Maddie's 11th Birthday

This year was a "friend party" year for Maddie. From the moment I mentioned that, she knew she wanted to have a Harry Potter party. And I  didn't want to do it. I tried to sway her many different directions, but she always came back to Harry Potter, so I finally embraced the Potter Party and off we went.
I can't believe I didn't take a picture of her invitations!  We bought white balloons and drew an owl face on them and tied a rolled up invitation to the end of the string and left them on porches.  We only had one blow away.  (Luckily, I had bought extra balloons). 
I ran  into Amannda Ashby a few days before the party at Wal-Mart and she had just thrown a Potter party and let me borrow platform number nine and 3/4.  Huge thank you!  Saved me oodles of time.  

I think it was a huge success!  Macie and Lindsay were house elves and helped with all projects.  We made mandrakes, had potions class which involved mentos, diet coke, pop rocks and sprite.  Super fun!  We played table top quidditch, which was pretty hard - if I do say so myself.  We feasted on pizza, butterbeers, golden snitch cake pops, pretzel wands and a birthday cake just like the one Hagrid made for Harry. 

I'll admit it now, I actually had fun creating all of it once I embraced that it was going to be Harry Potter.  I don't know what we did before Pinterest though!

On the actual day of her birth, I went and took her lunch and checked her out and went and got a perm.  That was the one thing she really wanted for her birthday.  It took over 3 hours to have done and when they unwrapped it, we were both disappointed.  We went home and by the second day, it was pretty much straight.  Huge bummer.  I called and asked if they would re do it.  They gladly did.  This time we got a different girl who was super fast and it worked much better!  (And it helped that I kept texting Aunt Tera asking her questions about what they should do this time - like use a smaller rod and stronger solution). 

I'm so grateful for my Maddie!  She growing up so fast and is such a good example for me and her sisters!