Harry Potter, 7-year old For my son's 7th birthday, he decided that he wanted a Harry Potter party. I used a lot of ideas from this site.  The first thing that I did was to create invitations, using dialogue from the book (Harry's invitation to Hogwarts). These I printed on my printer. The invitations were rolled and hand delivered to my son's school friends via "owl mail".  Guests were requested to RSVP via "muggle phone". For decorations, I went to the fabric store and bought Harry Potter pillow fabric, I cut these out and hung them as banners in the house. I also made a sign for Platform 9 3/4 that I put on the front door. I used black plates and bought Harry Potter napkins and cups. The punch was a potion that the kids could create using pop rocks and soda with gummy worms in it. When the children arrived, they were greeted by Hagrid (my dad dressed up), they were then given a special coin and told to visit Diagon Alley to purchase their wands.  They then met my mother dressed as a witch who had them pick up different wands until they found the "right one". The wands I made out of dowls from the hardware store, which I stained and then put glitter paint on the ends.  They were then wrapped in tissue paper.   I also cut and pasted the 4 house signs off the internet into a Word document and printed four to a page.  These were then cut out and glued to colored card stock, I punched a hole through each one and put yarn through them to make "house medalions".  These were passed out after the children were sorted into their houses with by the Sorting Hat. We made our own out of cardboard and spray painted it brown, but you can buy them.  The Sorting hat was equiped with a walkie talkie and each child was given a house. This was lots of fun! The kids had a great time waiting for the hat to tell them which house they were in.  We then played the Wizard Stomp, using balloons tied to each childs leg, containing a coin.  We had 4 colors of balloons which were the same as the house colors on their medalions.  Children were instructed to stomp on each others balloons.  When the balloon popped, the child whose balloon was popped was "out", but got to keep their coin.  The winner was given a gift.  I found Harry Potter post card books and notebooks at the dollar store which were used as prizes.   The next game was the Pinata, which we made out of paper mache, in the form of a golden snitch. We made a ball, then stuck feathers in each end and spray painted it with gold paint.  We also made small golden snitches out of ping pong balls, these had to have small holes drilled in each end and then feathers were inserted and spray painted gold. (I tried the styrofoam balls, but they melted with the spray paint!)  The kids then hunted for the golden snitches and got to keep the ones they found. My son then opened his presents, using his wand to point to the child whose present he wanted to open next.  He thought of this all by himself and had a great time instructing the kids whose turn it was to give their gift.  I made the cake and used a tree that I got from the craft store, with a car in it and a figure of Harry Potter on the cake. Other snacks included Bertie Botts beans (jelly bellies with computer labels) and chocolate frogs that I made. This party required a good bit of prep work, but it was definately worth it!!!