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I know the title of this post really refers to a Harry Potter spell, but it honestly is ridiculous how much time I spent planning out this Harry Potter party for Ellie and Kate. I’m so glad they agreed to do this party together because that means I could spend double the energy on this fun party theme and not feel guilty at all! (So what if laundry and house chore suffered!)
I am going to break up the party posts because there is too much detail I want to share. I learned a ton from parties I saw online (Pinterest of course!) and I’d love to have somebody learn from what I did too.
So today I am going to start with the scavenger hunt. Mr. Fun had a scavenger hunt at all of his own birthday parties and he’s continued the tradition for our girls. This year I ended up hijacking the hunt. In my defense, he does not know much in the way of Harry Potter details because he’s never read the books and has only seen three of the movies. Okay, okay, I admit it. I’m a bit of a control freak and I just had to make this over the top!
It all started when I found this Marauder’s Map online. This gal created these as invitations to a HP party she hosted in 2009. She is still graciously answering questions about how to fold them. I only made 10 maps, I can’t imagine making the 80 that she sent out!
I knew I wanted all the girls to go home with maps and I thought it would be fun to incorporate them into the scavenger hunt. Each girl had a clue they were responsible for reading but they all figured out where to go next together. But the kicker is that they find out at the end that they have to look at their maps to figure out the final clue. I circled certain letters on all the maps that they have to unscramble at the end. (Insert evil laugh!)
The hunt started with a video clue (Mr. Fun’s idea). We had the clue on my iPad and played the Howler scene from the 2nd movie. At the end of the clip the iPad told them their first clue could be found in Errol’s landing pad. At that point the girls ran over to the Great Hall table I so carefully decorated and looked as if they would take it apart to find the clue. ACK! STOP! We made them watch it again and then they got it. I won’t make you watch the clip, but he landed in a bowl of chips and that is where Kate got her first clue.
Here are the rest of the clues we came up with. I’ll tell you the answers at the end…
1. This clue was hidden outside attached to the willow tree in our neighbor’s yard. Good thing they found it almost instantly because it was raining outside!
2. I made an audio clue out of this one. On top of the dog’s crate the girls found an iPod and speaker with only one song on it. The song was an instrumental from a HP soundtrack with my disguised voice giving extra clues every 30 seconds. It was hidden behind an illustration of three dogs I already had hanging above his crate. Mr. Fun and I were surprised at how much trouble the yhad with this clue. It took them forever to even think of the dog’s bed, never mind noticing the picture of the dogs above it!
3. The mailbox of course!
4. We have a bag in our laundry room that holds all of our goggles and swim toys. The clue was hidden in the bag.
5. Norbert was released from the astronomy tower. We have a deck off our upstairs playroom so we hid the clue out there.
6. This clue is a nod to this amazing HP party we went to last October. At that party the girls potted mandrakes (okay they were really some sort of winter cabbage) and amazingly they are still alive. I hid the clue under the pots.
7. Jill helped come up with this clue. We decided it would be fun to make a Hall of Prophecies and make the girls find the right fortune. We blew up 9 balloons and hid clues in them. 8 of them said ‘There is cake in your future”. One of them said ‘Tick Tock’. The clue was hidden behind a huge clock in that room.
This clue was a bit harder because we don’t normally have a Hall of Prophecies. As a part of the overall decorations I put a Ministry of Magic sign on my photo studio door. Then, just inside, I put another sign that said ‘This way to the Hall of Prophecies’ so they would know they were on the right track.
Then, once they found all the prophecies they had to figure out that then needed to pop them. But they did persevere!
8. The portkey was a boot in HP 4 so this clue was found in my boots in my closet.
9. The girls had to review all of their maps and write down all the circled letters and then rearrange them into the final clue. It was tough trying to decipher it on paper so we took apart the one of the decorations, a Harry Potter themed Scrabble game.
They got it right away…the prizes were hidden in the bathroom. These little guys are pins I made from left over felt. The girls all proudly wore them on their robes after the hunt.
Stay tuned for the next posts that will show more of the details of the party. Such fun!
Just tying it all together…here are the other party posts: