Diagon Alley and the Shops

For the party we decided to set up a mini Diagon Alley with 4 shops and a "Have you seen this Wizard" photo booth for when the kids passed through the brick wall backdrop from Platform 9 3/4.

For the beginning of the party we set up the two shops “Flourish and Blotts” and “Potages Cauldrons” where the kids could get their cauldrons and Hogwart’s Special Session Booklets.

 I bought the cauldrons in bulk from the actual supplier which made them much cheaper than buying them off different party websites. The booklet took a bit of time to write because in Harry Potter there isn’t anything about hatching dragon eggs in water, or turning water into snow, or an actual recipe for “Felix Felicis” potion. So I had to make a lot of it up creatively to fit within our party theme classes. After I finished writing the booklet, Mike added various graphics to the pages and edited the fonts. We printed the booklet on aged paper and then used black cardstock for the cover and twine to bind the book together. This booklet was very useful when needing to burn a few minutes while waiting for the next class to finish.

For the rest of the party we had Ollivander’s wand shop which we quickly switched into Honeydukes at the end of the party. If it wasn’t for my piano student’s family helping us out with getting the chocolate frogs and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans as a birthday present to Aidan then we would have never had a Honeydukes shop (the chocolate frogs and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans would have sent us over our party budget ). Luckily, there was also Oriental Trading that had plenty of inexpensive candies that we were able to create labels to fit within our Harry Potter theme to keep us in budget.

After eating the birthday cake, the kids were super excited to go downstairs and spend the Gringott galleons they had earned during their classes on various candies at our Honeydukes.