Harry Potter Nerd Alert

I admit it, I'm a HUGE Harry Potter nerd. I have devoured the books and have been to the midnight showing of most of the movies. I have a couple of good friends here who are cool like me (28 year olds can love HP!) so I decided to throw a party before the LAST movie. I am really sad that it's all over but that is a whole other story...

I really didn't want to go crazy with the decorations but when I looked around in stores, there was NOTHING! I mean nothing. No plates, buttons, cups or anything. So, I decided to make my own.

I bought felt from the craft store and printed the crests on photo paper and then just cut them out. Lots of hot glue later and you have house banners!

I also made these larger banners to hang from the ceiling. The felt was super cheap so I think each banner was like $1 or something. I just free handed the letters and tried to make them look a little more "Potterish" by adding the points at the tops of each one.

This was blurry because it was already getting dark. For the snitches, I took a bunch of ping pong balls and sprayed them gold (this was really hard to do PS). I put pins in the top of each one and then attached fishing line. Once they were dry, I took gold foil cupcake wrappers and made them into the wings. I was proud of myself for this idea :)

I'm a big cupcake fan but I couldn't think of how I wanted to make them HP themed. So, what I did was pour the batter into all of the cups and then I put food coloring gel in the center and swirled it with a tooth pick. I made 6 of each color (4 different houses).

Because I used the rest of the gold wrappers, once they were frosted, you couldn't tell what color they were. This is very important. These are now called "Sorting Hat cupcakes" I came up with this on my own too. :) I also made the sorting hat by fashioning the eyes and mouth and then putting a dab of hot glue to keep the shape.

I had the sorting hat next to a tray of cupcakes, one of each color. Each person had to put on the sorting hat and then pick a cupcake. When she broke it in half, she saw the color of the cupcake and that was the house she was in. Pretty brilliant, right? I thought so. :)

Brooke was Slytherin!

Everyone loved the idea of being sorted, it made the party really fun.

Here are the rest of the decorations. We had goblin dip (like a taco dip), there was candy from Honeydukes and even Hedwig's cage. If you want any specifics on how I made things, let me know!

It was a really fun party and I would love to do it again!

The gals that went to the midnight showing!