How it Went: Harry Potter Week!
Let me just start us out right here: I bit off more than I could chew.
Bet that doesn’t surprise you, eh? In reality, while this idea was so much fun, there were just so many moving parts… and not to mention… LIFE. To say it took a lot of gumption to pull this off would be an understatement. But for kids… the show must go on.
Thankfully, to be quite honest, the little one is at an age where not only can’t she read, but she can’t seem to remember or comprehend almost anything fully still. This saved me. With a little bit of a stomach bug I dealt with at the end of the week, sniffles for her, school open houses, taekwondo, my partner traveling for work in New York for Toy Fair, and just general kid all-over-the-place-ness… we did it. But not without some re-arranging and even ditching of one activity.
How it Started:
Having seen Harry Potter marathons all over social media and watching through the movies myself each year in October, I thought doing an activity based marathon over the course of a week would pique the interest of a 6 year old. I wanted the opportunity to share these magical movies, that in my eyes, also help nurture imagination. While I know that Harry Potter can be scary at times, she’s the child that has loved everything spooky from a young age and there’s always the fast-forward button if needed.
So I planned the days out, a movie a night- in order of course. Then with the help of Pinterest and talking to my other Harry Potter loving friends, I came up with the activities and tried to schedule the shorter ones around busy nights and the longer, more in-depth ones on the weekend. I’ll get to my rearranging later, but in theory… I mostly had it down.
Let’s go through each day!
Monday
While the little one was at school, I decorated our place with as much of the Harry Potter vibes I could muster. Having just recently moved, we’re not entirely unpacked, and still kind of busting at the seems… but we’re close enough and making due! I hung the viral floating candlesticks from Amazon (I purchased the ones here). These were totally worth it and I LOVE this purchase (so does the little one and my man!) It comes with a literal Harry Potter looking wand to turn on and off, and has a 6 hour auto setting as well. After a bit of googling, I also found free pintables of the “wanted posters” here and hung them in our hallway, the living room and as you turn to the kitchen. I tried to make them look as wind swept and magical as I could.
I just barely had everything set up before she came home from school. I surprised her with her own witches hat and a poster outlining our week. As you can tell- she was very shocked!
Click this link for my complimentary Harry Potter week printed flyer with whole week plan!
Our first night was “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” + Train Treats. You guys… I’m making this fun, but I promise everything on here isn’t Pinterest worthy. My partner picked up some popcorn buckets from the DollarTree and I snagged some Bertie Botts Every Flavor Jellybeans and a chocolate frog from the Michael’s Craft store checkout lane. I later saw some Harry Potter branded Hershey’s Kisses & grabbed those for her dad. She wasn’t too thrilled with the jellybeans, but we did bribe her $1 to try 3 “gross” flavors. She got earwax, soap and sausage. She was the least thrilled about the sausage one and told me it “had ketchup in it”.
Tuesday
Tuesday was “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” and baking Mandrake Cupcakes. Truthfully, it was more “decorating” the cupcakes… but for a six year old… close enough. To make things more simple, I went ahead and just purchased a cupcake mix. I prepped everything earlier and let her help decorate. She was especially excited about smashing the oreos for “dirt”. Ironically, we had just finished watching the mandrake scene when we started decorating! It couldn’t have been more perfect timing for her to get the context.
To assemble the mandrake cupcakes it was pretty easy!
Dip strawberries in chocolate & throw in freezer to harden while frosting.
Frost the cupcakes (we used vanilla because that’s what she likes, but chocolate would look more like “mud”).
Sprinkle/press crumbled Oreos to resemble dirt in frosting.
Remove strawberries from freeze & push into the frosting so it looks like mandrakes springing from the soil.
Draw little screaming faces on your mandrakes with icing.
Make sure to mimic screaming when you pull your mandrakes out to bite their faces off lol!
*I am gluten-free, so these were made entirely gluten-free. It’s easy to find alternatives for most popular items these days!
Wednesday
This was a night where time started to get most chaotic. My partner was packing to leave for New York for work the next morning and we had taekwondo. Thankfully this was one of the easier nights- “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” + Butterbeer floats. I decided our butterbeers would be very kid friendly. Since the little one is a bit of a picky eater, and I wasn’t sure she’d entertain a lot of the butterbeer recipes I’d been finding. She enjoyed this- minus the cream soda on it’s own, so take that as you will if you decide to recreate this!
Kid-Friendly Butterbeer Float Ingredients:
Cream Soda
Vanilla Ice Cream
Whipped Cream
Caramel Syrup
Thursday
Another chaotic school night, I admittedly started to go a little rogue on our plans. Thursday was “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” + I decided to do “Herbology Class” a day early and rearrange. The little one had a school open house at an odd time of night and got out with about an hour and a half to blow before going back to school for the open house. Thankfully, I had been tipped off that there was a carnivorous plant seller at the farmer’s market & it happened to be the last Snohomish Farmer’s Market of the year! If you’re local to the greater Snohomish area, I’d highly recommend checking out Predatory Perennials! I was thrilled to not only buy with someone local, but she honestly made this such a cool experience for the little one! Her booth was so unique and all of the plants were carnivorous. She even had stones in a bucket to name your plant. The little one went with “Pan”, which I thought was fitting.
