Table decorations

We brought in our table tennis table from the garage and bought some black fabric from Spotlight to cover the table. 
Decoration wise: went op shopping and $2 shop shopping to find all sorts of quirky jars and things, and then put weird stuff in them. We had vinegar, bicarb soda, cornflour, green cordial concentrate, chopped up sour worms, pickled onions and their juices, and sherbet sticks all emptied into a big jar with soda water added. They looked really cool surrounding our big jar of jelly bellies with two packets of Bertie Bott's every flavour beans. The jellybeans were a massive hit and one of my friends spent the entire night trying to get the gross ones and test them all out! We also had a cute little owl statue that we got for 7 bucks at target/kmart/big w (one of them!) and a whole bunch of candles. It looked really good!

Our home set up

Bought some crepe paper from the newsagents, recruited some friends, and simply blu-tacked all of the crepe paper for each different house onto the window frames. It looked so lovely with the light streaming through and we'll be leaving them up for a while!!

Cake!

The glorious Golden Snitch!

Mum has lots of experience in making cake pops from my sister's 18th dessert party, and we didn't have much time to create a cake. So with that in mind, we decided to make one giant cake pop - just without the stick. So we bought 3 packet mixes of vanilla cake (going all out guys) and baked them, and then crumbled the cake, mixed it with delivious vanilla icing and put it together. It was like making a sandcastle trying to get the shape right hahaha. It wasn't really forming into a ball so mum had the genius idea of picking it up on the baking paper it was on, putting it into a plastic bag and shaping it in there. We then left it to set overnight so it would harden because it was still really crumbly.
Next morning - party morning :') we took it out of the fridge and plastic bag and set it on mum's cake stand. We then just made icing with icing sugar and added some yellow food colouring, we put that in a piping bag and mum got to work on icing it.
For the wings, I melted white chocolate and put them into this cool syringe looking cake decorator thing and piped them out, copying a design off the movie snitch. That set overnight too. And to attach them to the cake, we cut slits in the side and put in the wings, and then filled it in with more icing so it would stay. We had made bigger wings (shown lying on the cake stand) but they snapped quickly so we used our backup smaller ones. Super proud of it considering the small amount of time we put into it!!

WOW soz for not blogging

Guyssssss im so stinkin super tired and so sorry for not posting more regularly! But now the party is finite!! Don't know if that means finish in french or not but eh well. I'm exhausted, the party was incredible last night, everything was amazing. I'll shortly post everything for you guys :)

Lollies!

First day of shopping today. By of course to go shopping you need a shopping list, so here's the one I compiled.

So shopping at Kmart, big w, and target led me to buying bunch of lollies for all $1 a packet. I got some cheap gryffindor coloured balloons. At a cheap lolly store,  I also purchased two packets of Bertie bott's every flavour beans for $4.30 each because I just couldn't justify spending any more for such a small amount of jellybeans. But then I found a packet of deformed, left over jelly bellies that was $7 for 500g. So I'm all sorted for jelly beans!!

I think I'll put the sour worms and sour straws in potion jars to make them fizzy. We'll see what happens.

Invitation

http://helpinglittlehands.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/printable-hogwarts-acceptance-letters.html

Google saves the day.

This incredible blog helped me out so much for this invitation. I was keen on doing a Hogwarts acceptance letter and I knew my friends would get excited when they saw them.

This site will give you everything you need. I also wanted to heliumify white balloons and draw owls on them so they'd get their invites delivered by owls.


But as a seriously nerdy and busy year 11 student, I didn't have time to do this. So i printed out my letters, folded them into paper planes and threw them at my friends - as if an owl had dropped one on them. They loved it and and screamed with excitement when opening their letters - hint, it's a good idea to invite friends that like or have some knowledge about Harry Potter.

I also decided that I wanted my friends to be in each of the four houses so we could compete in games during the party, so I grouped friends and labeled each of the invitations with a house so the numbers would be relatively even.

Here's my letter:

HOGWARTS SCHOOL

of  WITCHCRAFTand WIZARDRY

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,

Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear                                                          ,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary equipment.

A beginning of term orientation will be held on DATE AND TIME, at the residence of Vanessa Ward, ADDRESS. We await your owl by no later than TWO WEEKS BEFORE PARTY. Please send to either Miss Ward herself or to the owlery at HOME PHONE NUMBER.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall 

Deputy Headmistress

HOGWARTS SCHOOL

of  WITCHCRAFTand WIZARDRY

UNIFORM 

First-year students will require: 

1.     One set of black robes (or coat)

2.     White shirt with tie, preferably in house colours.

3.     Females: knee length skirt, with black stockings and dragon hide shoes (optional ballet flats).

4.     Males: Short or long pants, preferably black or grey, with dragon hide shoes.

5.     Please adjust tie or scarf colours to suit your house.

Please wear the closest you can possible to the Hogwarts Uniform.

OTHER EQUIPMENT

1 wand 

Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad. Plush versions of any animal are acceptable for this orientation.

Please note: Rats are not accepted. There have been dangerous connotations with them in the past and we would not like to repeat that.

My Sweet 16th: Harry Potter style

After endlessly googling ideas for my sweet 16th - which makes it sound super tacky - I switched from an 80s theme to Harry Potter. My hope is that through this blog you'll be able to get ideas for a Potter party yourself.

I started by simply googling 'harry potter party ideas'. From there I was bombarded with pages and pages of websites linking me to harry potter related food, drinks, decorations, party games, invitations, gift bag ideas, music, costumes, cakes and all the rest. I knew that this couldn't be a half done job and I quickly became willing to spend a bit of money to make it amazing. One blog that I read had a lady spending loads of money to practically recreate the great hall. If I had that kind of money, I'd be doing that too. So another hope I have is that these party ideas help those of you with a lower budget. I've got 2 weeks to plan this. Keen as a spleen.