many existing Hogwart's decorations, we made kitty plates!:



LOTS of kitty plates!  :D



Just took a little Mod Podging kitten images onto various 2nd cake plates we found for 25-50 cents each.



We had purchased the licensed ones but they were so tiny! And cheap plastic.  :/  The largest was barely bigger than a saucer:  So, we hung them on a door.



My mom and sis found this pink jar that we added a knob with a MoM logo to.  We also colored some sugar pink with food coloring.



We also had to have some of Umbridge's Educational Decree Proclamations on the walls.  The frames are made of lightweight foam board we picked up for $1 a sheet at a dollar store painted with Acrylic Craft Paint.  They were large sheets, so didn't take much.  Ran out of time for the locks and would like to have put the box behind them to set them away from the wall like in the movie.  (I made up a template for cutting these.  If you would like to make some, I'm happy to send it to you.  Just message me by email or on Facebook.)



One of my favorite easy projects was making the prophecy balls from he Ministry of Magic.  We used plastic ornaments, battery LED light and angel hair from old styrofoam ornaments we had.  The based were various things from metal candle stands to plastic bottle parts spray-painted black.  Looked really cool lit up on our mantle.  (We reused our MoM logo poster from 4th Triwizard Tournament behind them.)



For our OWL's, we made test papers (not pictured) for each class.  And we handed out Dark Arts Defence blank journals to our students.  (I figure blank is just as useful as what was probably in them to begin with.)  ;)  We just printed the covers and wrapped them around dollar store journals.



My sis made us some really cool extendable ears!  Love them!  Plan to make them a box for next years Weasleys' shop.  She also made us some neat proclamation ornaments for the tree.  (Not pictured)



Last and definitely least was our cake.  LOL  We kept putting it off to the last minute, so ended up having the kids help make it.  If you can't tell, we were going for Mimbulus Mimbletonia, Neville's plant.  Ran out of frosting.  Kids may have been eating it while working.  :/  We skewered cupcakes of different sizes onto wire and frosted.  :D  It may not look great, but kids enjoyed making and eating it.  It was rather fun just pulling off what you wanted.  :)

Let's Give This Dementor a Hand

We just recently hosted our daughter's 3rd Harry Potter themed birthday party.  She's now a teenager?!  :O  How time flies!  We had lots of fun with the party.  Even after two previous years of Harry Potter parties, we still managed to create a few new things for year number three's Prisoner of Azkaban theme.



The first one I'll share is for our WIP dementor, Pete (His name is inspired by the Moosebutter song.  We love all the clever Wizard Rock songs out there).  Our dementor never quite got fully assembled, but we may get him finished before year Five when dementors show up near Privet Drive and the Ministry.  But, I managed a pair of hands and a quick mask.  Here is a brief tutorial of how I made the hands:



This process is very similar to how I made my dragon wings.  I started with a wire hanger, some wooden beads (from a Christmas cranberry garland I found on the clearance table years ago.  I've used these beads in many projects.) and lots of masking tape.  I like the masking tape because it was already the color I wanted, it stays flexible and easy to use.



I straightened the hanger and cut the wire to lengths and placed the beads where I wanted them for the joints in the fingers and taped them in place.



Then, I taped the fingers from tip to bottom leaving extra tape off both ends to make a pointy tip.



Next, I taped the fingers together one at a time adding them to the hand.  Then wrapped more tape around to secure them in place.  Some tape was wrapped between the fingers until they wouldn't move around too much.  At this point I bent the fingers to resemble a more natural hand shape.  This isn't really necessary, yet.  They will still be posable once finished.



I painted the taped covered wire with lots of fabric paint.  The mixture of translucent Glow-In-The-Dark and Black slick paint makes a good slimy gray flesh of the dementor.  One good squirt of black directly into the GITD paint bottle should be enough.  (The applicator tip should pop off to make it easier to squirt the black in.)  Shake it really well, and then shake it some more.  You can test it and clear the tip of unmixed paint.  Let it dry to determine the actual color.



