a potty potter birthday bash - harry potter party

This is the year that i turned 30 :( big hooomassive sad face :( :*( and while i really wouldve loved to crawl into a deep dark hole and mourn the passing of my 20s i had a big birthday bash to organise! and organise i did to take my mind of turning into an old hag..

For the past 2 years ive desperately wanted to host a harry potter themed halloween party and this year was the year. Every year i say "oh no got too much on, next year.... " And this year with turning 30 Mitchell kindly started the ball rolling for a birthday bash at the new house... well one thing led to another and i thought YOLO (oh dont forget the hash tag #YOLO!!!!) and the potter birthday bash planning was in full swing.

I carved about a million pumpkins, i carved 7 of them to spell out WELCOME to greet the guests as they came through the door and then carved 2 fancy ones. This year i was a bit short on time so they werent my best handiwork, so i recycled last years cat pumpkin and then did an owl design on the other.

welcoming pumpkins

The weather was horrendous that day and the tealights were just not lighting up so i filled the pumpkins with glo-sticks instead which was pretty effective, especially for the skull as it was glowing red. (the skulls were ceramic skulls taken from my shop)

hedwig i think

For Snapes potions cupboard, i dug out my antique bottles which i found in the woods, reckon it mustve been a rubbish pit at some point coz i found loads! never again will i stumble upon such gems again! and the great thing is one of them already has poisonous imprinted on the glass. Perfect! and then i printed out some labels using these free printables and stuck them on with blu-tack as i didnt want them on there permanently. then filled them with glo sticks as well. Then covered the whole thing with spiders web you can pick up from the pound shop.

Snape's potion cupboard

Next it was onto the spooky hallway which was plastered with spiders and moving holographic piccies as the pictures in hogwarts move you know.

Then i stretched my old VM muscles again and created a wee display on the stairs with one of my vintage trunks, I printed out the hogwarts crest and motto and blu-tacked it onto the trunk, strewn some of my handmade fabric pumpkins (this blog has a brilliant tutorial on how to make them! fabric pumpkin tutorial)

Not forgetting the quidditch broomsticks, a skull or two and of course Hedwig!!

And then there was a few little touches here and there for the die hard fans like myself, the fat lady was of course guarding the door and guests had to know the password to get in, there were signs to the ministry of magic next to the toilet and poor Mrs Norris had been petrified and hanging from the kitchen cupboard.

Poor old Mrs NorrisPetrife

I absolutely loved this party theme even if not alot of people were big potter geeks like me and this could most definately be an annual event now due to time and money spend on crafting those decorations!!