when our girl turned 5 we celebrated with a harry potter birthday party. we had so much fun...maybe one day we will revisit that! but for today i want to share the fun that we had on friday celebrating her 8th birthday.

it all began this year with a formal request for attendance. we had fun making these personalized invitations this is all i can share given each invitation had the guests name "engraved" on it...they were so sweet though.

we made this newspaper bunting thanks to the marvelous mayamade for her creativity again!

many of the attendees are huge potter fans...we did have a few that do not live and breathe potter so i wanted to make sure that we had robes (in this case capes) my quick and affordable solution was to purchase some inexpensive black felt and i cut it into pieces that were about 25x35 and about 5 inches down on the long side i sewed a 14 inch black gross grain ribbon on each side to use as a tie. they were so quick (even for me) and they worked great. they were actually much cooler for the girls than the robes.

hermione granger was practicing her flying before the guests arrived.

airborne!!!

my husband and i enjoy harry potter as much as my daughter. we came up with some fun activities. of course they took a very small fraction of the time we thought that they would and also a very small fraction of the time that it took us to put it together. all three of us have been talking about what we could do for weeks now, here is what made it to the day.

we decided to do a treasure hunt using port-keys to move you from one clue to the next!

this boot was the first port-key. my husband wrote great poems for them so that they could find each of the port-keys

my daughter told us today that they didn't really pay much attention to the poems...they just wanted to find the next port-key. sometimes the honesty is appreciated...sometimes not!

the final clue led them to this suitcase. inside they found the makings for wands from mr.ollivander!
they found the wands that my husband and i carefully prepared for them to personalize with colored tape and ribbons...once the wand had chosen them of course.
all the wood was found in our yard and my husband cut them down to size. they were all carefully labeled with the type of wood and the core ingredient, the length of each wand was also included.

this new wand looks so much more authentic than that plastic wand. we also had potions making class...my husband was the very stern professor severus snape. we used different types of juice and unusual berries and coconut for the ingredients. our secret ingredient was pop rocks to add at the end for a little magic! most of the potions were very tasty. i can't say that the girls drank many of them but i did. they were really more interested in concocting. too bad they missed out on some very powerful magic. my husband printed out the names of all the potions that were discussed in the books so that they could name them. my husband also showed them what happened when they put baking soda and vinegar together.

we also held an herbology class where the kids took interesting looking succulent plants and cacti and replanted them in clay pots. my husband labeled each of the plant with a name and definition of a plant from the book, as the kids replanted i read each of the descriptions and we did a few trivia questions about the herbs from the books.

we found some bertie botts every flavor beans the girls had fun trying some really gross tasting jelly beans~gravy, fish, cheese, sausage, onion and banana. i was just given a pizza...how'd they do that? it really tastes like pizza in a really gross sweet way. ewwww! they spared us earwax, vomit and buggers this time (we have had all of these before-really gross).

we had some of the yummy jelly bellies too.

i made these parchment sewn bags again thanks to another great idea from mayamade. when she posted this i thought oh my, i can use this in so many ways. thank you maya i love these.

i made these bags to put chocolate frogs that i made from a mold. (i found a better mold that i will have a link to on the sidebar) and harry potter collecting cards in to give to the girls. i always loved the idea of the chocolate frog from the book how it would jump away.

hermione had a great day! thanks for all who shared it with us.

another thoughtful idea from soulemama

thursday night we took the kids to dinner and belly dancing

friday night we had my aunt over for homemade pizza friday and played some high stakes euchre check out the sweet breast cancer playing cards by bicycle.

the 1st day of spring was so wonderful.

we had beautiful weather here which was so excited especially since rain was predicted.

my daughter and her friend were out most of the day playing harry potter making potions and casting spells.

later they went to an egg hunt to celebrate the spring equinox, that is going to have its own post.

i was trilled to work in the yard. after the construction here last year we did not have much chance to work in the yard. we had some grass seed sprayed, but as you can see we are going to need more seed this year. we did have the whole back yard regraded last summer and a french drain installed so we don't have our typical lake in the back yet.

i'm on a search for good non-gmo popcorn. i found this amish grown red and blue popcorn. i thought it was really tasty a bit firmer popped (which i really like) and fewer hulls to get stuck in your teeth and throat. the yellow is the jarred non-gmo that you can find at the grocery store.

this is a shot of saturday evening a new egg laying bunny, guiness and harry potter 7.

here's my girl coloring and listening to harry potter while keeping warm on the floor vent, it was cooler here today. let's just say most of sunday was devoted to harry potter 7...we're so close to the end, in the last 100 pages.

my sweet was in the craft room with me when i was sewing on granny's purse strap and found some yarn the next thing i knew the big balls of yarn, well the mama ball anyhow, started to have some babies... this has been going on for 3 days now. the old yarn stash has come out and they have made several trips over to the neighbors in the sewing machine carrying cases aka the yarn family home.

love how they can find joy in the basics. love the imagination. makes me sit here and smile to think of it.

we were invited to watch the rochester redwings play a game. the great treat was we were going to be watching it from 8 stories up!

we had so much fun. what a beautiful night. we began the birthday celebration for my dear mother-in-law. we even had an amazing show of fireworks.

by the time we left we were all very tired but had not had dinner so we stopped at a diner and had breakfast at 10:30 a first for sweet pea. she loved it.