Magical Foods

You can't have a Harry Potter themed party without Harry Potter themed foods!  The internet is full of ideas inspired by the foods mentioned in the books.

What I did
This was our menu for snacks at the party, our "feast" in the "Great Hall"
huffle puffs aka purchased cream puffs
pretzel wands aka pretzel rods
dragoned eggs aka deviled eggs
herbology tray aka veggie tray
butterbeer
pumpkin pasties
cauldron cakes

We did some research several weeks earlier, testing out different butterbeer recipes.  One recipe we made had sweetened condensed milk in it.  It was very tasty, but it got gross after sitting out a few minutes.  We wanted something that would hold up and this recipe was it.





Butterbeer
2 liters cream soda
add butterscotch sauce (icecream topping) to taste
ice (optional)

My dear mother in law made the pumpkin pasties.  She made pie crusts and made mini semi circle pies with pumpkin pie filling.

The cauldron cakes were our birthday cake.  I made mini cupcakes and stuck them inside the plastic cauldrons.  Two mini cupcakes fill them well.  I made some vanilla buttercream frosting and used a pampered chef frosting tool to put a little frosting between the cupcakes and on the top.

No Harry Potter party would be complete without the snack trolley and it's magical sweets!  I bought small white paper bags to use as goody bags and created a Honeydukes label for them.  I found this font online, googling for "retro fonts."

Our snack trolley had
Bertie Botts every flavor beans aka Jelly bellies
licorice wands aka twizzlers
exploding candies aka Pop Rocks
jellied bugs aka gummy bugs
chocolate frogs

My mother in law and sister in law made the chocolate frogs the night before the party.  They decided to give them a marshmallow fluff  (dyed green) filling and they were delicious!

What I'd do differently
I would probably buy some frosting to save time.  The homemade frosting got a bit hard as well.  I really wanted to have the snack trolley set up all cute like, but it was a little too tempting for some of the kids who got into the treats we wanted them to take home.  I did end up packing the goody bags instead of letting the kids do it themselves.  I'd also get a different flavor of twizzlers, most kids don't like the black licorice.


Sources
plastic cauldrons, pop rocks, gummy bugs- Oriental Trading Company
frog mold- Amazon
chocolate melts- Michael's

party prep
Hogwarts activities post

Harry Potter Party PreparationsI

My oldest loves Harry Potter and she was so excited to have a day at Hogwarts themed birthday party.  I did a lot of looking online for ideas. An entire blog could be devoted to just Harry Potter party ideas.  I found a lot of cute ideas for invitations, activities, and food.  I'll share what we did  for food and activities in separate posts.

Planning the party~
Invites: With some input from my daughter, I decided to buy some cute Harry Potter clipart on etsy to use to make invitations.  Buying just the clipart and designing my own invitations was less expensive than buying a set of invites/decorations.  I liked having more control over it as well.   It took a little bit of time, but I think it came out pretty well.  Buying the clipart also gave me the freedom to use the images for other things like the food tags and goody bag logos.  The back side of the invites said "Come spend a day at Hogwarts to celebrate Jaide's 8th birthday (date, time, address)  After classes, we will celebrate with a feast of treats in the great hall.  We await your owl by no later than July 14th or RSVP by muggle phone or email (our phone number and email)"

Wands: A long time ago, I read online the idea of making wands filled with glitter.  I bought some cute paper straws in a few of the Hogwarts' house colors.  It would have been cooler if I could have found red and gold striped straws, but these ones worked just fine.  I had some special helpers, three of my sister in laws, to assemble the wands the night before the party.  The method we came up with for making the wands was to wad up a small piece of tissue paper, dip it in mod podge and stuff it in one end of the straw.  Once that dried, we used a piece of paper rolled up like a funnel to fill them up with glitter.  When the kids chose their wands, they gave it a shake and out came the glitter!  We had some fun testing it out the night before.

Gryffindor

Ravenclaw

Decorations: I bought sheets of felt in the house colors (red and gold, blue and silver, gold and black, and green and silver).  I planned to make some kind of decoration out of the felt, but ran out of time.  My dear mother in law stepped in and made some adorable bunting.  She measured out triangles on the felt, cut them out and then sewed them on to some string alternating colors, making one bunting for each house.  She used a zig zag stitch.  The bunting looked so good, I still have it up. Eventually it will go up in Jaide's room. I made several class schedules to hang in the various rooms we'd be using and I made signs so people knew what rooms they were (the Great Hall, the Dungeon, and the Divination Tower for example).

What I'd do differently
I should have done more in advance (we were a bit busy with the family reunion right before).  Most of the preparations got left until the night before or morning before.  I was very lucky to have family here to help.  If I'd had a little more time, I might have made a few more decorations.

Sources
striped paper straws- http://sweetsandtreatsboutique.com/
clip art- etsy
free harry potter fonts http://members.outpost10f.com/~lindax/harrypotter/fonts.html

food post
Hogwarts activities

House Tour: in conclusion- Basement and Backyard B&A

The basement was a very dark forest green when we bought the house.  With one tiny window and just about zero built in lighting, it was insanely dark down there.  

the paint that eats light!

That was the first space we painted.  We picked a light gray color which I believe was a Glidden color called iceburg.

after #1

the finale

I got that entertainment center from Ikea as-is section for just $50!  The only ding was on the very bottom.  Since we would have had to disassemble it to get it out, we left it for the new guys.  

