A birthday celebration

Bianca really wanted a Harry Potter birthday party.  And for months this is what we've been thinking about and finally the big day arrived.  We booked the school hall because Bianca has so many friends.  Too many for our house and so the school hall was certainly a great option.  It has lots of space, has a kitchen right there, tables and chairs and all that we had to bring were - food, decorations and kids.

We couldn't do the party on Bianca's actual birthday which was on Saturday 18th June because currently on Saturdays she has netball in the morning and cheerleading in the afternoon and so we planned to do the party on Saturday 19th June.

On the morning of the 18th we woke Bianca up with presents, singing (happy birthday) and breakfast in bed.  That's sort of our tradition in our house.

Afterwards Bianca got ready for her netball match, but about 10 minutes later the netball teacher called to say the match was cancelled thanks to the rain, but it did give us a bit more of a relaxing morning.  After lunch we left to set up the hall.

Terence and Bianca left to go to cheerleading, but unfortunately Bianca got a coughing fit when she ran to the bathrooms.  And so Terence brought her back instead.

And then we went to Cobb 'n Co for dinner - another tradition in our house - when it is your birthday, you get to choose what we'll have for dinner, be it something special we make at home or somewhere special to go to and so Bianca decided she really wanted to go to Cobb 'n Co.  At the restaurant Bianca opened some more presents from South African family.

And then the party day arrived!  The day we've planned and worked towards for quite a while.

I made all the invitations to resemble Hogwarts acceptance letters.  Some parents actually joined in the fun and one parent sent a letter letting us know that their child would come to the party and on the envelope she wrote (by owl post) and another parent sent a text and ended it with (... their muggle mother) :-).

I found this cool website to make these paper wands.  They were so easy to make and I used 2 sheets of paper, 2 bamboo sticks (with the pointy bits cut off) because that made it easier to roll, a glue gun and some paint. 

When the kids arrived, they each got to choose their special wand:

We then sorted the kids into their tables with the sorting hat.  This was so much fun, I read out the names and Terence pre-recorded some suitable messages onto the ipad for when we put the hat on each child's head.

For lunch we simply had some sandwiches, sausage rolls and so on.  Nothing major.  And then it was time for candles and cake.  Bianca's teacher also came to the party - she insisted on inviting him to the party and he was such good sport - he even dressed up.  He brought his guitar and then we all sang happy birthday to Bianca.

 

I then chose some ordinary games with a Harry Potter spin on it.

For the quidditch game - I painted a bunch of polystyrene balls black (bludgers), brown (quaffles) and golden (a golden snitch).  I put all the balls into a box with a hole cut into each side. The idea with this was that the kids would stand in 2 circles and pass a ball to each other until the music stops and then when the music stopped, the one with the ball in their hand would run to the box and choose a ball.  The team that manages to find the golden snitch would then be the winning team.

The other game that we had in mind was a Tag you're it kind of game.  We called it the defence against the dark arts game as in Harry Potter or "freeze you're it".  Basically the kids would all stand in a designated area and then one child wearing a party hat is the wizard.  The wizard then have to tap a child with his / her wand saying a special magic spell and then that would make the person "freeze".  The person can only be unfrozen when one of the other kids crawl underneath the frozen kids' legs saying their magic spell.

Our friend Mike also came up with another fun game where the kids had to keep a balloon in the air using only their wands:

And some or the other game using a balloon:

Part of the entertainment was that the kids would watch Harry Potter 1 and for the movie I found this cool website and made these owl bags for the movie treats.  It was simply a brown paper bag with some paper decorations making it look like owls.

Inside each bag I put some popcorn, some jelly beans, some jelly snakes and a chocolate frog.

Bianca got to open her presents:

And then right at the end the kids each got a little bag and a balloon.  Each little bag contained a little thank you note from Bianca, some star glitter and a stone I painted using red paint a glitter - a philosopher / sorcerer stone :-)

 All in all, it was such an incredibly fun party.  And now I'm leaving you with this photos of my beautiful girls:

 

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