Harry Potter 7 Movie Premiere Party

I have been a Harry Potter fan forever; since the first book was published.  I've never gone as far as waiting in a long line in a Hagrid costume at Barnes and Noble at midnight, but I will admit to trying out a few spells in the privacy of my living room just to see if I might be a witch.  (I was SO hoping I was, so I could go teach at Hogwarts.  No luck.)  I could've totally used the Alohomora spell when Charlotte locked me into Gavin's bedroom.

Lucky for me, I have two students in my class who love HP and a good craft as much as I do.  This week, we held secret lunch meetings and planned a surprise "Harry Potter premiere party" for the rest of the class.  The good news:  the other kids were surprised and delighted.  The bad news:  I totally forgot my camera.  These iPhone shots will have to do.

We used small garden stakes (cut in half, with the point cut off) and paper bags to make little broom pins.  We cut the paper bags into thirds, and then cut a fringe and rolled it up.  Then, we tied black yarn around the paper bag for effect.  I added a dab of hot glue to the stake before putting it into the paper bag, and affixed a pin to the back with hot glue too.

Pretzel rods made great-looking wands.  I actually bought white chocolate morsels to melt and dip the end of the pretzel rod in (I thought it would look more wand-like) but I was too tired last night to follow through.  Sorry, kids!

Jelly Bellies fit the bill for Bernie Bott's Every Flavor Beans.  Alas, no earwax flavor.

And what's a party without some Butter Beer?

I'm going to admit, I had a teensy bit of trouble letting the kids make the brooms and do the design work with little help from me.  I'm a bit of a perfectionist in that area, but was super-proud of myself that I was able to step back and let the kids create.  And they did a fantastic job, right?  :)

Hope you Muggles are able to get out there and see the movie!  

Nathan's Fire Truck Party

Even though it's going to be a small gathering, we still decided to have a "theme" for Nathan's second birthday.  Since he's starting to get into trucks, particularly fire trucks, we decided that would be easy enough.

I designed the invitation using a fire truck graphic from  JW Illustrations. Jessica does terrific clip art. It only cost $1.00 to download, bringing the total cost of the invitation to a whopping: $1.00.

More details are coming!