Once the whole hand is covered, I added more paint as a webbing between the fingers.  I found the fabric paint bottles were convenient to spread the fingers.



Once completely dry you can pose the hand however you like.  Be sure to not lay it on anything it will stick to.  If it is tacky, rub it with a little corn starch to prevent it from sticking.



This is what I ended up with.  They were fun to pose around the house.  I want to make a second pair with attached arm to hang them on Pete easier.



Here is Pete's face.  I used a plastic skull with it's mouth open to mold a piece of foil over before taping the foil and painting it the same way I did the hands.  It looks lighter, but it is the same color as the hands.  I'm still on the lookout for a suitable fabric for the dementor's robes.  I see that the cheaper decorations this year are using black interfacing-like fabric.  It may be too stiff for my purposes, though.



Our hands ended up guarding the entertainment system cabinet, so older students wouldn't try to skip class and watch football.  :/



But, I think they look just as creepy hanging out in the quidditch trunk my sister made for us.  :)  Next, I hope to post about some shrunken heads my mom and I made and the inexpensive upcycled bell jars we put them into.

Hogwart's Birthday 2nd Year - The Food and Classes

It's been taking me forever to post all the things we did for our 2nd year Harry Potter themed party.  I think I'll wrap it up with this post about the food.



Since our 2nd year party was first and foremost a birthday party, we served a cake for dessert, of course.  This year's cake was inspired by Aunt Petunia's Pudding.  We used a packaged cake mix for a two layer chocolate cake.  Since the pudding looked like it would end up being a lot of frosting, which we're not too fond of, we experimented with ways to make it lighter.  So, I added whipped cream to the frosting.  I may have gotten carried away and used too much whipped cream.  It began to get soft really fast, but there were no complaints about the taste.  :)

We served students the feast dinner of Turkey and all the trimming, including Pumpkin Pasties.



We used the same recipe for pumpkin pasties from last year.  But, we opted for leftover green frosting stems instead of green gumdrops pictured below.  Though, the spearmint ones weren't too bad.

As I have mentioned in last years party planning, the pasty is made with packaged biscuit dough.  We pulled the biscuit layers apart in the middle.  Set one half in our mini bundt cake pan for the shape and filled them with pumpkin pie filling that was strained for the juice.  We placed the top half on and punched the sides a little to seal.  Once bakes and cooled, we added the frosting stems.  I didn't have a tip large enough for the stem, but found that a sport bottle top pulled off and cut worked quite well.  (This is our whipped cream frosting, so that is why it looks rather runny.)

After dinner and games it was late, so we dismissed the students.  We held a showing of the Chamber of Secrets movie in our makeshift home theatre with popcorn, last years pumpkin juice recipe and butter beer.  This year we acquired a projector and surround sound speakers from family members, so we had a really neat setup in our DADA classroom (aka: living room).



The next morning the plan was breakfast and start classes at 9am.  There was a surprise waiting for our Slytherins (that I failed to get a pic of before they were gone.)  It was in the form of two floating cupcakes suspended in front of their door when the came out of their common room.  They were suspicious but ate them anyway.  ("How thick can you get?!")  They were yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting and sprinkles just like Hermione made in the movie.  We used large flat buttons tied to fishing line that was poked up through the cupcake to suspend.  We used an "S" hooks to hang them from the door frame.

We had a busy schedule this year, so were light on the classes.  Besides DADA and Potions, which I've already mentioned, we also had Herbology - Re-potting Mandrakes.



We wanted to make mandrakes that were edible.  We decided on some graham cracker bears and artificial leaf stems glued in the center with homemade cookie icing (this stuff is super easy to make and holds extremely well when set).  I cut apart and washed the artificial stems.  (I think it might have been nice to use mint or other edible greens.)  We potted them in mini ice cream cone pots.  Then, students would repot them into larger cones with some crumbled chocolate cake and then some Oreo cookie crumbs mixed with graham cracker crumbs to resemble dirt. While no one was looking, we thought about replacing the repotted cookie bears with larger mandrake cookies.  These could be part of another game where students would have to revive their classmates with mandrake restorative drafts when they lost our Basilisk game in the evening.

