Fandom Sweet Sixteen Party
It's finally here!!! The long LONG awaited sweet sixteen. I have literally been looking forward to having this birthday party since I was like eight, so planning and having everything come together has been amazing for me. I'm actually writing this blog post to the days leading up to the party, and then after the party I will complete the post and share pictures, so if I change tenses, please pardon me :)Just a reminder, I have geared this more towards teens, but if you wanted to make a Harry Potter birthday party for a younger child, this may help you out some too!
So first off were the invitations. I wanted to do Hogwarts acceptance letters as invitations, so I knew there was going to be a little bit more effort involved than a plain invitation. They were relatively easy to create, but first I had to get all the right fonts. To get the right fonts, I downloaded them from a free sight, which was super easy, they have all the fonts that are needed. To find out which fonts I should use, I just googled "Hogwarts acceptance letter font" and looked most at MuggleNet, which was super helpful. (I'll leave all the links that I used at the end of the post.) I did the standard set up for the Hogwarts acceptance letter, with a letter first from McGonagall (you can just get a picture of her signature from google) and then the supply list. All I did for the letter was change the arrival date and RSVP date to my desired date.
I used the fonts "Lumos" for the top, "Bell MT" for the Headmaster part, and "Acceptance Letter" for the actual letter.
The supply list I changed quite a bit so it gave all the information I needed to give (i.e. location, RSVP number, time, etc.) I used "Acceptance Letter" font for this part as well.
Since this was a fandom party, I tried to add Doctor Who and Hunger Games aspects into the letter. Since this was a no present party, I was able to add that in with the "Parents are reminded" part, and it worked out well.
For Platform 9 and 3/4 tickets, all I did was find a picture off Google of the ticket and print it onto tan paper. We then used double sided adhesive tape and taped them to the supply list at the bottom of the page. By turning them on their side, I could fit 4 on a page.
To make the invitations look like authentic Hogwarts letter, we bought parchment paper from Walmart, but it can be found at really any office supply store. We decided against using envelopes because it would be another extra cost, so we just folded the letters. For the wax seal, we used a red candle we already had and melted it and dripped it onto the paper. It took a little while to get the hang of it, but we managed. For the stamp, we ended up using a button. We bought brass buttons from JoAnn Fabric's for about two dollars. You have to make sure to get one that will have deep enough engravings, otherwise it won't work very well. We quickly learned that the more detail there is on the button, the less it shows up. We went with an Irish Knot in the end.
Next was games. I created a scavenger hunt and two games for us to play, Fandom Taboo and Character Charades.
The Scavenger hunt is actually a driving scavenger hunt, sand I requested the help of some of my older friends who have cars to drive through out our town to find objects on the list and take pictures of them. My mom set a limit of how far we could go in the town to prevent people from driving too far away. We also were required to return within an hour, whether or not we had found everything on the list. I also set up houses of people I know in my neighborhood where people could go to find objects.
Of course, based on what you're interested in, these items will differ. I set up a point system so every item was worth 1 house point for each person. There was extra points available for the first car to get back and for the people who found everything on the list.
Once we got back, four golden snitches were hid in the front yard, and there was 50 extra house points for each person in a car that found a snitch. I had my mom hide them before the party started so I could participate in the hunt as well. One snitch had "I open at the close" written on it with a Sharpie, and the team who found it received 100 extra house points.
The snitches were very simple to make. My older brother works at a golf course, so he provided us with 4 golf balls for free, otherwise you can buy them at a sports store or golf shop fairly cheap. My mom drilled holes on the sides of each golf ball. Then, I stuck half a tooth pick on each side and set them in a dixie cup, suspending the ball using the tooth picks. I already had gold acrylic paint, so I just used a paint brush and painted all over them. Golf balls are extremely slick, so we had trouble covering them very well. We decided not to put another coat of paint simply because it would be dark and no one would notice, but I would recommend adding another coat if you're going for looks. For the wings, we simply bought a pack of small white feathers for $3 from JoAnn's. We did have to trim the stems some, but we just used scissors for that.
