We're big Harry Potter fans in our family, so it was no surprise that my daughter wanted a Goblet of Fire birthday party when she turned 8. The arrival activity was the decoration of simple paper gift bags to put their accumulated goodies in.  We also had some Harry Potter word finds and crossword puzzles. When all the guests had arrived, we had a sorting ceremony to sort the group into the three schools (Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang).  My husband, dressed as Dumbledore, welcomed them. I was Professor McGonagall and ran the event, as Professor Dumbledore had other obligations at the Ministry of Magic for the rest of the day. Kids tried on the sorting hat (I bought the official one but any homemade one would work as well) and pulled a school sticker out of a bookbag I had previously sewn a Hogwarts patch on.  They put this sticker on their goodie bag along with their name. We had to do things out of order because of winds threatening our maze for the third task.  However, this is the order I \*intended\* to do them in.  I think I found our pre-tournament activity on this web site somewhere.  We had a niffler hunt - I scattered plastic gold coins around the yard and had kids find them.  The one with the most got a small prize.  Then there was the tournament.    For the first task, there was a find-the-golden-egg treasure hunt. I had purchased gold and silver oversized Easter eggs. For each team there were three clues hidden in silver eggs.  I took a plot plan of our house, scanned it in, and made a map for each team.  The map had circles labeled 1, 2, and 3 that showed the general area they would find the silver eggs in. Each silver egg contained part of a rhyming clue.  Example: "I stretch up and I stretch down / I rise high above the ground / Just search me as I go upstairs, you'll find your eggs hidden there".  Putting the clues together led to the location of the golden eggs (one per person), along with small stuffed dragons for each person.  The eggs contained the clues for the second task.  For the second task, kids had to find something in the "black lake" - a couple of big plastic bins filled with water and shredded green plastic tablecloths.  I bought cheap animal figurines at a dollar store, and made sure each was unique. Each child had a clue sheet (from the golden egg in the first task).  It contained a poem I wrote that mimicked the one that Harry found in his egg (same for each kid). I then wrote, in a symbol font, the name of one of the animals (different for each kid, I used mail merge).  And finally there was a decoding key for the symbols (same for each kid).  For the first two tasks I had prizes for the fastest team.   The final task was the biggest hit. We set up a maze in our backyard using 6-foot tomato stakes and plastic sheeting. (Wind was a problem, though. We saved money by building it ourselves, but it would have been much less hassle to rent an inflatable one.)  Plastic trophies were hidden in the maze, and each child got to go in and find one.  After they all got an individual chance, they wanted to go in and run around, so we let them keep at it for a while. We followed this up with a little bit of potions class using the cabbage juice acid-base indicator experiments (any web search using these terms will turn up variations).  We used the cabbage juice, vinegar, and baking soda. They were all in glass cruets and dishes to disguise the content. I have tiny little glass cups and small cocktail spoons that pairs of kids got to use.  The final activity was a wizard hat pinata. After that, we had a Harry Potter-themed cake from our local grocery store, and we served butterbeer made from cream soda and butterscotch topping (plus apple juice for the less adventurous). Some extra goodies for their goodie bags included Harry Potter stickers, plastic glasses, lightning bolt temporary tatoos, and rat-shaped lollipops.  It was a lot of work, but great fun, and the kids had a terrific time.