Adult Harry Potter Birthday Party

Months ago I was chatting to my cousin who was just about to go to a 16th birthday party which was Harry Potter themed. I got really excited (obviously) and started giving her ideas of different things and asked lots of questions.

I really really wanted a Harry Potter birthday party for myself,  I *love* Harry Potter and have done ever since I was given the first book as a Christmas present when I was about 8. I would read them over and over, and queued up for several of the midnight book launches, devouring them as fast as I could. So it is safe to say that I am quite a huge fan.  After lamenting the fact that I wanted one but didn't think I could I thought "Rachel, you are 24 years old. If you want a Harry Potter birthday party, have a Harry Potter birthday party" and that was it, the idea was born.

I cautiously broached the idea with my closest friends over the next few weeks, and after seeing how excited they all got at the idea, it was decided. For my 25th birthday I would be decorating my house as Hogwarts and my friends would come over for a party in fancy dress!

To decorate the house I first designated each room to be a room of Hogwarts, so my living room was Gryffindor Tower, the downstairs loo was Moaning Myrtles bathroom, the drinks area was Potions Class, the bathroom was the Prefects bathroom and the shed in the garden was Hagrid's Hut. There were far more rooms but I don't want to give you all of them, I'm sure you can imagine the rest!

I set about making signs for the doors, unfortunately I don't have a picture of the finished ones, they were just printed out using the parchment background in Word and stuck on some cardboard. As the living room was Gryffindor Tower, I thought it was only right that I made a notice board (I may have been listening to Order of The Phoenix at the time which talks about the notice board a lot). It is simply a standard cork notice board on which I printed out a lot of the signs that are mentioned in the books - word for word - and some others, using genuine Gryffindor students names and book titles.

To get Sirius' head in the fire I printed out the biggest picture of him I could find and cut off the white border. To make it not curl at the edges my Mother-in-law to be suggested taping a skewer to the behind of the picture at the bottom, which worked perfectly as you can see. Just had to remember not to turn the fire on whilst it was there!

When I ordered a wand from eBay for Rich to use, it came with the letter Harry got and it gave me the idea of creating an Owlery in the hall where I normally put my post. The cookie jar owl and stuffed one I already owned, and one of my lovely colleagues lent me her Hedwig rucksack which she stuffed full so it would stay upright, and kindly made me a letter. It is fantastic, it uses many in jokes from work, which is why I am not showing you the inside as I would have to do a lot of explaining so it would make sense. That letter is something I am keeping forever though!

Costume time! For Rich I bought his tie (and mine) from eBay, along with his wand. We had a last minute dash to Primark to get his cardigan and trousers and he already had his white shirt and specs. I bought a cheap lip liner to use for his scar (which you can just about see in the picture) which lead to me standing in Boots drawing all over his arm in the testers to see which colour would show up the best! I hope you can tell that he was Harry, it seemed the obvious choice due to his specs and dark hair, even though he is quite a bit taller than Daniel Radcliffe!

For myself I already had the white shirt, black skirt, tights and wand required to be Hermione, along with the brown bushy hair! My tie was bought with Rich's and I bought a robe from Amazon, but it was a very hot evening so it didn't stay on for long.

My friends Jen and Cat came as Tonks and Bellatrix, including some colourful hair (also known as feathers) for Tonks and the dark mark tattoo for Bellatrix.

Dean came as Lupin, and Ollie came as a dementor, which was a fantastic idea!

Emma came as Ginny Weasley, even going to the trouble of tinting her hair red for the occasion, and bringing Tom Riddle's diary to write in with her quill!

I love that all of my friends went to such a great effort for my party, we had such a brilliant time, and I am now looking for another excuse to dress up as Hermione, anywhere!

Sorry this post has been a bit picture heavy, and the quality of them isn't that great, tipsy phone photo taking isn't my forte!

Rachel x