Over the weekend we celebrated Caden’s birthday with his friends and family. I think it’s the first time we’ve ever had parties a week after his birthday, which was a little bit weird. In a way it was nice to spread out, but there’s also some positives to just powering through everything all in one weekend! It does make September as a whole a bit less chaotic. At any rate, it was fun! He picked Harry Potter for his theme this year. I found so many cool decorating ideas online, but ended up just going with the simplest and cheapest – potion bottles from Hobby Lobby filled with colored waters. At the friend party, every single kid asked me what each particular potion was for. I was not prepared with answers!
I bought a chocolate frog mold because it showed up on amazon every time I searched Harry Potter party supplies. I figured just filling them with plain almond bark was pretty boring, so I made m&m, mint, Andes candies, sea salt, and salted caramel chip frogs.
Greg and the boys were doing a rock candy experiment the week before and it turned out that the sticks were done the same day as the party, so we laid them out as wands.
Polyjuice potion punch. I just used the same punch potion I use at basically every single party – 2 bottles of 7up, 1 can of pineapple orange juice concentrate, and lime sherbet. Plus some extra neon green food coloring for this party.
Butterbeer fudge. Which was really just a mix of butterscotch and vanilla fudges, with marshmallows on top.
Golden snitches made from Ferrero Rocher truffles and a wing template I found online. Originally I wanted to make golden cake pops with some sort of edible wings, but after some disastrous attempts at cake pops for my brother’s birthday in August, I decided it wasn’t worth the struggle!
The main dessert was butterbeer cupcakes. I thought the kids would think they were cool, but they quickly ate all the other food and nobody wanted a cupcake. I’m pretty sure I was the only one who ate one and it wasn’t really that good. No big deal, just wish I hadn’t spent the time making them! We had chocolate covered pretzel wands too. And gummy shaped witch/sorting hats I randomly found in Door County.
The party started with all the boys playing in our giant leaf pile. They were having fun. And it was very messy!
Then we came in for dinner. I made this pizza bread snake. It’s one of my all time favorite recipes and I only ever make it on Halloween. Need to change that! I also used a baguette to make a long sandwich which I sliced into little pieces and shaped like a snake. And we had chex mix, which I called muggle munch.
Present time next. I somehow always think everyone will settle down while my kid opens his presents. No such luck! Surely they know how to sit and stay sitting at school?!
Lots of awesome gifts from his friends! I think they all picked out their own gifts to give him and showed that they know Caden pretty well.
I bought a box of Bernie Bott’s jelly beans, so they played the Beanboozled game. It was pretty hilarious how into it they all were!
One of his friends gave him a sorting hat, so they had to do a sorting ceremony.
This is the one kid who absolutely, no matter what, did NOT want to be in Gryffindor.
And cake time. I could not get Caden to take the rock candy out of his mouth or smile. You think that young kids are uncooperative for photos you want to mean a lot. Think again! The older the kid the more they refuse to cooperate!
As close as we were going to get!
The rest of the party was spent running around outside. Whew, did those kids have energy! I apologize to my neighbors for the noise!! I’m glad it was such a nice day that we could send them out to play in between everything. Overall, it was a really nice party. I think Caden had fun. And I liked doing it on a Friday because everyone was available (as opposed to its originally scheduled Saturday time, when literally nobody could come for the whole thing) AND I didn’t have the boys home all day freaking out about how long it was until the party started.
We celebrated Caden’s family party on Sunday. After having no interest in the butterbeer cupcakes, Caden said he didn’t care about this dessert either. So I went with something I would like. I don’t normally like cake all that much, but it’s fun when I can be a little extravagant and go over the top with decadent flavors.
Halfway between our birthdays, so kind of my cake anyway. 🙂
I had to take a lot of cake pictures! It was a triple layer homemade chocolate cake soaked with butterscotch sauce. Salted caramel frosting and chocolate ganache. Topped with gold sprinkles, sea salt flakes, and homemade toffee shards. It was delish!
Mostly the same desserts, though I upgraded to some fancy chocolate covered pretzel wands I found at Costco last week. Oh and little cups of mini animal crackers, which I was calling Patronuses.
More of the same punch. I think I’ll have to change it up for the next family party. But this one is pretty delicious and so easy!
We had a big taco bar for lunch, which is what we have at almost every party. I thought about doing something different, but tacos are Caden’s favorite food, so it made sense. I might need to be more creative for Shepard’s party next year.
We were so excited to see Hudson for the first time in six weeks! It’s amazing how fast babies change in the first year. He was awake for most of the party, which was awesome. Annie was very curious about him, particularly his feet!
Cousins!
He was so entertaining!
Wondering why I keep flashing lights at him.
Presents. He got a lot of Harry Potter and magic themed gifts this year.
Greg took Annie to the dog park in the morning to wear off her energy and she was pretty great for most of the party. But something about us all sitting and watching Caden hyped her up, so we gave her a new bone. She thought she’d settle in next to my dad to chew it. He wasn’t having that!
I don’t think he’s ever even seen a magician, but he had the showmanship down pat when he demonstrated his first few magic tricks. It was so funny!
It was another great party! Many thanks to everyone who helped my boy celebrate his last year in the single digits!
