Life in the Big Chicken: Philip's Harry Potter Birthday Party

Husband's birthday was coming up, as I was trying to figure out what to buy him I ran through the standard gift ideas that make good gifts for Philip: books, movies, music. But I wanted something different.... then it hit me. A surprise birthday party! Our kids aren't old enough to have the exciting anticipation of holidays and birthdays yet. And as we are getting older the holidays have lost some the excitement and magic. So I wanted to bring the magic back with a party themed with one of his favorites -The Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

The "wishes" sign fell down in this picture.

I'll put some close ups of the food and labels at the end.

Happy birthday my love!

I didn't think to take a picture until a couple people had already left, but here is most of the gang.

There's the "wishes" lol... I also downloaded a free "Harry Potter font" from the internet.

Being away from family is hard on us and on them. I wanted them to be able to be as much apart of Philip's birthday celebration as much as possible from the other side of the world. So, the owl post had a storm of mail with birthday wishes. For added details, I drew owl stamps and put the HP mark on the back of each letter.

I also had this big gaughty frame made to fit around the ipad so that his family could skype in for the surprise moment of the party as a talking portrait. Technical difficulties prevented us from being able to skype, so Dumbledore visited instead.

My mom came up with the idea to put glow sticks in balloons. It had a really neat effect that's not captured in the picture. She also sent glow in the dark balloons, which made it even more neat.

One of Philip's favorite details was the toilet which says "Ministry of Magic this way"

Our Honeydukes store had some special treats from the Harry Potter world at Universal. I found them on Amazon and my mom shipped them over. A chocolate frog and Bertie Bott's every flavor beans.