Charms - We came up with charmed pancakes for breakfast.  If you've seen the Youtube video where the guy draws with pancake batter, then you get the idea.  Basically we'd let each student charm the batter into a recognizable image in our magical, or electric, skillet  This is actually really simple and fun.  Just need a squirt bottle, like those used for ketchup or other condiments.  The daughter and I made a Hogwart's crest and some other simpler things like bats and faces.

We had some other ideas for classes that didn't end up happening.

Potions - We want to up the difficulty of the potions class by changing the ingredient game from last year by making students identify the ingredients in a mixture instead of individual ingredients.  For example:  Kool-aid, Sugar and Water could be one potion.

Transfiguration - We thought about making a puzzle game using shapes.  Students would transfigure a rat into a water goblet or teacup by reordering the pieces.

If you've noticed, we've been busy working on pixies, house elves and gnomes and the tutorial for each of them.  I think we've got the pixies and gnomes perfected, and there are some pixies listed in my Etsy store with gnomes to follow.  But, there are still some changes we'd like to make the the house elves.  Hope to have them available soon.

Lockhart's DADA Pop Quiz and Pixie Hunt

This post is a continuation of the projects we attempted for the 2nd Annual Harry Potter themed birthday party we held back in November.  To keep student busy while we prepared the House Cup Award Ceremony and End of Term Feast, we sent them to the DADA classroom where they took a 54 question Gilderoy Lockhart pop quiz and helped return escape pixies to their cage.



Pop Quiz
The quiz was, of course, essay questions all about the professor with all facts taken from the books, movies and even the Pottermore website.  It was pretty tough coming up with 54 questions about this supporting character.  I printed the 3 page quiz on longer legal-size paper, which I planned to stain like parchment with watercolor as pictured.  We expected students to fail miserably in answering most of the obscure questions, but we were surprised by their knowledge of everything Lockhart.  Two student just about had full marks and there were many humorously clever answers that we read aloud.  Students all got a signed glossy photo for their effort.

- Would you like a copy of the quiz?  Find a PDF here.  And, you can find the answer key here.
- Or, why not try taking the playbuzz version to see how well can you do?

We wanted to give the DADA classroom some elements specific to 2nd year.  So we came up with the following simple projects:



Framed Pictures
In the Chamber of Secrets movie, Lockhart's office was littered with framed pictures and paintings of himself, so I scoured the internet to print as many pics of Lockhart that I could find.  I trimmed the printouts and covered all the framed photos we had in our house gathering them into our DADA room.  (We must look like obsessed fans of the actor, Kevin Branagh.  Hahaha)  I tried my darnedest to find a decent pic of the large oil painting of him painting himself, but alas, I did not succeed on that one.



Signed Photos and Simple Peacock Quill 
The desk in the classroom was littered with some of the professor's things.  Some of the images I found of Lockhart were actually signed already.  So, I printed up some of these in 5x7 glossies to pass out to students.  ( you may notice the one on the right is actually signed as Branagh.  Oops.  Hehe) And, of course we had to have a peacock quill to sign them with.  We made one at the last minute by floral taping a tail feather to a pen with the barrel removed.  Then, I wrapped the stem with green string.



Textbook Covers
I didn't managed to find many decent pics online to use as book covers for the 1st and 2nd year textbooks used in the Harry Potter movies.  I did find a few lower resolution ones, even a couple from the obnoxiously long list required by Lockhart.  Some needed a little photoshopping to clean them up, but they looked convincing enough wrapped around random books.  I made one complete set off of the textbooks reworking the tiny thumbnail images on Pottermore to fill in the missing covers I couldn't find.

• Magical Theory
• Standard Book of Spells - Grade 1 and 2
• History of Magic
• The Dark Forces
• Magical Drafts and Potions
• A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration
• 1000 Magical Herbs and Fungi
• (We already had "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them")

I only managed to find three of Lockhart's books.  I'm amazed at the attention to detail on these books used in the movie.  They are:

• Guide to Household Pests
• Break with a Banshee
• Year with the Yetti

So, the Pottermore images had to due to complete the Lockhart set, as well.



