Happy Birthday Harry Potter

Okay, okay, so Harry's birthday isn't until the 31st of July, but we had our celebration a little early this year so that Kj could be a part of it. Let me just say, it was epic.

We had a lot of fun decorating.  Kj is a master!  We put up banners and signs and the like.  The house became "the burrow" and was the center of all the madness.

Floating candles in the entryway 

Magical candy that can help fight off the dark arts

There were also puking pastils and licorice wands

A few weeks before the party, Soren, Anne, and I took some wooden dowels and transformed them into colorful wands.  The first 20 or so guests were able to select a wand (or rather, the wand selected them).

There were surprises all over the place.

When people first arrived, we tested their Harry Potter knowledge with some tricky trivia (written by yours truly).  We also had some gnome tossing action going on in the back yard.

The first real event of the evening was Quidditch.  Soren and Alan made the hoops out of sticks, hula-hoops, and PVC pipe. The morning before the party, Soren and I sprayed the lawn to mark out the field.  This was muggle Quidditch, so there weren't any brooms or flying involved.  The Bludgers were water balloons (thrown by the beaters), the snitch was a person (who had to be caught by the seekers), and the chasers could only take three steps once they had the Quaffle.  It was so much fun.  The first round ended pretty quickly, but the next two rounds were long because it took the seekers so long to find the snitch.

After Quidditch we ate...and there was a lot of good food to be had.  Aebleskivers made for golden snitch pancakes, we had meatballs, bread, beans, butterbeer, and lots of yummy fruit.

Check out the totally legit cauldron!

After Quidditch/during dinner, people tried out the zip line.  It really is so much fun, but we did have one friend biff it pretty good on her way down.  We gave her a special prize for her injuries. This next video is me going down the zip line with the camera to give you an idea of how epic it is.  Warning: it's a little shaky.

The next event was diving in the pond.  Soren and I attached 6 rocks to pool floaties and spread them out throughout the pond.  One of them was spray painted gold, but you couldn't tell which because they were wrapped in rags.  The swimmers had to pick a floaty and hope it was the right one.  I got out on the pond in the canoe and was able to watch the action from the water.  The winner was our friend Tom from South Pacific.  He was pretty stoked.

The third event was probably my favorite.  Soren mowed a maze in the field next to the Barker's house.  My first time through it took me about 6 minutes...so it was pretty hard.  We sent people in at intervals while we timed them from the road.  The fastest time was under 2 minutes.  WOW.  He was fast.

The evening concluded with the award ceremony, where prizes were given to those who won events.  The prizes were all awesome.  There was a Marauders Map, Time Turners, a pocket watch with the deathly hallows on it, head boy and head girl pins, etc.  Then, to end with a bang, we set off some fireworks.  And not the little sissy fireworks, the big rock 'em pop 'em sock 'em fireworks that shoot way into the air.

In the end, a good time was had by all.  It was so fun to get together with our friends to embrace our nerdiness.