Within the Kitchen: Harry Potter Party: Decorations #2

Start at the beginning here. And then here for games and activities . And here for the food. It describes the beginning of our daughter's 11th birthday party - Harry Potter themed obviously! My bit of advice this week is to start the decorating process as early as possible. If you have an idea of the type of things you'll need, you'll be able to find good prices on things as you're out and about in daily life instead of panicking at the last minute before the party! That's how I found the owls for the Owlery and potion jars.

This post will cover our decorations for our King's Cross Station, the Portrait Hall, the Gryffindor Common Room, the Owlery, Potions and Herbology decorations.

King's Cross Station

Our front door was covered by a "brick wall". I found brick-wall craft paper at Michaels (it was in the school section - I think it was meant for bulletin boards or as class decorations) which I then taped onto 2 tarps so the kids could walk through it. If you have the time you could paint the wall on a sheet like they did here. At our party, the kids handed in their Hogwarts' Express Ticket (included in their invitation) and then went through the wall. Upon walking through the wall, the kids entered the Portrait Hall.

I just printed these off the net.

Portrait Hall

To create the Portrait Hall we simply printed off many Hogwarts or Hogwarts-like pictures found in the movies. I found most of them on Harry Potter Wiki. Check here for great pics.

In the same area we also posted Educational Decrees. You can find them here and just print them off.

Owlery/Potions

A few owls on a window sill makes a great owlery!
(We added a few regular birds in cages but the kids didn't seem to mind!)

Our living room was a mix of areas. First, we had the Owlery. At our local Dollar Store we found a variety of cute owls - all under $5 each. We placed them on a window sill and I made an "owlery" sign to place underneath. Simple and cute!

We have a Harry Potter book with some potion labels so I just photocopied them and taped them to some little bottles for a Potions Class effect. We added food colouring to some water to represent potions.

We had potions in another window and in some glass cupboards. Most of these were jars that I already had or picked up at the Dollar Store and then filled with colored water. In a few of the jars, we placed toy spiders, worms, and other icky things we found!

Gryffindor Common Room

The portrait of the Godric Gryffindor,one of Hogwarts founders, was given a place of honour in our Gryffindor Common Room

The living room door also had a picture of the fat lady on it and, of course, a password was needed to get in when it became the Gryffindor Common Room.

I ordered this poster online. We used it as decoration in the Gyffindor Common Room on the day of the party but it looks great hanging in her room now.

In the room, we placed some posters that I had ordered on line, a Gryffindor Notice Board. The Board was my daughter's idea and I loved it! She wrote a bunch of notes and announcements for it and even added a few socks in case any House Elves wanted freedom!

Love this Notice Board! We found the Gryffindor crest online. It's removable and re-positionable so after the party we moved it to my daughter's bedroom wall.

Finally, we hung a portrait of Professor Dumbledore and one of his sister.

Herbology

On the other side of the room was our Herbology section. I printed a bunch of plants descriptions from the books and movies and placed them in front of plants we already had. I loved the addition of the Mandrakes (which were really troll dolls found, of course, at the Dollar Store).