You can check out the Predatory Perennial Instagram here. Seriously, go check her out! & Thank you so much to Predatory Perennial’s for giving us such an awesome experience!
Friday
Sooooo. Friday was “Harry Potter an the Order of the Phoenix”… and also where I realized I was in over my head. The little one bit it hard on the way out of school and I started feeling unwell. I decided to just take it easy this day- it was just one of those days. We watched the movie and otherwise took it easy. I will say, this is the day that she really started wanting to watch alllllll of the Harry Potter movies. She was into the other’s we’d watched, but it became an obsession on the last few.
Saturday
Saturday we did “Harry Potter an the Half-Blood Prince” and only bought the things for her wand making because I made the age old mistake of thinking I was feeling better and over-did it. Until then, we had a really fun morning! We started our morning in Downtown Snohomish at the shops on First Street. With any good wand, I knew we’d need a crystal to make it just that much more special! Thankfully, our little town of Snohomish has so many wonderful shops, including the magical “Little Shop of Light”! Can I just say that I’ve had the best experiences here with small business owners thus far? The owner of Little Shop of Light was simply incandescent and made the little one’s crystal selection so special. She welcomed us so warmly, indulged my explanation of Harry Potter week, talked to the little one about magic, but also feeling & intention. I couldn’t have asked for more!
I also recommend you give the Little Shop of Light a visit! Find her Instagram link here.
After visiting the Little Shop of Light, we strolled along the Snohomish River Front Trail on the Snohomish River looking for the perfect stick for a wand. The little one tested out quite a few and landed on an actual beautiful piece of cottonwood. It’s fantastically knobbly and wobbly!
“Coffees” in hand from Looking Glass Coffee, we set back out on First Street to discover more Snohomish gems. Beyond the flurry of bats at Edit an Olive & Bloom Company, we found a black staircase seemingly straight out of Harry Potter, with the coolest First National Bank safe downstairs! Is this Gringotts!? While there were no goblins in sight (thank goodness), I did find a beautiful dress I plan on wearing for Thanksgiving. Edit is a self proclaimed “curated lifestyle marketplace” with everything from boutique clothing items, to furniture, home decor & accessories.
(Peep her Harry Potter dress)
Sunday
We made it!! Our last day was a double header of Harry Potter movies! “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows”- Part 1 and Part 2. The little one was most excited for potions class and it was the most “all out” activity I had planned. I purchased all different sized glass bottles from Michael’s, ribbon, charms, tags, glitter & E600 glue for the corks. From Fred Meyer, I purchased corn syrup & food coloring for the “potion”.
Learning Moments from the Potions Making-
I read that corn syrup was a good ingredient to keep the glitter suspended. In my opinion, it’s fine to fill the bottles halfway with corn syrup, but hot water is needed to melt it enough to be able to mix everything together. The first two bottles we didn’t use hot water and it was impossible to mix and turned into a mess.
*Pro-tip: Get a disposable tablecloth for these projects! Thanks to my honey for suggesting this! Only $1-3 and you don’t have to really clean up messes- just put items away and fold and throw away the tablecloth.
(Also peep her Hogwarts sweatshirt)
Our biggest casualty this week! Woopsies!
Our poor wand! Due to six year old attention spans & running out of time, all we were able to do is get the wand glued together. It’ll eventually be painted brown… but I’m sad to say it’s currently in this state until we can revisit this project!
Takeaways
First of all- this is an EPICLY long blog post & I did not realize how long this would be! While I have blogged in the past, this type of content is new to me and in the future I’d probably break our activities out by the day so it’s easier to absorb.
This was a lot. A LOT. LOL!!! In hindsight, I’d probably watch through the movies in a week like we did, but maybe start them on a Friday night and do Friday-Sunday of some activities to get excitement going, but just watch a movie a night without activities during the week.
We completely missed the golden snitch hunt. This would have been fun- just like an easter egg hunt but she never seemed to notice we missed an activity. This is one of those moments that we sometimes put so much pressure on ourselves and then realize that in that moment… there really wasn’t reason for it.
I am honestly really proud of all of this though! While it was a lot of work, the point was to get the little one excited and into Harry Potter, but to also bring the magic! I love encouraging imagination and Harry Potter just has so much magic, but also stories and lessons about so many other topics like friendships, family dynamics, bullies, and good over evil.
It worked. She was so into the movies, the music, the magic!
Would I do something like this again? Totally. There would just be more planning and not as many activities to give us all a break when life is well… life.
Thank you again for reading! I hope you enjoyed this EPIC Harry Potter week and seeing how we were also able to integrate this with our sweet little town of Snohomish, WA & the local small businesses that helped make it so special!
Have more ideas for me? Things we can do with kids, things to check out in Snohomish or some feedback for Harry Potter week? Throw it in the comments below! I’d love to hear!
♥ Andrea Hamre
Proud Snohomish Community Member
& Trusted REALTOR® w/ John L. Scott