Pixie Hunt
We've sewn quite a few pixies in the past.  And, now my mom is making smaller ones to infest our house.  We decided to make another game with them.  We created a cover for our pixie cage like the red one in the movie (Sorry, not pictured).  Then when we lifted off the cover, the cage was wide open and empty.  We asked the students to perform a quick hunt to round them up in the class room.  House points were award to those who found them.  (You may have notice Harry hanging out in the back of this photo.  Daughter made me my very own Potter Pal Puppet for Christmas!  She's getting so crafty on her own.  Best present ever!  )



With the quiz, framed pictures, signed photos and book covers, there was a great deal of printing in this portion of our party decoration.  But, we lucked out when our local friendly printer, Minuteman Press (who were super friendly and helpful), was having a special on color copies for half price!  Perfect timing!  Yay!  It ended up costing well under the $20 I had budgeted for all the book covers and photos.  I was even able to print some more candy boxes and labels (not pictured).  I tried a couple new versions that I made changes to.  Also, worked on some designs for wizard cards, but they are far from usable, yet.  Maybe this year.

After classes we tallied the house points and met in the Great Hall for the Awards Ceremony.  The daughter says the Lockhart Quiz and the Degnoming were her favorite things.    The winners of the house cup, Slytherin (boo, I think they cheated.), received boxes of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and a bottle of Butter Beer.  Some high scoring students also got gobstones marble sets in their house colors.  I still have a few random things left to share like our birthday cake.  Stay tuned!

Hogwart's Birthday Party 2nd year - Aragog's Cobweb Maze

This past November's 2nd annual Hogwart's Party had many more games this year.  After opening ceremonies and the de-gnoming detention, it began to get dark outside.  It was a perfect time to encouraged students to wander around the Forbidden Forest at night, right?  Here are some details of one of the scarier after dark events, Aragog's Cobweb Maze!



The weather forecasted rain for pretty much all of Saturday, so we knew we'd have to do any outdoor activities on Friday (even through the dark of night).  When student came back inside from the degnoming, we drew attention to the line of spiders heading from our main bathroom out through the Great Hall window.



We hinted that following the spiders out to the forbidden forest they might see what was up.  The line of spiders actually started appearing from the bathroom shower drain meandering all the way out through the great hall passed the fireplace to the window.



(Our party being just after Halloween, we found tiny plastic spiders for the floor and the perfect vinyl window clings for the shower wall and mirrors for up to 80% off in the clearance bins around town. Yay!)

With about 25 acres of land out here growing wild, we had the perfect location between a couple of small hills for our Forbidden Forest.  And, there were just enough trees to hang the giant cobweb maze that would outdo our measly porch from years ago.  (The kids had requested this cobweb maze.  I may have mentioned the one I made back in my youth a few times.  We had transformed our closed in porch into a cobweb maze for Halloween where Trick-or-Treaters had to wind their way through the webs under the glow of an eerie green porch light to get to the front door for treats.)  So, I found a few bags of artificial webbing and some plastic/rubber spiders here and there, and we had our maze.  But, this time we used both white and black webs.  The white webs were pretty easy to spot in the dark and kept the students on the path, however closer toward Aragog some black webs were mixed in that are nearly impossible to see..and easy to walk into.  (Hehehe)  The webs also got lower and harder to pass by.



At the end of our maze was Aragog (or, as we say, one of his smaller relative) protecting what the students were supposed to retrieve. We would award house points for retrieving three rare acid green glow-in-the-dark spiders (not pictured) from Aragog's web for Professor Snape as potion ingredients.

