Ella's Harry Potter Birthday Party

After some arm twisting, I was able to convince Ella to let me host a Harry Potter themed birthday party for her friend party this year.  Since Ella is not an avid reader like Lia was at 10 years old, she has not read the Harry Potter books and doesn't love these stories like Lia did at this age.  But since I spent hours and hours preparing for Lia's 10th birthday party, I really wanted to be able to reuse all of the decorations and activity ideas that I created for Lia's party since I just don't have the time or energy to start all over again for another themed party of Ella's choice.  After giving Ella permission to binge watch six of the eight movies earlier in the month, Ella warmed up to the idea and actually started to get excited to host this party.  We invited over twenty girls and learned that several could not come due to it being Easter weekend or Spring Break in their school district.  As a result, we ended up with twelve girls coming which ended up being a perfect sized group.  Ella had friends from school, church, gymnastics, and theater.  Everyone was so polite and well-behaved.  We followed the same schedule for Ella's party as we did for Lia's party with a craft and then several games before opening gifts and finishing off with cupcakes and ice cream.  Ella was kind enough to let Emmett participate in the entire party and everyone seemed to have a great time.  Ella loved having so many of her friends under our roof at the same time and thoroughly enjoyed playing games and opening her gifts.

To help Ella get more excited for this party, I ordered a cute, Harry Potter birthday shirt from etsy.  She combined it with Lia's old Hogwarts cape, a pair of Luna Lovegood sunglasses, and a wand for her party outfit. She looked so cute for the party.

A close-up of Ella with her party outfit on.

Like last time, my good friend, Wendy, allowed me to go through her amazing collection of Harry Potter items to borrow as decorations for the party.  This is what our table in the foyer looked like after entering our house.

Just like with Lia's party, I had an owlery set up after walking under the flying keys hanging from the ceiling.

In addition to decorating the mantle in the family room, we decorated two tables with Gryffindor colors.  We also hung floating candles from the ceiling.

A close-up of the head table where Ella sat with half of the girls.

The second table complete with cupcakes, candles, and broomsticks.

As the girls arrived to the party, we offered them the chance to put on a lightening-bolt tattoo on their forehead or somewhere else on their body.  Most girls chose to put it on their neck which cracked me up.

I think that Emmett was the only one who had Ron put the tattoo on his forehead.

We then headed out to the garage for the craft activity.  All of the girls made snitches out of styrofoam balls and yellow feathers.  Lia thought of this craft all on her own six years ago.

We then came back inside for the girls to play "Pin the lightening bolt on Harry's face."  Here is Ella's friend, Addy, putting her lightening bolt on the poster we made for Lia' party.

We then played a game where the girls had to throw an actual Quaffle ball into a ring cut out from a poster board while standing from three different lines taped on the floor in our family room.  Here is Gracie throwing the ball from the first line.

Here is Ella throwing the ball from the middle line.

We then played "hot potato" with a wand.  The circle shrunk down to only two girls after everyone had been eliminated one round at a time.

We finished off with the games by playing the funniest one of them all.  The girls had to eat one of the Bernie Botts Every Flavored Beans after spinning a spinner that would tell them what color to choose from of a box.  Some bean candies were delicious and others were disgusting.  Luckily, we provided a little garbage can for both groups of girls to spit into if they chose a disgusting flavored bean.

Ella then had the chance to open up gifts from all of her friends.  Here she is reading the card from one of her good theater friends, Gianna.

Ella opening up a gift from one of her gymnastics buddy, Lily.

Ella opening up another gift from her gymnastics friend, Annabelle.

Ella reading a card from Addy, one of her close friends from school.

A group shot of all of the girls before we headed to the kitchen for dessert.

From left to right:

Back row:  Madelyn, Aria, Ella, Addy, Gianna, Gracie, Landon

Front row:  Annabelle, Everly, Lily, Evie, Elif, Payton

Ella making a funny face while her friends sang "Happy Birthday" to her.

The entire table smiling for me while they enjoyed eating their cupcakes, ice cream, and punch.