One of my favorite details about Hogwarts was the floating candles in the Great Hall. To recreate that I used those battery operated candles you see around Christmas. You've probably seen them before. The neat thing about them is you can put them in your own candle holders, turn the switch on at 5pm, and every day they will come on at 5pm and stay on for about 5 hours. The batteries last for months, so even in the cold, dark days of January they still come on to cheer your evenings. I got my first batch years ago from the Lillian Vernon catalog, but I've since found them online
here.
To get the Great Hall effect, I took them out of their holders, tied thread around the bulbs and suspended them from the ceiling of my dining room with clear pushpins. I was quite happy with them and I think the Fat Lady was too.
The invitations were printed in green ink using a font I found online called
Hogwarts. I tried to use similar verbage to Harry's first acceptance letter. And I tried to address each one using descriptive terminology for each kid's bedroom. If we had no idea about their bedroom we used
the Cupboard under the Stairs.
When the guests arrived they had the option to don the Sorting Hat and be assigned a house. We had several stickers for each house, but the Gryffindor stickers seemed to be the most popular.
We also found some Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans and gave them as prizes. They are always fun. The flavors seem to change over the years. I remember getting a dirt flavored one before and I heard there was earwax and vomit too, but this year the icky ones were FISH, CHEESE, ONION, PEPPER, GRAVY, and SAUSAGE. And yes, they really taste like their names.
And Ollivander (Teen2) made a little display of wands that guests could borrow.
I hope you enjoyed visiting our Harry Potter theme Halloween party. Now, who's excited about November 19th? I know we are!
Just had to share a few more photos from the Halloween party. Above is Myrtle before she was Moaning.
Here are spiders fleeing the castle. Remember Ron saying, "Spiders! Why does it have to be spiders? Why couldn't it be 'follow the butterflies'?"
Here are two cute students. They perfectly illustrate that costumes needn't be difficult or expensive to be effective.
Oh, here is one of my favorite costumes. She is Tonks with the pink hair and pig snout. Too cute!
These two photos show the party in the Gryffindor Common Room after they won the Quiddich cup. The music was loud, everyone was dancing, and I'm pretty sure some snogging was going on somewhere.
Here is one of the educational decrees that I (Umbridge) posted in the Entry Hall.
Here is Bellatrix LeStrange's dark mark. Pretty cool, eh?