The next thing was the food. Since we were going to be having more than 20 people, we decided to go with a spaghetti dinner because it's easy to make. We made all the food ahead of time and were able to just heat it up on the stove again about half an hour before people arrived. For drinks, we took a bottle of orange soda and removed the label and replaced it with our own that we made that said Pumpkin juice. We also made a punch with ginger ale, pineapple juice, and frozen lemonade. We called this Sonic Screwdriver. We also made Butterbeer to go with our dessert. I looked up some recipes, but they all called for a lot of extracts that we didn't want to buy, so instead we just bought creme soda and vanilla ice cream and put it in a punch bowl. It looked and tasted a lot like the actual Butterbeer from WWOHP!
For dessert, we decided to make cupcakes. We mad 42 cupcakes, half chocolate and half white cake. We made those the weekend before, as well as the cupcake toppers because those were very time consuming. For cupcake toppers, we made them out of fondant. It all turned out really cute and just the way I wanted it, however, I wouldn't recommend making them yourself just because we spent 7-8 hours making all of them and it's very messy. But if you're willing to spend the time, be my guest. I'll link the fondant recipe we used below.
The decorations that we used around the house was all pretty much stuff we had at home. The only things we actually bought were some silver table centers from the dollar store and table cloths. The table centers we used to make "miniature goblets of fire". We did this by using some blue-tinted stemmed glasses we had as the goblets. Next, I took the silver table centers that I bought for the dollar store and opened them up. I had to break down the cement block inside quite a bit for it to fit in the cup, but that was pretty easy and I just used a hammer. After words, I placed a bit of plastic back around the cement block and lined the cup with the silver wrapping it came in. I then placed the table center back inside the cup and used electric tea lights to create the fire effect.
After dessert, we played "Fandom Taboo" and "Character Charades", both games I came up by myself. Fandom Taboo was very similar to the game catch phrase or Taboo. On half sheets of index cards, I wrote names of bands, singers, books, movies, shows, authors, etc. The person who's turn it was had to describe the name on their card without saying the name and try to get their team to guess who and what it was. For character charades, I printed out a list of every Harry Potter character from Wikipedia and cut the papers into strips and placed them in a witches hat we had from Halloween. The difference between this and regular charades is you're allowed to talk, but you must act like your character.
We also made polyjuice potion for everyone to try, which was a huge hit! My mom was in charge of this part and really enjoyed it. Mom collected spices she had that she thought looked like the actual polyjuice potion and set them out. For the liquid, she made a very peppery, spicy chai tea. The drinker then chose 3 spices (they didn't know what spices they were) and it was all placed into a dixie cup. Each person who tried it got house points as well. We put all the spices in crystal and dishes my mom had that we thought looked alchemy worthy.
After tallying all the points, I awarded the house cup and the person with the most individual points (from a different house). As a prize, we bought boxes of candy from the dollar store and handed them out. They also got a picture with the house cup, which they all loved.
Finally, the house cup. The house cup was two different pieces of crystal. One was a vase (the top part) and one was a candle stick holder. To keep them from falling apart, we just hot glued them together. Hot glue is great for this type of thing because when you put the glass in warm water, they pop apart and your glassware isn't damaged.
And that's pretty much it! The party was a huge success, everyone loved it and had a ton of fun. Thanks for reading this SUPER long description! If you use any of these elements, send me a picture on Instagram! (All my links will be below). Also, all the links that I used for ideas, information, fonts, etc. will be below, so check those out if you need more help!
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Font link: http://www.dafont.com/
Blog I got ideas from: http://adventuresingreenness.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-very-harry-potter-party.html
Fondant recipe: http://candy.about.com/od/fondantcandyrecipes/r/mm_fondant.htm
Character list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harry_Potter_characters
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