10 Years and a Harry Potter Birthday

When this girl was in 2nd grade they had a day where the teachers assigned them a fictional character name for the day. Well her teacher was obsessed (obvi) with Harry Potter and therefore she gave all her students a Harry Potter character to embody for the day.

This excellent daughter of mine was chosen to be Hermione.

You guys, this very well may stand as the highest honor of her young life. As her teacher later said to me, Of course she choose her to be Hermione… she is Hermione. She really is, and we are so lucky.

Back then we were early in our Harry Potter reading (book 1 or book 2) but the HP bug had bitten and this girl has been obsessed ever since. One of the best parenting decisions I ever made was to save these books to read with just her and it’s been a treat. We are currently finishing book 7, and going at a snails pace because I think neither of us wants it to end.

Naturally, her 10th birthday (we only do friend parties every other year) had to be a Harry Potter birthday party. She also got to have a combined party with two of her best friends–twins who are only a few days older–and the result was fantastic birthday had by all.

I thought I’d share a few party details because, well I always love seeing these kind of things.

First, I really do love having birthday parties at home. I love the old-fashioned, homemade goodness and creativity that comes from games and craft tables. However, I also appreciate the ease of having a birthday party at some sort of party emporium where kids can bounce off the walls and get a little crazy while someone else cleans up the mess yaknowwhatI’msaying? This time we opted for the latter and it was great!

13+ girls jumped and bounced and rolled and slid and climbed and had a great time! 2 different rooms for a little over an hour and by the end the kids are plum tuckered out.

And while you can’t quite go all out on decor (since the surrounding room colors tend to clash a bit) I always try to make that one table look really good. The twins’ mom and I joined forces and this is what we came up with.

I honestly don’t know how I did parties before I got my Silhouette machine but it is a dream for children’s birthday parties. 100% not a sponsored post and I have no affiliation with Silhouette, I just love this machine so much for birthday parties and all sorts of creative crafty goodness. I really haven’t even scratched the surface of what it can do.

Here are some some detail shots:
Golden snitches and chocolate frogs in chocolate frog boxes (My friend, the twins mom, did the chocolate frogs and the boxes! She found a template online, printed cut and assembled each box by hand!) 

Vanilla cupcakes with lightning bolts for the non Chocolate cake people.

Goodie bags for their Harry Potter glasses, tattoos, chocolate frog boxes (with wizard trading cards!) and golden snitches. Personally I don’t like a lot of party crap, so I try to keep the stuff to a minimum with mostly edible items.

A really simple cake topper for the Harry Potter birthday cake (we also added chocolate frogs on top.)

For making all the lettering, the Harry Potter goodie bags, the snitch wings and other little decorations it’s as simple and searching google images for “Harry Potter silhouette”and “Harry Potter font” and then cutting and pasting the images in the silhouette cameo design studio software. Then you use their tracing tool to trace around the images and letters. Once I had the main shapes and letters I wanted I played around with the size and cut quite a few different shapes out which came in really handy the day of the party. For example, I had a lot of small lightning bolts that I ended up just sticking in the cupcakes last minute because I had them.

The snitch wings were a snap, as were the letters for the Happy Birthday sign.

I actually got the machine for free at a conference a few years ago and at first I was a little nervous to actually use it. But if you’re familiar with photoshop, illustration or the like, it’s pretty intuitive. I’ve looked up YouTube videos when I need a little help and can usually figure out how to get things done.

*****
On a personal note I am amazed at this wonderful girl who I get to call my firstborn. She is bright, she is beautiful and she is kind. She’s determined and she loves adventure. It’s not always easy being the oldest child and a special needs sibling… she gets a lot of extra responsibility put on those petite shoulders of hers, but she bears it so well. Maybe somedays too well. I hope that we recognize when she needs that weight lifted off her shoulders a bit and that we provide that lifting for her.

We often talk about what a fussy, difficult baby she was and it’s rather unfair because I was also a fussy, difficult first time mom. A huge part of that was post partum depression, the other part of it was a fear of motherhood. As much as I wanted to be a mom, I was so afraid of becoming one. In the early days, post partum depression and my fears got the best of me. Which meant that this teeny-tiny baby was bestowed to a mother who was not in a great position to give the best of herself at the time. I certainly wasn’t a horrible mother, I really was doing the best I could, but I can’t help but think of the absolute trust that little baby had in me to pull through to do and become better. She turned a hard core taker, into a little bit of a giver and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank her enough. I still fall short, I still fear that I am not enough, but because of her I am more.

Happy Birthday PSP.
I love you so much and I’m so glad to be your mom.
SaveSave