I first read (some of ) the Harry Potter books aloud to my children (mostly my older daughter) in the fall of 2018. She was/is completely obsessed now but we haven’t read past the 4th book yet. Last summer, since we weren’t doing TOO many exciting things, I decided it would be fun to take a whole day to do nothing but celebrate Harry Potter’s birthday at the end of July. We celebrated on July 30, 2019 (a day early – my fault, oops!), but this year we’re going to do some of these activities today, which is July 31- Harry’s 40th birthday!!

I’ve included a few pictures from our celebration last year as well as some other ideas we’ll be doing this year, in case you want any ideas for foods that might be fun for a similar celebration 🙂

1) Make t-shirts or Golden Snitch necklaces. If you aren’t crafty, you can buy these things too! We made these t-shirts last year with fabric paint and they turned out great!

2) Make chocolate frogs (I use THIS frog mold)

3) Drink Butterbeer (either non-alcoholic or alcoholic though I’ll let you guess which kind I prefer, hehe). Here’s a great recipe!

4) Do the online Harry Potter escape room OR this at-home escape room if you have time to plan ahead. I have planned and prepped for the AT HOME Escape room to do tomorrow as a fun pick me up and I know my kids are going to be beyond excited.

5) Get sorted into your Hogwarts house! There is a quiz on Pottermore and also one here that you don’t need an account to take. I’m a Hufflepuff, which took me a while to be OK with but I am proud now. 😉 My children are also Hufflepuffs lol.

6) Do some Harry Potter yoga! My kids love this one. We also want to try this one but I need to do it myself first to make sure there aren’t any spoilers. 🙂

7) Read a Harry Potter book, listen to an audiobook, or watch one of the movies! We just started Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone again for -the umpteenth time, but this will be my 6 year old’s first true experience with the book so it’s pretty exciting 🙂

8) Eat some Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, or Sherbet Lemons! Last year, I also made Hagrid’s Rock Cakes, Golden Snitch Energy Balls, Gillyweed (Kale chips), and Pumpkin Juice. It was a lot of treats 😉

9) Play Quidditch! This is probably a better activity for a celebration not during Covid-restriction time, but I did this once with my friends in University and honestly, we had a BLAST. I should do a whole post about this some time if I can find the pictures.

10) Play a Harry Potter game like this one (we love it) or do a Harry Potter lego set OR listen to one of the soundtracks 🙂

Hope you all have a great weekend, and a wonderful August! July flew by (I have no idea where the time went!), but August is my birthday month so I can’t wait!