How to Harry Potter Your Next Birthday Bash

The Little Lady is already creating Pinterest boards around the theme of her next birthday party.

Her birthday is in August.

This year will be her 10th b-day and I think that this might be it for the big, birthday bashes. That is until she turns 13 and 16 and 18 and 21. . .

Here's a look at how we Harry Potter'd her last b-day celebration at home.

Invites

I certainly wasn't going to be delivering invites via owl, although I briefly considered sending snail mail invites with a red wax seal, until I realized that was legit crazy.

The better option was Paperless Post. They have super cute, high-quality designed invites and they just so happen to have a few that are wizard-themed. The best thing about an online invite is that all the info is easy accessible. I have a recurring anxiety dream where I am late for birthday parties or go on the wrong day. This is an easy way to keep all the scheduling and guests in order, plus they are totally on-theme!

Hogwarts Houses Option

We picked this one for the Little Lady

I also love it when we get invites from Paperless Post. I always know that I find the date and time, save to my calendar and never be late for a party! Plus the internet is kind of magical right? You really can't go wrong with either wizard-themed option, not to mention the hundreds of other invite styles and themes.

Decorations

Once we sent out the invites, we hit Pinterest hard for design and decorating ideas and came up with a few good ideas on our own!

I did want the kids to feel like they were entering the Wizarding World and the first stop was Platform 9 3/4. We covered the front door with Brick Backdrop and printed out a Platform 9 3/4 printable that we found online.

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We also think no event is complete without a candy bar. We printed Harry Potter themed candy names from the book onto vellum paper, cut with craft scissors and attached to containers. I found the Ron, Hermione and Harry print outs online and filled them with Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans.

I bought some small glass containers and printed potion names on vellum, glued them to the bottles and let the kids have a potion slime party. It was a good activity and they got to keep the super cute container. 

Slime, slime and more slime.

Last but not least, I ordered each kid a Harry Potter themed pajama. That, along with the candy from Honeydukes ended up being the party favor. I am a firm believer in party favors you can eat or wear! Check out the super cute  Hermione nightgown the Little Lady is sporting. 

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Or are you more of a Harry Potter fan?

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We also set up a photo booth for all the kids. You'll recognize this from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I just cut out the middle of a poster board and downloaded and printed the text. Yes, I am Sirius it was that easy. Sorry had to Harry Potter pun it.

We had a few more details that I will share in another post. Hope you have a few ideas to get your Harry Potter party started.

Motherhood in the Sweet Spot

My children are no longer babies. While they will always be my 3 Beans, we have reached what I like to call the sweet spot in parenting.

That's right. It can happen. Everyone can get dressed by themselves, feed themselves, respond to and follow simple demands (although this might take some repetition), and for the most part function normally in society, with the exception of them running through hotel hallways and Target aisles like gazelles being pursued on an African plain.

The transition from newborns to toddlers to tweens did not take long. And while I miss the sweet, smelling newborns against my skin, the inquisitive toddlers exploring their world and the toothless smiles of kindergarten and first grade, I am grateful for this time that I find myself in.

This is the best I got of all 3 of them!

The Lady is 11. While she is a full on tween who is navigating middle school, social media and the expectations and changes associated with her age, she hasn't quite reached the point where she has sequestered herself in her room. She still allows me to hug her, tell her how much I love her, and dance terribly in front of her without too much embarrassment or rolling of her eyes. She is the most introverted yet independent of my children and demands the least attention from me, for now.

The Little Lady is 9 going on 19. She wears her emotions on her sleeve, is quick to lash out, but loves, loves so freely. She is social and funny and wants more than anything to spend time with her family (when she isn't staring at a screen of course!) playing games, watching movies, baking and creating. She does roll her eyes--frequently, but what she wants most is my attention and time, for now.

QT is 7. How did my baby get so old? He asks the most random questions that I can tell he has been thinking about and then just kind of starts to speak as if we all have been part of the conversation going on in his head. He loves video games and hanging out with his friends. He is always coming really close to the proverbial "line" and can still for the most part get away with it by batting his long eyelashes and smiling, for now.

For now, what I want is to recognize this time, take advantage of it before the doors close and the eyes really roll. For now, I want my children to see our family as a safe space, to be themselves wholly and without fear or doubt before the outside influences, the peer pressure, the impact on their self-confidence continues to creep its way in. Life is coming for them but for now, in this sweet spot of time, I want them to know that their terrible dancing, Grateful Dead loving, lapsed runner and blogger of a mom is here and loving each of them for who they are right now.

Motherhood: A Timeline

Monday, February 1, 2016

8:35 a.m.: I go down into my home office to check some work emails before the final push to get everyone out the door. 

I found this note from the Little Lady on my desk. The photo is one of my grandfather I keep there. He died when I was in third grade. GG is my grandma who died this summer at almost 91. We talk about her a lot in our house.

