Yesterday, we held my son Jared's 7th birthday party and it was a Harry Potter theme.  My son's birthday is Nov. 6, so each year we have his party at my home the weekend following Halloween and we host a Halloween theme party so that the children can wear their expensive costumes at least once more. The weather here is normally cooperative at this time of year and yesterday the temperature was approx. 72 degrees and partly sunny, so they could play outside comfortably.  This year, my son wanted a Harry Potter theme party, so we began researching early any ideas we could find to make this possible. My son, of course, was dressed up as Harry. My well house in the backyard was painted to resemble Hagrid's Hut (a very creative friend painted a scene of Hagrid on one side sitting by his fire, drinking tea out of a tankard, she then hung an old window frame over the scene). In my front yard, my huge willow tree became the infamous "womping willow". Inside my garage was cordoned off with tapestries and Harry Potter throws and was dubbed the "forbidden forest".  The area inside the tapestries became the "Great Hall" where the "feast" was set up.  The feast included chocolate frogs made by the birthday boy, his older sister (Hermione) and I (Professor McGonagal).  I had ordered 2 types of frog molds and we used our Chocolate Factory to create them as one of our "quality time" projects.  We also made magic wands (pretzel sticks dipped in chocolate) and we had Bertie Botts' beans (Jelly Bellies) served in Halloween theme serving dishes.  We had butterbeer (apple juice heated in a crockpot and served over a spiced vanilla ice cream concoction). We also had "parchment scrolls", ham roll-up sandwiches, made with flour tortillas, cream cheese and luncheon meats. A punch bowl was chilled with icy hands (water frozen in a pair of rubber gloves, an idea taken from "Martha".) The cake was an idea of mine implemented by Jared's father, Rick (Hagrid).  We found a picture print of Hogwart's Castle lit up at night and Harry flying by on his Nimbus 2000 in pursuit of the golden snitch. Rick superimposed a picture of our son's face onto Harry's then printed a color copy and took it to the Walmart Bakery.  There, they imaged the print into a sugar cake top and placed on top of a chocolate sheet cake with white frosting. Rick said he had difficulty getting out of Walmart because of all the passersby who wanted to see the cake and marvel over it. I have a collection of owl statues and we had one table set up as an "Owlrey" where his cards and gifts were displayed, so that Hedwig and Errol were making their deliveries to the birthday boy. The pinata was a ghost purchased at Walmart after Halloween, when all the merchandise was 75% off (originally $9.88) and dubbed "Peeves the Poltergeist".  "Peeves", thanks to the efforts of Jared's fairy godmother (Molly Weasley), was filled not only with candy, but with toy cauldrons, spiders, finger puppet skulls and Halloween pencils. Each child was blindfolded and given three whacks at Peeves.  Finally, "Hermione" (Jared's 14-year-old sister) blind-folded herself and took her frustrations out on Peeves. When he was burst open, the children scrambled madly for the candy and prizes. The gift bags were actually disembodied hands (clear plastic gloves filled with candy corn for witchy claw-like fingernails and then stuffed with freshly popped popcorn and fastened with twist ties.  These were displayed in a huge cauldron and distributed to the guest children before leaving. Even the adults enjoyed themselves and those who were not previously familiar with Harry seemed genuinely enchanted. We like to critique ourselves after each party to see what could be improved for the next year, but my son declared this party the best ever!