It’s Time! Harry Potter Halloween Party Planning Ideas

My parents told me, in front of a group of college friends as I recall, that as a child I began counting down the days to my birthday and Halloween which followed hours later, as soon as October was approaching. As a sugar addict in need of a 12 Step Program back in the day, I must have been looking forward to the sucrose blitz at the end of the tenth month that would make me fly like a kite well into November (with the hypoglycemic crash, alas, that lasted until Thanksgiving…).

My mother, God bless her memory, sewed the greatest Halloween costumes for me and my two brothers, efforts that required much more than day-of-event last minute planning. So maybe my anticipatory excitement in late September reflected her enthusiasm as much as it caused her to buy fabric and face paints?

I’ll never know. I am pretty sure if there had been a Harry Potter mania in the 60’s that we would have had the best costumes for Halloween and maybe even a theme party at a birthday. Because I would have loved the big books obsessively, right? And mom would have been all over that with encouragement and shared text enthusiasm.

I do have a pretty good idea what my bedroom would have looked like if Harry and I had been childhood friends. Ideal James sent me a link to 33 Cheap and Easy Ways to Throw an Epic Harry Potter Halloween Party and I suspect I would have done my best to express my fascination with maybe 30 of these possibilities. Definitely the glue-gun crafted wands and Dementor light shades. Lumos and Nox postings on the switches and floating candles? Oh, yeah. A must.

My daughter Sarah and her college roommate decorated their top deck flat at UChicago (aka ‘Chicagwarts’) as the Hufflepuff Common Room. The only thing they were missing from this party catalog was the envelopes-from-the-fireplace number. Which, yes, is a WOW. I’m half-hoping my children see this and get excited about a Halloween Party this year so we can put together some of these favors. There’s a month to get ready, right?

File this under ‘Shared Text,’ because, no, an Anna Karenina or Mary Poppins themed party just isn’t going to have the gags and tricks that everyone will recognize and enjoy… More Harry Party party ideas here and here. Hat tip, James!