My daughter loves Harry Potter so I just HAD to do a Harry Potter party for her 11th birthday. A month or so before her birthday I spent hours trawling the internet for ideas and we formed a plan. The party was held at home and on a tight budget so we made as many of the decorations as we could ourselves. The party was a great success so I though I’d share our Harry Potter party ideas with you here.
Invitations
I used Canva to design these fab scroll style party invitations. Canva is brilliant for designing things like this as you can literally edit everything. You can choose whatever background, logos and font you like to totally customise it to your own design. We cut out the scroll shapes and put them in envelopes. These were sealed with a false wax seal (printed on paper from google).
Decorations
To decorate the house we started with a sign to go on the front door. I hand drew the outline of the design in pencil and then went over it with Sharpie pens. We then put two balloons in Griffindor colours on the door above it.
In the lounge we hung up some bunting (fabric bunting hand made by my mum years ago) and added a few touches such as eyeballs in an old glass jar, rat skeleton, etc. We collected bird feathers on a walk and spray painted them gold. I then cut the tips to insert a pen nib and put them in an inkwell on the mantle. I also hung an envelope addressed to Harry Potter in the fire place, as a nod to the scene where lots of Hogwarts letters come flying down the chimney into the Dursley’s lounge.
Upstairs in the toilet I put a picture of Moaning Myrtle on the toilet lid! The kids found this absolutely hilarious, however don’t forget it’s there and give yourself a fright!
In another area of the lounge I set up a back drop to look like Platform 9 and 3/4. I used a sponge and some paint on brown paper to make the brick effect. I drew around a dinner plate to make the platform sign and used Sharpie pens for the writing. We borrowed an old trunk and bird cage from my parents. I put a soft toy owl in the cage and added a Griffindor cloak which I picked up second hand for £1. It looked fab for photos!
Activities
To keep the kids entertained I printed off a free Harry Potter party bingo game and laminated the sheets. We’ve kept this game and regularly play it as a family. Even 3 year old Baby Bear loves to play it! I found the game here: https://funmoneymom.com/harry-potter-bingo
Next we used a glue gun to make designs on our wands and left them to dry before spray painting them black, silver or gold. The wands were simply sticks that we picked up on our dog walks but once spray painted they looked so effective! I had also printed off labels with descriptions of wands from Ollivander’s Wand Shop. The descriptions were things like ‘Dragons heart string, phoenix feather, etc and the length of the wand. The children each chose a label to go on their wand and these were added to their party bags to take home.
Our third activity was Professor Snape’s potion class. The kids loved making slime potions (personally I hate the stuff, haha!). We found a ‘recipe’ for making slime online and bought the ingredients. I also picked up some cheap plastic bowls with lids from Poundland (£1 for a pack of 10) and spray painted them black to look like mini cauldrons. The kids had a cauldron each with their name on and used this to mix their ingredients and make their own slime. I used Canva to make the potion sheets below (although this ‘potion’ didn’t work very well so I’d recommend finding a better one!).
Finally our last activity was playing ‘pin the scar on Harry Potter’. I hand drew a simple picture of Harry’s face and then a load of lightning strike scars. We wrote the children’s names on the scars so we knew whose was whose once they were pinned on his head. This game was great fun and had everyone in fits of giggles. It was so simple to make yet the kids loved it and played several rounds. It now lives on the wall in my daughter’s bedroom. For the winners prizes for this game and the Harry Potter bingo I managed to find bags of lightning strike gummy sweets in Poundland which were perfect!
Food
I set up the table in our dining area to look like a banquet table in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. This was complete with candelabra centrepiece (borrowed from my parents) and witches hats for the kids to wear while they ate. The food was a normal party buffet of sandwiches, chicken nuggets, nibbles, fruit, etc. The Slytherin cake was made by my mum (Custom Cakes Didcot).
Party Bags
The party bags we made were certainly a labour of love. They were so worth the effort though as they looked fab. We managed to get some large brown paper bags from a local take away. I used Sharpie pens and coloured card to make them look like Harry Potter wearing his Griffindor scarf. For his glasses I simply drew round a cup. I think they looked brilliant! I bought a load of gold Lindt chocolates and printed off some little wings to stick on them so they looked like golden snitches. These went in the party bags along with a little Harry Potter notebook, eraser and pencil (from B&M), the wands we made, some popping candy, plus a bag of chocolate coins with a Gringotts Bank label on them. Lots of cute little touches which made it all a little more special.
I hope you find these Harry Potter party ideas useful. There are so many easy ways to make this theme look great with minimal effort. Raid your Halloween decorations and fancy dress outfits. I love all our handmade decorations and many of them are now displayed in my daughter’s bedroom! We had some kids at the party who didn’t know much about Harry Potter but they still really enjoyed it. The party went down a storm!
