HP-Themed Birthday Party

[Rosmerta]

At last, a subject I can talk about with some authority--we staged a 
Harry party in our backyard last fall for *seventeen* 7-yr-olds. 
Scary. But it was a lot of fun. 

I was really anal and refused to use manufactured anything (also this 
was before a lot of WB stuff was out there: We had potions class (gak-
-which is like homemade slime) in the basement; quidditch (each kid 
got a broom, which was handmade by yours truly, using a real tree-
branch-type stick, newspaper cut into fringe and then glued onto the 
stick and spray painted gold; the field we just spray painted onto 
our grass; the goals were soccer nets; the balls were a couple of 
small playground balls, which gave people great joy when they lobbed 
them at each others' heads); and a pinata in the shape of spider was 
care of magical creatures. Each kid also decorated a wizard's hat 
(made out of heavy wrapping paper with a newspaper core--got that one 
from Family Fun magazine) and got a wand (also from Family Fun--those 
were really neat; it's made out of flexible clear plastic plumbers' 
tubing with a dowel-wrapped-in-a-sparkly-pipecleaner inside). During 
cake and ice cream we kept people calm (well, relatively....) with HP 
trivia. Oh, wait, we also broke the kids into three houses (don't do 
four because nobody wants to be in Slytherin and it starts a lot of 
fights!) and had dragon-egg-on-a-spoon races (I had dyed the eggs 
black). 

I told my son that next year we're doing something simpler, like 
hiking to Alaska. If you want any details on any of this (like the 
gak recipe) you can email me offlist.

~Rosmerta