Other items:  wall shelves and brackets, white and brown boxes, gateleg table (another awesome deal!), accent chair, office chair, floor lamp, book case, magazine holders, and floral print art- Ikea.  storage ottoman- target.com.  vinyl plank flooring and area rug- Home Depot.  baskets and picture frames- Michael's

The backyard was a pain in the butt.  When we moved in, it had drainage issues and a ton of large plastic kid stuff left behind from the previous owners.  We enjoyed the kid stuff, but before we listed, it had to go.  Over the years we worked to improve the drainage in the back yard.  We made a few other changes: replacing the hvac system (I would have thought the new outdoor unit would be smaller than the old one, shows what I know), making a garden, building a deck, adding a rock area, and replacing the porch light (after these pics were taken apparently, oh well).  

before

 after

the neighbor extended the fence, can't take credit for that one

 another angle

after

The bistro set is from (you guessed it) Ikea.  The doormat is from Home Depot.  We hired out to build the deck, but the rest we did ourselves.  The raised garden bed is made from an old door frame and an extra piece of wood to finish it off.  I got some cedar edging from Home Depot to put around it to make it look a little nicer. The flowers, veggies, and two little arbor vitae were from a great spring sale at Home Depot.  They all did remarkably well and are all still around (except the lettuce which is all eaten, mostly by us even).  

And there you have, six years of work in three blog posts!  Now we get to start over again :)

house tour part 1, house tour part 2

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House Tour part 2: Upstairs Before and After

The upper floor of the house only has three rooms (including the bathroom) and a hallway, but we sure found ways to do a lot of work up there. When we moved in, my husband and I took the big room and our daughter was in the little room. The little room was originally Pooh Bear yellow with Winnie the Pooh wallpaper borders and clings.

We kept it that way for a long time. I painted the master bedroom a sea green color (oops paint) one wall at a time. After our second daughter was born and entered toddlerhood, we decided to switch rooms with the girls.

I had a hard time deciding on a color. I had a plethora of paint chips. I finally decided on a Martha Stewart paint color called Full Sail.

I never got around to blogging about this project, so here are some of the during pictures

To maximize our storage space in the small room, we got PAX storage units from Ikea. We found all the doors and drawer fronts in the as-is section. They were all new in the package, I guess they were just trying to clear them out. The big doors were $3.99 rather than like $100! After building the PAX units, we had more storage space in the little room than in the two closets of the MBR combined!

After

Eventually, we figured out that switching back would make more sense for staging the house to sell.

After After

After the first switcheroo, the big room became the girls' bedroom/playroom. It went through a few different configurations, eventually ending up with bunk beds (that really opened up some space for play!)

Befores and Afters in the big room

The paint color in the master bedroom was a mix of a gallon of blue oops paint, a gray oops paint sample, some left over light blue oops paint I had bought a while back, and some flat white paint.

I added a bit of white semi gloss before painting the bathroom with it. I'm pleased with how it turned out. I left some touch up paint for the new residents and took the 5 gallon bucket of the rest with us!

Bathroom before

after

Sources: Small room-- PAX wardrobe system, all bedding excluding euro shams, end table, boxes above wardrobe, under bed basket, and blinds- Ikea, bunk beds- BJs, lamp, curtain, and curtain rods- Walmart

Master Bedroom-- ceiling fan-Lowes, bed skirt, head board, ottoman, and lamp shades- Target, all other bedding, picture frames, end tables, book case, floor lamp, accessories, and throw- Ikea, baskets-Michaels, table lamps and chair- thrift store

Bathroom-- towels- jcpenny.com, shower curtain-Target, light fixture- Home Depot, glass shades- Lowes, towel rod and toilet paper holder- ReStore, frame around mirror- hand cut and built by me with end cap trim from home depot, painted with bronze spray paint.

part 1 of the house tour,

next up- the basement and backyard

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House Tour: A Before and After nearly six years in the making

We did it! We sold our house!

What a journey it has been. When we were getting the house ready, I figured I'd blog about all the projects once they were done, then I was so busy cleaning and keeping the house looking nice while it was on the market that I didn't.

I also got quite discouraged while we on the market. Getting an offer, then having the buyer back out was also pretty discouraging. But we did a lot better than a lot of the people trying to sell in our neighborhood. I think all the work we did made a big difference.
So did having good pictures in our listing. Our realtor hired a photographer and all the after pictures here are her work.

Without further ado, here is part one of the house tour, the main floor.

All of the before pictures were taken way back in 2005 when we were barely starting to move stuff in. Yeah, we bought in 2005, and yes we did lose $$.

The kitchen is the first thing you see in this house.

I blogged about painting the kitchen cabinets here and about the flooring here and here.

I wrote about the fake board and batten here and the trimmed out ledge (up the stairs) here.

I couldn't find a good before picture of this part of the kitchen. We used to have a big book case here that was always overflowing with junk and looking terrible.

We made the table with a butcher block countertop and four adjustable table legs all from Ikea. The light shade, the wall cabinet and many of the accessories inside it are also from Ikea. The barstools are from walmart.com.

The dining room beforeand after

The chandelier, bench, table, and chair covers are from Ikea. The chandelier shades are from jcpenny.com. All of the floor mats are from LLBean.

The living room, before we moved in any furniture

way after

The curtain rod, drapes, and lamp are from Ikea. The sheers and the art is from JCPenny. The print pillows were on clearance at Target. The brown pillows are pillow covers made from napkins. The plastic film on the window panes of the door and the laminate flooring are both from homedepot.com.

*edited to add- for those interested in the paint color, it is Soft Yellow from Glidden (we bought it a few years back, so I don't know if it's still called that).

Next up: Part 2- The upper floor

part 3-basement and backyard

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