Harry Potter Murder Mystery Party: The Setting

I know these Harry Potter Murder Mystery posts are long over due. I promise one day I'll be finished with them. :) In case you are interested and missed the two before you are welcome to catch up on the cast of characters and the food on my previous ole' bliggity blog posts. 

The setting was one of my favorite parts of the party. Did I already say that about the food? Okay, let's be honest, I just love all aspects of putting on a party! But setting up was particularly fun.

Alot, of that fun came from Colleen's blog just Sweet and Simple. I am forever thankful for all her hard work and the amazing fact that she decided to share all of it on her blog! 

All her signs, labels and ideas made everything come together!

The living room table still being set up. I purchased 4 black candelabras online for around $1.50 each. I love them! And they can be painted in the future for use in other parties. They made such a difference with the whole party feel and worked out perfectly for lighting. 

Our table only seats 6 so we had to get creative for our 12 person dinner party. We put 4 desks at the end of our table, which worked out perfectly for space. But, this insured that we had to be creative with a table cloth, too. Who wants a fancy dinner without a table cloth? And seriously how bad would a wood table with 4 white foldable desks on the end look? (Lets just ignore the white foldable chairs, okay? :) ) Soooo, walah! We found our gold & terrible looking former bedroom curtains in our linen drawer, which turned out to be the perfect size and somewhat beautiful as Harry Potter party table cloths. I'm not sure if our landlord will appreciate the spaghetti sauce stains, but hey, in the name of the party, they had to be used. ;)

I bought these awesome lanterns online for $6.00. Seriously, your next party check amazon for some cheap and awesome deco. Oh wait, most of you probably live in America where there Goodwills and thrift stores a plenty. In that case, check your local Goodwill or thrift store. But to save time, just go ahead and check out Amazon, too. Does Amazon pay for promotion plugs? (Amazon. Please take note of how I am encouraging use of you. Feel free to send a lofty check/gift card. ;) ) Floo powder sign can be found here.

In China there are tons of small shops that sell little cutesy items, like; tiny clothespins with bears on them, cute little notebooks, cutesy bookmarks, or little vials/jars, like the above, with rolled up paper scrolls in them for love notes. These little jars were perfect for the potions corner. We took the love notes out and decorated each jar with a PolyJuice Potion label. I'm not sure if anyone noticed but I loved the small detail.

The "Mix your Potion" area. Ideally this area would have held tons of mixers for some of these Harry Potter cocktails but we had to go with the cheaper option. :)

We made sure to make everyone a Harry Potter wand. They were so fun to make and complete. The finished product was amazing, in my opinion and it couldn't have been easier. Buy cheap chopsticks, put hot glue around the top in whatever pattern you prefer, roll in rice, pebbles, sand, whatever you fancy, let dry, and paint. Easy peasy.

Everyone loved their wands.

We played a fire on the TV all night, which was also a nice touch and added to lighting in the room.

The table filled with appetizers. 

The dining room.

Place settings. 

I LOVED the table. It looked awesome. A few days before the party we started gathering items around the house that could be used for decorations. Anything that was unique, wooden or dark colored made the cut. We covered some books with wrapping paper and wrote Hogwarts book titles on them. 

Pumpkins added a great touch. Also, the Christmas lights plugged in at the far end and draped across the table looked fantastic.

The Care of Magical Creatures book--loved it. It now sits on our shelf all year round. :) And I have yet to, and don't think I ever will, uncover all of those books. Catherine just did such a great job with the penmanship. Love. Love.

On the mirror behind the table I taped the "owls" and their deliveries. Each owl held an important pack of information pertaining to the mystery.

How many pictures can I post of the table? I know. Right. I just loved it and was estatic with how it all turned out. And I want to remember!

Even the wine bottles placed through out the table added to the feel! Can you tell this was our first proper dinner party? I guess the Harry Potter part takes away from the proper part, but you get what I mean.

Picture 545 of the table. Bored of seeing it yet? Okay. Moving on to.... the bathroom!

The Ministry of Magic! Such a great idea! Again, that was all. Printable found here.

