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One of my most popular posts on the blog is my Harry Potter party! But it is a really long post with a daunting amount of detail. So I’m working on breaking it down into more bite size chunks. Today I’ll cover just the decorations.
For our Harry Potter Party I focused the decorations in two areas: my entryway which I tried to transform into an area where the kids could be sorted and then get a wand and broom (so I guess a Diagon Alley type feel). And then my dining room which I tried my best to transform into the Great Hall at Hogwarts.
Sorting Hat Station
When the kids arrived the very first thing we did was sort them into their houses. We did this by having them each pick a “sorting hat” that I made out of ice cream cones and opening to reveal either red or blue m&ms. You can read all the details about that in this blog post. After they were sorted into their houses they were given their appropriate house scarf and then were allowed to pick a wand and a broom.
I used items I could gather from around my house and from friends, including a fun vintage suitcase from my mother in law for the scarves to go in. You can read more about how I made the wands and brooms in my full Harry Potter party post.
The wands I made out of chopsticks, hot glue and spray paint and had fun labeling each of them with their different “cores”. The brooms are all “firebolts” and looked the same. But it made for a fun activity for them to be sorted and do their “shopping” as guests arrived. And it doubles as great decorations as they walked into the house.
The “owl” cage is a nice touch, don’t you think?
After they were sorted and decked out we had several activities including Muggle Quidditch which you can read about here. And then it was back inside to the Great Hall for lunch.
How to Create your Own Great Hall
To keep things simpler we only used two houses for the party: Gryffindor & Ravenclaw. This also made it simpler when it came to decorating the Great Hall, as each house needed it’s own table and flag. The kids sat at their house tables, which were designated by the tablecloth being their house color. I wanted it to feel fancy so I splurged for real tablecloths rather than plastic ones. And actually they’ve come in handy a few more times for our Marvel party and our Ninjago party.
I also used golden chargers and goblets to keep the fancy feel going. The flags I thought about making, but when I found some on amazon I thought nevermind forget that! I also hung floating candles from fishing line so that when the lights were off it looked like they were floating. It was around Halloween time so I also grabbed some cheesy looking ghosts from the dollar store that I hung in the corners.
A closer look at the individual place settings will show that we had chocolate frogs (made with this mold) and personalized sorting hats. I got witches hat ornaments from the dollar store (similar here) and then painted them brown. Then I used my cricut to add the sorting hat facial features and the names in gold. Of course I used the Harry Potter font. I then tied the hats onto their little silverware bundle.
I had some gold fancy looking pillar things I found at Salvation Army that I used for my centerpieces and stuck a candle on top. If I remember right I waited until the kids were sorted and busy doing one of the activities to tie the sorting hats on the right color table.
And the dessert table was the perfect focal point for our Great Hall decorations. The beautiful cake was made by my mother in law and we had some house cupcakes to go along with it. We also had saved some of the packaging from our trip to Harry Potter world in Universal so that was a nice touch to the table.
Many of the printables shown, including a happy birthday banner similar to this, are available in my Harry Potter Party Pack which you can add to cart with the button below. Thanks so much for your support!
