After the amazing feedback we received about our recent Harry Potter birthday celebrations, I thought it would be helpful to share our tips and tricks for anyone else planning a Potter party…

1. Letters from Hogwarts

This was the first surprise our daughter spotted as she came down the stairs on her 8th birthday.

We had so much fun setting it up. The letters come as a set from Amazon and includes 50 printed envelopes and stickers, plus the string and glue dots. The great thing is we only used about half the pack, so she has lots left to write to her friends.

2. Golden Snitches

So simple, yet so effective! We found a snitch wing template online and simply cut them out and stuck them on using the Ferrero Rocher stickers!

3. Platform 9 3/4

Walking through the wall and recreating that famous scene from Platform 9 3/4 was one of the most memorable parts of her birthday. All it took was a roll of brick wallpaper!

Simply hang two sheets of the brick wallpaper from your doorframe, leaving a slit in the middle to walk through.

The roll of wallpaper went a really long way, so we decided to use it on our kitchen cupboards too. This made a perfect backdrop for our afternoon tea (see below).

We searched Google images for the 9 3/4 sign and printed this off ourselves.

• 

• 

• 

4. Magic Wands

Mikado sticks make fantastic edible magic wands! You can normally find these for around £1 in most supermarkets. Warning – you can magically make the whole box disappear in around 1 minute!

5. Butterbeer

Really easy to make…

• Cream soda
• Butterscotch sauce
• Ice cream or whipped cream topping
• We added ice to make it extra cold

We already had a set of Irish coffee glasses, which looked just like the ones you see in the movies.

6. Potions

The potion bottles made a really fun element to our afternoon tea. I found the miniature glass bottles on eBay and used different coloured drinks to fill them up. One was cherryade, one was apple juice and the blue one was Don Simon lemon & raspberry juice.

The really tiny bottles I filled using sherbet straws. Again we found a potion label template online and scaled them down to the right size before printing. (The light up bottles came from Lidl).

7. Birthday Itinerary

We made a plan of lockdown birthday activities and printed it off using a font called: Parry Hotter, which we found online. We had fun making each activity tie in with Harry Potter scenes and characters. For example, we had a Yule Ball instead of a disco!

8. Harry Potter afternoon tea

I spent a LOT of time thinking about the details of this Harry Potter afternoon tea and looking for inspiration.

I wanted it to include a birdcage, as I’d already found a Hedwig plush to use as a prop from Smyths Toys. So I started looking for birdcage cake stands and I got lucky with the one below on eBay!

eBay is such a great place to find bargain party supplies. I also got the Harry Potter cupcake toppers on eBay, the Hogwarts house flags and a bag of chocolate frogs.

The jelly snakes were another favourite table decoration. These particular ones are Haribo ‘Yellow Bellies’. It was difficult to find just a couple to buy, so I ended up with a wholesale size box of them (much to my family’s delight!)

Her birthday cake we found in Morrisons for £12 and we added a personalised Harry Potter themed cake topper from… you guessed it eBay!

• 

• 

Altogether the day was fantastic. My daughter said to me the next day ‘it was amazing’ and that it was much better than she could have imagined!

That’s what we wanted. After a really unsettling year and not being able to visit the Harry Potter Studio Tour as she had wished for, we wanted to make her day as happy and as magical as possible.

If you’d like to see these Harry Potter birthday celebrations in action, head over to our Instagram page @Lewisfamilyblog and tap on the HP party highlight.

If you found this blog helpful or if you have any questions, we’d love to hear from you in the comments below…