For my 14th Birthday Party this year, i decided to have a HP theme because i am a HUGE fan and the 7th movie came out exactly a month before my birthday. 

1. Invitations-  HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY, Headmistress: Minerva McGonagall. Dear Miss ______________ We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Due to damages caused by the recent Battle of Hogwarts, a muggle house is being disguised as the school. We are holding a special evening for selected fourth year students in honour of ____'s birthday. This begins promptly on *date*, *time* at *address*. Please make necessary travel arrangements (appration, Hogwarts Express, muggle car or Portkey). The night will commence at *time*. Please come in wizarding attire and bring a broomstick & wand. We await your owl or muggle tellyfoney (*your phone number*) by no later than *a date at least a week before the party*.   Yours sincerely, Minerva McGonagall, headmistress   I delivered these at school, but sending them via post would be really cool too.  

2.Decoration- My favourite house is Gryffindor, so the theme was obviously red and gold. I got streamers and ballons at the $2 Shop and a gold and white tablecloth. The cutlery and plates were all red. I also painted the Gryffindor Crest on white fabric and hung that in the living room. I was planning to paint a potrait of the Fat Lady" and pin that to my front door but didn't have time. I had the Harry Potter theme song playing from the iPod dock.  *Common room/lounge* Streamers balloons chess set Harry Potter books various encyclopedias and old fashioned books Gryffindor banner throw rugs and cushions.  *Dining room* More balloons goblets fairylights/ christmas lights.  *Garage/Room of Requirement* Random junk and overall messy look. *Study/ Divination classroom* Cushions on the floor candles dim lighting fairylights 

3. Activites/Games- As the guests arrived (around 5-5:30) I got them to guess how many jellybeans were in a jar. Unfortunately these were regular jellybeans and not Bertie Botts (which aren't available in NZ). They also collected the quills I made (hot glue a feather onto a pencil) and if required a wand.

Our first activity was quidditch. This was played at my old middle school which is a five minute walk from my house. We didn't have a seeker but used a netball as the Quaffle and soft spongey balls as bludgers. This version of quidditch is like a combination of basketball and dodgeball. You could only catch and throw with one hand (your other is holding the broom). If you get hit with a bludger you had to bob down for a certain amount of time. 10 points for every quaffle into the hoop.

After that we came back home and had Potions. I was the proffessor at my party because my parents don't know that much about Harry Potter. All the guests were girls so we made a Love potion. This is a combination of Raspberry soda (Bats Blood) Lemonade (Frog Spit) Raro (NZ version of Kool-Aid which i renamed crushed Flamingo bones) Strawberry Essence (Basilisk Venom). We pretty much mixed everything together. It was really cool cause when u stir in the Raro the whole thing fizzed up.

After Potions we went outside for Charms. We practiced the Lumos and Nox spells. There is this light which has a switch in the dining room so my dad stood inside and I instructed my friends to yell "lumos" and "nox". I gave them a demonstration and obviously it turned on the first time. When my friends tried it took them a couple of goes. It was hilarious and no one figured out how the light turned on cause there was no visible switch. Then we had dinner (I'll explain all this in my food section).

After that we had Defence against the dark arts. I wrote a bunch of characters on slips of paper and taped it onto everyones foreheads (they taped one on me too). I told them that each person had been put under the imperius curse and we needed them to figure out who they were so we could unjinx them. We sat in a circle and asked yes/no answer questions. It was so fun and lots of laughs.

Then we went upstairs for Divination. Here we read palms and read tea leaves. You can search online for basic palmistry and the tea leaves just needed a whole heap of imagination although you could find the meanings of certain symbols. The results were hilarious after my friends found a skull a person standing on a rock and someone falling off a treadmill LOL.

The last activity was Honeydukes where I had Licorice wands (Twizzlers) Droobles Best blowing gum Honeydukes Chocolate Cockroach clusters (chocolate covered raisins) Toffee Apples Fizzing Whizbees (Sherbet discs) Blood pops (red lollinpops) Mini Dragon eggs (egg shaped lollies) Pop Rocks Gummy snakes and Bears. This ended at 9pm when my friends all got picked up. While we were waiting we watched a couple of episodes of A Very Potter Musical on Youtube.  

4. Costumes- I wore a black robe red and gold striped tie grey cardigan white shirt and a grey skirt with black leather converse. One of my friends came as Luna and she wore mismatching converse. The others dressed up as Bellatrix (full black and teased hair) Lavender Brown (oversized bow and a hot pink cardi) a Slytherin (robes and green tie) and Astoria Greengrass aka Dracos wife (mainly muggle clothes and a wand).  

5. Party Snacks- We had dinner at my house cause the party was 5-9pm. We had pizza (hawaiian and meatlovers) which was called "Mrs. Weasleys homemade pizza". Witches bread (white bread butter and green food colouring spread and 100's & 1000's) curly fries chips (alien shaped lol) Herbology salad mix (mesclun bagged salad from the supermarket). We also had cookies during DADA. We drunk the rest of the "Love potion" and also had Raro/ Kool Aid.  

6. CAKE :D my mum made an icecream cake for me (even though my birthday is in the middle of winter). We got a 2L carton of icecream that had 4 flavours (goody goody gum drops chocolate coookies and cream and Vanilla)so there were 4 layers. The cake was quidditch themed so the goody goody gum drops was the top layer because it's green. We then sprinkled dessicated coconut which had been died with green food colouring. I got three skewers and stuck an O shaped gummy lolly on top for the hoops. The 14 candles went around the cake. Square wafers were stuck around the cake for decoration. It was really yum! Look online for the huge amount of recipes.  

7. Favours- the main part of favours was lollies from honeydukes which I explained above. They also took home a Cauldron Cake (chocolate cupcake with icing and licorice handle) a quill a clock (they were really pretty with dolphins and stuff around the edge) and a bottle of bubble solution.  

This was one of my favourite parties I've ever had. I had a HP party when I was 10 but I think this one was much better organized. I spent under $100 on this. Some tips are: *keep organized! I kind of left things to the last minute with decorating.  *if you are on a budget keep the reciepts of everything and add as you go. *look out for discounts at the supermarket and at party stores.  *look at the other submissions on this website (they are fantastic)and check out this website: http://www.britta.com/hogwarts/recipes.html   HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT PARTY :D "