I also wanted to have a picture of Moaning Myrtle in the bathroom. I know at other parties people have mentioned making a recording of Moaning Myrtle to play in the bathroom, too. There's just an endless amount of details and ideas you could add to a Harry Potter Party! 

Signs found here. 

 Thanks for letting me share with you this little love project of mine. I had more fun prepping for this party and putting it together than I've had in a while. If only our budget allowed us to have fun parties like this every month. :) 

To view ALL the links for labels, invites, script, etc. Go here! :) Enjoy and party on. :) Lame. I know.

Harry Potter Murder Mystery Party: The Food

A good party is all about the food (and company, of course!).  Fortunately, when hosting a Harry Potter party there is SO MUCH fun, creative and delicious, on theme, appetizers and desserts to choose from. If we lived in the States I would have loved to be even more creative! I would have loved to make pumpkin pasties, chocolate shaped frogs and all the fun potion-cocktails. For being in China, I think things came out pretty great though! The best desserts were the butter beer, butter beer cupcakes and cockroach clusters, which were all made by my beautiful & talented friend, Kate. Thank you Kate!

This butter beer was fantastic. It was so warm and rich. We topped it with whipped cream, cinnamon and the leftover carmel from the butter beer cupcakes. The beer mugs were a great party favor (make sure people remember to take them home--we now have 14 beer mugs in our cupboard) that I bought at the store for $1.50. These would be great for any party, honestly. Check the dollar store before your next party. 

I tied red ribbon around the mugs and attached Harry Potter labels for decoration! 

Butter Beer Lables found here from Colleen at Just Sweet and Simple blog. 

Butter Beer Recipe here
We did number 5.

These babies were SUPER sweet but still delicious. I would suggest serving the butter beer before dinner and the cupcakes after! After everyone had their huge mug of rich butter beer, these cupcakes were just too much. On their own, they would be great!

Butter Beer Cupcakes recipe found here at Easybaked.net

Cupcake toppers found here from Colleen at Just Sweet and Simple blog. 

These cockroach clusters were awesome! They reminded me of pralines but chocolate! Delish.

Cockroach clusters recipe here
We didn't use the peanut butter chips and instead used all chocolate. 

All food lables found here--From Colleen at Just Sweet and Simple Blog

I ordered the black candelabras online for $3. They were perfect to set the scene. If you're in China, try taobao next time you have a party! They have everything! If you're in the States, get creative, check the dollar store, check local thrift stores and ebay for cheap party supplies!

I think these gummies were actually the octopus shaped gummies, but hey, with 8 legs, they worked as spiders. 

I used an old strawberry container for the wretched worms holder. I was going for the worms in a cage look.

We bought these clear suckers with fruit inside and drew a black dot on the front of the package to make them look like Goblin eyes. You can get creative and think outside the box when planning for theme parties.

These snitch truffles were super easy to make! All you need is Ferrero Rochers, white paper cut into wings and tape. Easy peasy. I would have loved to make a huge tray of them but Ferrero Rochers are expensive here, as they are in most countries I assume.

I used pink marshmallows for the Cauldron creams and placed them in a black tea pot.

I used dried dates, since they looked like black rocks, as the Rock Cakes and random cookies as the moon stone cookies. If you're in the States, with access to all of the ingredients, there are tons of recipes for Harry Potter party good online. For Moon Stone Cookies recipe go here. 

While guests arrived and were talking we had tons of appetizers, desserts and finger foods for them to snack on. After everyone arrived and had their fill of the starters we moved into the dining room for a course meal. We started with salad as the first course, opened the wine for the second and moved on to Spaghetti for the third. Then, we moved back into the living room for dessert and butter beer.  

I really want to thank Colleen from the Just Sweet and Simple blog. She has posted EVERYTHING you could possibly need for a Harry Potter Party or Harry Potter Murder Mystery party, including food labels, the murder mystery script, DIY's and every printable imaginable. This party would not have been possible without her blog! Check it out! She's a pro at throwing parties and her website is full of tips, tricks and DIY's.