 

For scale, here Aragog is on our Jeep at about 4-5ft across from toe to toe.  That is pretty small for a full grown Acromantula, who is supposed to be the size of a small elephant. But, we had our limits.  This size was creepy enough for the kids. :)



As I've mentioned before, we were on a strict low budget.  This event, including spiders and webs cost us no more than $10 total.  We used mostly stuff we already had.  Aragog is made of masking tape, wire hanger, paper towel tubes, cardboard, plastic bags, newspaper and is wrapped in two rolls of black duct tape.  His eyes were made from plastic bottle caps.  I hot glues tacks into them and just stabbed them into the head.  We had two sizes of paper towel tube and even used the wider tube leftover from one of the duct tape rolls to create the removable joints.  Yes, you read that right.  He comes apart for storage.  Each leg/arm, eyes, his fangs and even his trash bag bum are all removable.  His legs, being all wire wrapped in paper and plastic bags covered in tape, are easily posed, too.  We planned to use him again for the six year when Aragog is supposed to pass on.  Since his legs are bendable, we can put him on his back with the legs all crunched up.  And the fangs may be used in a future challenge.  But, I'm afraid the kids want him to hang around each year...alive.   :(



Also, in the distance near the entrance to the cobweb maze, students could see the lit up headlights of our cardboard flying car stuck in a tree.  The holes in front were for flashlight headlights.  My mom and my daughter helped make the car out of a cardboard box with paper plate tires painted with acrylic paints.  I think I had more fun running around the house with the car over my head.  Vroom...vroom... (Yes, that did happen!)  Due to it's puny size, this tree in our yard has now become known as the "Wimpy Willow".  :(

That's all for this project.  I hope to share some more things soon!

Hogwart's Birthday 2nd Year - Degnoming the Garden Game

One of our first and probably most popular games at this year's 2nd year Hogwart's party back in November was the Gnome Toss loosely based off the mini game in the Chamber of Secrets video game for Playstation 2.  I posted about the creation of these creatures awhile back, but here is the details of the game:



After dinner in the Great Hall, we told the students they would have to immediately serve a detention degnoming the gardens for being late to the start of term.  They would serve their detention with Mrs. Sprout near the Quidditch Pitch (still under construction).  Basically, it was a bean bag hunt and toss game that scored house points.  Students had to find gnomes hiding throughout the grounds (our backyard).  Then, they had to tag them and toss them over the fence off grounds.



Each student had to find one of 8 gnome hidden throughout the back yard.  Since we had about two students in each house, everyone could find a gnome to toss.  One gnome was slightly larger than the rest, and another somehow ended up smaller.  Those that found the Largest and Smallest gnomes received 25 house points.



Once they had a gnome in hand, they had to tag its leg with a house color scrunchy for identificaation. To toss it, they had to hold the gnome with either a leg or arm in each hand.  (Since it was wet and muddy out, we made a last minute decision to bag them to keep them clean while tossing.)



While holding their gnome properly, students had to spin around 3 times and toss it over the fence barrier into a clearing with three different sized colored hoops just outside the Hogwart's grounds. We gave bonus house points for making it in a hoop as follows:

Orange (small, farthest away) = 150 pts
Green (medium, middle) = 100 pts
Pink (Largest, closest) = 50 pts

And the person who threw their gnome the farthest without landing in a hoop also received 10 pts.

The hoops were various sized neon hula-hoops from the dollar store.  To make the game a little easier, the larger green and pink hoops were enlarged to two hoops joined together into one larger hoop.  I simply removed the staples and label that hold them together and poured out the beads inside to avoid a mess.  (Conveniently they tear down for easier storage.)



We had wanted to do the game tournament style, where houses would compete in multiple rounds throwing three gnomes each, but we feared it would be too cold/wet to stay outside that long.  So, we opted for a quicker game where each student only threw one gnome.  If we had time or weather had permitted, we also had a notice board challenge planned to attend Fred and Georges Gnome Tossing Tournament.  Here students would compete individually on various skills.  It will definitely be on the list for next years games.



All in all, it was a lot of fun.  Slytherin and Hufflepuff earned the most house points during the event.



Next, I plan to share a creepy game held just after the De-gnoming.  Stay tuned!...if you want to.  :)

UPDATE:  Now you can have gnomes of your very own from my Etsy store.