Harry Potter Party Ideas

Did you know July 31st is Harry Potter's birthday? (It is also J. K. Rowling's birthday.) My kids are huge Harry Potter fans and as the wizard's birthday approached, they asked if we could have a party. I thought it was a fun idea and a great way to invite a couple families over. Here's what we did.

Instead of serving a meal, we had a bunch of snacks.  

Slugs = Gummy Worms

Nimbus 2000 Broomsticks = Pretzel Sticks with Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups 

Hufflepuff Popcorn with Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans = Popcorn and Jelly Beans 

Owl Feed = Nut Mix 

Hagrid's Veggie Garden = Lots of Vegetables 

I made sorting hats out of sugar cones and black icing. I placed the sorting hats among the food as decorations, but we all ended up eating them. 

We served our snacks from our kitchen island. I tied candles from our island's lights to resemble floating candles. Yes, you can see my white thread. Next time I'll have to use fishing wire. 

Along with the food, we had a couple of games. We played Tabletop Quidditch. Here's how to make your own Quidditch ring. You'll need a styrofoam cone, a styrofoam ring, duck tape and a shish kabob skewer. Wrap your cone and ring with duck tape. You'll want to do this to give your Quidditch ring some strength. Remember to leave a small space on your cone's top and ring's bottom without tape so you can easily place your skewer. Then, just skewer the two styrofoam pieces together and you're done!

Set up rows of plastic cups behind your ring. With a ping pong, bounce it before the ring so it then bounces through the Quidditch ring and into the cups. You earn a point for each ping pong you get in a cup.

It ended up being a fun game and quite addictive.

We also had some Harry Potter trivia. A great website to use is Sporcle. We really enjoyed the quiz where you guess what character said what using their last line in the book series.

It was a fun summer evening and my kids are already talking about what we'll do next year. Before then, you can throw a Harry Potter themed birthday party or Halloween get together.