All the fun of Hogwarts

This weekend, after lots of planning it was time for Esme's Harry Potter party. As always we had a lot of fun with planning and probably went slightly over the top, but it was great fun all round.

Planning started with the invitaion where we set the scene for Hogwarts  summer school, to be held at XXX currently disguised as a muggle house and gave the kids the password. Judging by the replies we got people certainly got in the mood,  we had texts from head witches and even one reply delivered by a cuddly owl.

Of course having set the scene everything had to live up to expectations, so we transformed the dinning room into a potions classroom.

We added the Hogwarts crest and the children had fun making flying keys.Our display cabinet became a potions cupboard with jars of strange ingredients and filled the shelves with as many things as we could find to add to the atmosphere.

Out in the hall we had the student's notice board with a timetable for the day and other school notices. After registration lessons began with wand carving, having measured each child and selected the best fitting wood they each made their own wands.The children took it very much to heart were all busy telling their parents which wood they had at the end. Esme's is purple plum form our garden, the colour is mostly from the red oil she chose to oil it with.

Then on to our potions lesson, we made a happieness potion, all the ingredients were measured out and layered in the jar, ready for the final ingredient to be added once they got home where they can bake their cookies. As the children searched the cupboard for the ingredients they needed they came across all the other bits and pieces we had put around the room.

Back outside they had a care of magical creatures lesson where the blindfolded child had to find the owl among all the other animals by listening to their calls, and a quick quidditch practice before it was time for the birthday feast. We started the feast with these cheese mice

Followed by lots of the usual party food washed down with magical colour changing lemonade. The jelly squares were particularly popular and surprisingly easy to make, though with waiting for each layer to set it did take a while. The white layers have a spoon of yoghurt stirred into the jelly and I put in a bit extra gelatin so they could be picked up.

Of course no birthday is complete without the cake and the snitch turned out well, as I mentioned before the gold cake spray worked out well.

Finally I couldn't resist making the mini snitches in the previous post, the children were full by that time so they took them home, along with a selection of Honeydukes sweets, and yes I did design a label to go on them!

We all had a lot of fun but I've got no idea how we'll top this one next year!