Christopher turned TEN this week, and after much debate, decided on a Harry Potter birthday party. This made me happy because the alternative was Star Wars, which we have already done to death, plus we have the whole harry potter thing going on at the library this summer, so I didn't have to switch gears in my brain - something that is getting harder and harder to do!
Of course, Harry's story doesn't really take off until he is eleven, when he finds out he is a wizard. Until then, his only gifts were the annual single tissue from the Dursleys. On Christopher's actual birthday, Tuesday, Sheridan presented him with a handmade card containing...a tissue. I thought that was hiLARious, but he didn't, and he tried to throw it at her. Of course, tissues don't go very far when you throw them, and he may or may not have become even more irritated with how much I laughed at that, too.
Anyways. We decided a little bit of artistic license was acceptable in this case. A few weeks ago, we sent invitations to school using these awesome printables from Just Sweet and Simple, my new Favorite Blog to Steal Things From.
I just printed out the blank invitations, hand-wrote our information, and photocopied from there. I loved her idea of attaching them to cut-out owls and helium balloons, but I didn't think the teachers would appreciate that!
For Christopher's birthday cake, I replicated the one Hagrid made for him, although I did not misspell "Birthday", nor did I carry it in my pocket and sit on it.
It was nice to not have to even try to be neat!
I also made sorting hat cupcakes. Just chocolate cupcakes, scoop a bit out of the middle, fill with colored M&Ms, then replace 'lid' and frost.
The color of the M&Ms told what house you were in. I tried piping the frosting on in spirals to make them resemble hats, but that quickly turned into a mess, so I just went with spreading it on. Nobody seemed to mind!
Notice the black fabric draped in the background? That is covering the cereal, coffee pot, toaster, some flashlights, a can of crack sealant, and a bunch of other things I didn't have a place for. I have decided I am going to start collecting fabric in all sorts of holiday colors, and decorate this way from now on:
The picture is a little dark, but the black fabric is covering dishes, school supplies, toys, globes, cookbooks, you name it. Add a couple owls, broomsticks, and severed heads, and you are good to go!
I spent a little more time in the kitchen:
More black fabric to cover the canned goods, and 'spiderweb' draped to cover the screws, where I took down some of my decidedly non-wizarding decor.
I already keep much of my kitchen ingredients in bottles and jars, so I just added appropriate labels, also from Just Sweet and Simple (seriously, you need to check out this woman's site!)
I had to make up a few tags myself, and since it was last-minute, they don't look nearly as nice:
We also had steak fries, which I decided to label Mandrake Roots, but they were in the oven until the last minute, and didn't make any pictures!
Our Polyjuice Potion was just green punch, and the Butter Beer was cream soda with a smidge of butter flavoring, then a dollop of butter-flavored whipped cream on top:
The kids were so funny, they really sucked down the butter beer, and several sported mustaches for a bit! Very sweet, though - one glass was plenty for me!
Oh, and there was also pudding, in case Luna showed up:
Peppermint flavored, with mini marshmallows sprinkled on top. Because.
I was going to do the hot-glue-and-chopsticks thing to make wands, but I ran out of time, and bought glow sticks instead. The goodie bags included golden snitches (a certain gold-foil-wrapped chocolate), owl stickers, spiders and snakes, and a few candies I thought the Weasleys might sell, like Pop Rocks. I really had a hard time finding wizarding items. You would think with a play/book coming out in July, the marketing would be all over it by now!
I didn't get any pictures of the actual party - too busy chatting with other grown-ups! I think the kids had fun, though, and I can re-use everything at the library this summer - bonus!
So, now my little wizard is in double digits. But, I will always picture him like this:
Happy Birthday, Biggest Guy!
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