Had to cut this off for a few reasons: 1. my grandpa is dressed as Baby New Year and while I love this photo the Internet doesn't need to see that. 2. The Little Lady signed her name. 3. The black blob is covering our home address, apparently she felt the need to use our address stamp as part of this.

So, clearly there are tears.

I go upstairs give the Little Lady a huge hug and tell her how much I love her and think "I must be doing something right."

***

8:55 a.m.: I pull the Little Lady off of the bottom bunk into a small package and carry her, yelling about how she doesn't want to brush her hair or go to school, through the hallway, down the stairs and out of the garage before depositing her in the booster seat in Minnie-Ru where her brother and sister are waiting. She isn't wearing any shoes.

I run back inside, grab her boots, a jacket and a hat, throw them at her, throw the car into the reverse and peel out of the driveway. Late to school again and all the while thinking "what am I doing wrong?"

A Quick List

So here is a quick recap of a few of the other things that we have been up to since the beginning of July.

The Lady and I are making a very conscious effort to get to more of the Mom's Club play dates and to become more involved. I still only know 5 women by name and sight but it is better than none.

After 6 years of living in CT and after 5 summers of seeing the Shakespeare on the Sound signs around town, my husband and I finally picked a night, got a babysitter and headed down to the sound for a showing of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Of course when we got there, the show was cancelled because a storm had blown in earlier in the day and all the electricity was out to only that one little area of town where the performance was to take place. This wouldn't have been so bad, had this actually not been the second time that this had happened to me in my attempt to view some outdoor Shakespearean theatre. However, since we had the babysitting in place we decided to take in a movie and hit up the local multi-plex for a showing of "The Hangover," which was super funny and only the third movie I have seen in the theatre at that point in almost two years. We finally made it to the last showing of the summer along with my brother and my sister in law the following week!

LI Play date: The Lady and I headed out to LI to meet up with the CNY girls and a couple of really cute kids from Brooklyn. The Lady is really into the big girls and they were so great with her, however, she only took a 25 minute nap, so things got a little hairy towards the end of the night with her. Here is a pic of the kids in their pjs.



Harry Potter: Since my little sister hates Harry Potter we left her at home to babysit and took her boyfriend to the movies along with my brother and SIL. Ah Harry, the teenage angst and budding love. The movie was pretty good and I was actually amazed to have seen two movies in the course of two weeks. I am assuming I won't be back in an actual theatre until at least 2011.

In between we have met up with other friends and family and I have made a real effort to spend some time with the Lady before her life (and mine) gets turned a bit upside down by this next kid, which I am eagerly anticipating and hoping arrives sooner rather than later!

Updates

We have been a bit out of it lately. Here is a recap of what has happened here in the last couple weeks or so. . .

The Lady has become slightly obsessed with Dora the Explorer. At first I was okay with it because it allowed me to have something on in the background that I haven't seen eight hundred times, but now it might be getting out of hand. She is constantly talking about her "packback" and has now started to grab my hand and pull me in the other room by saying "vamanos." (I have no idea if that is spelled correctly or not, but I think you get the point.)

I guess I should be pleased that she is picking up some Spanish. Maybe I can get her to go and yell at all the customers to the La Marqueta in front of our condo, who constantly block access to our driveway.

For those of you not immersed in Dora culture, there is a little girl, Dora, her monkey sidekick Boots, Tico, a Spanish speaking squirrel, Benny the Bull and Swiper the fox. For a while the Lady had a hard time pronouncing fox and it came out like fuck. Her father and I had hours of entertainment asking her questions like "What type of animal is Swiper?" To which she would reply "fuck" and we would both laugh, amused at the lingual shortcomings of our little girl.

The Lady has also started using the word awesome, is still obsessed with trains, and has started to refer to herself in the third person. It is all good stuff.

We are looking forward to the weather turning around this weekend and are actually heading to the Shore for a weekend with some friends. I am hoping to get up to the beach a lot more this summer before baby #2 arrives. The Lady and I went to the local beach last week and she spent a good amount of time just hanging out playing in the sand. I hope this is going to be typical of our beach days, because I am not, I repeat not, going in the freezing cold LI Sound.

Where is the Remote?

I didn't want to accept it but I think the Lady might have thrown away our remote control. Granted, it is the TV remote that only controls the volume and not the actual channel changing. The power button had also been rendered useless by her chewing on the end of it too many times, but it still worked.

Initially, I wanted to blame my husband. The Lady and I were gone all last weekend and for most of the day on Monday so we really didn't have any access to the remote control. He was certainly the last one to use it, but after pulling out the couches, checking all the drawers and nooks and cranny's in the Lady's sight line and witnessing her throw a spoon and a cell phone into the trash yesterday, I am thinking that our alternate explanation of Gremlins in the house probably isn't valid.

I am hoping it will turn up one day so that I don't have to walk the two feet from the couch to the TV to adjust the volume, but I am not holding my breath.