I’m sad to announce that this is the final entry in my Knockturn Alley party post series. The final shop we created in our living room was the Cauldron Shop, and it was made by my friend and roommate Eia Waltzer. I was super impressed with what she did with the theme – the only idea I really gave her was “fill cauldrons with food and drinks”. Great artistic direction, I know.

But Eia is a creative mastermind, and she definitely made this corner of the party her own.

It was pretty dark over in the Cauldron Shop, but that was purposeful. As you can see above, nearly everything in Eia’s shop glowed in the dark. She had, by far, the most popular drinks and snacks – but I’m not sure if that was due to her masterful cooking skills or the fact that we literally had a light up fountain.

This fountain was one of my absolutely favorite party purchases. You can buy it for your next party here on Amazon, and it was really reasonably priced. We called this punch Amortencia, the love potion of the Harry Potter universe. They say Amortencia smells different to everyone who sniffs it; similarly, our Amortencia tasted different at various points of the night because it kept getting refilled with slightly different ingredients.

Oh also, I don’t know how obvious it is – but those white things floating in the fountain are eyeballs. It just made sense.

Both drinks at the Cauldron Shop came in punch bowls because, duh, they look like cauldrons. I don’t have a close up picture of it, but if you look at that first picture again you can see the glowing blue punch bowl on the left – that one held Unicorn’s Blood. The lights at the bottom were blue glow sticks. It was a mixture of blue Hawaiian punch and Whipped Vodka and it was delicious. Most party guests said it was their favorite.

On to food! First up are these delicious wrapped hotdogs Eia lovingly named “Frankenweenies”:

This is a terrible picture, I apologize – but that’s what you get when you try to photograph food in Knockturn Alley. The funny part about these little guys is that for two years now Eia has been calling these Frankenweenies… but it occurred to us this past weekend that there’s nothing “Franken” about them! They’re mummies! It’s too late though. The name has stuck, and they look creepy enough to be served at a dark wizard gathering, so they got to stay.

I found these great little mini cauldrons at the local party store, so Eia fashioned her own version of Cauldron Cakes out of them: vanilla pudding died green, crumbled oreos, and gummy worms. Don’t pretend like that doesn’t sound AMAZING.

I believe Eia’s greatest conquest to be these Pumpkin Pasties. She made those cake pops entirely by hand and they were wonderful. I really appreciated the unique approach to more “common” Harry Potter treats, and it was greatly appreciated amongst party guests.

Now that I’ve shared the entire party on this blog, I’m curious what your favorite parts were? Which shop did you like the best, or did you prefer one of the other aspects of the party more? What was your favorite reference to Harry Potter?

I can’t tell you how much fun we had planning this party. I feel like I’ve preparing for this party ever since I was 13 and started reading these books; ever since I first fell in love with Slytherin house. The night of the party will go down in history as one of my favorite events of all time, and I only wish I could have shared it with ALL of the Harry Potter friends I have made over the years.

Thanks for following along as I recounted the experience, and I hope you’ve been inspired to throw your own themed parties. Themes parties are the best parties.

Also, before I end this party series forever, I feel like it’s prudent to admit that somehow, a party guest dressed as DUMBLEDORE won the costume contest. No joke.

I guess good really does always triumph over evil. Humph.

Hey guys! Rather than try to figure out her vision myself for this post, I figured it would be better to give you guys the real deal. I introduce to you my friend and roommate Liz Leo, the mastermind behind the Spiny Serpent portion of our Knockturn Alley party.

The Spiny Serpent is home to all things creepy, crawly, and scaly. You simply can’t find stock like this anywhere else in the wizarding world. We have your spiders. We have your maggots. We have your miniature poison-egg-laying dragons (perfect for brunch with ex-boyfriends).

A regular here at the Spiny Serpent, Mr. Dungeon Troll (his parents weren’t very original), once told me a story about how a pesky boy wizard stuck a wand up his nose when he was just trying to go to the bathroom during a Halloween party. We decided to honor his tale with a pretzel and dip delicacy (the dip featured here is cheese, as we ran out of real bogeys just moments ago).

We have scores of dragons that lay all sorts of pernicious confections. Some eggs make perfect smoke bombs to be used for sneaky escapes. Others contain scrolls that predict the future. These- well these are chicken eggs that I hard boiled, gently cracked the shell, and soaked in red and black food coloring for a few hours- I tend to save the real dragon eggs for higher paying customers.

Maybe window shoppers like yourself might be more interested in some dragon scales and goblin blood- only a knut a scoop. Our dragons shed like mad in the summer, so we sell the scales by the bag all autumn long. However in a pinch blue tortilla chips and verde salsa will get you through a dry spring.Finally, if you’re like me and you spend a large portion of your time wrestling giant flesh eating slugs away from your nursery of carnivorous shrubs, sprouts, and seedlings, then you’ll be needing this drink to take your mind off of your struggles. This “Flesh Eating Slug Repellant” features margarita mix spiked with tequila, limeade, and ginger ale- plus the salt around the rim will make sure the slugs don’t go for your flesh as well. (Oh, and please forgive our signage’s spelling error. Our house elf Winky must have gotten into the sauce before practicing her penmanship.)

*cue ominous music

The largest shop at our Halloween party was Borgin & Burkes, naturally, as it’s the only Knockturn Alley shop we really know anything about. For some reason our house has a built-in bar, so we designed this shop around it. Technically it was assigned to my roommate Justin, but it was more a collaboration between all of us.

The idea was to have food in the front, and a museum of artifacts “for sale” in the back.

Each of the dark artifacts had a tag on it with the name and a price. Some were things we happened to have sitting around the house already (like the books and creepy picture frame and hourglass) while others we either purchased specifically for the event (ie. George’s ear) or entirely made from scratch.

This hand of glory was made by my roommate Liz. She worked on it for days, creating the entire thing out of popsicle sticks, hot glue, paper mache, acrylic paint and wax. You can read her hilarious and disturbing tutorial here. The red display pillow we happened to find at a consignment store on the same day as the party, which was exactly the sort of luck we kept running into throughout most of the party-planning process.

Eia created this pensieve. The concoction inside is a mixture of almond milk, blue food coloring that we took care not to mix too thoroughly, and fine glitter. If you create a pensieve for your own party, please make sure your guests don’t confuse it with another punch bowl!

Next up were the food and drinks for Borgin & Burkes. We went pretty dark with everything at this station, which was surprisingly fun for creating snacks. Every party needs chips and dip, so that was an easy one.

One of my all time favorite party foods is stuffed mushrooms, which are inherently creepy looking. Those were a hit and instantly fit at the Borgin & Burkes spread. I forgot to put a tag on these ones, but I thought they looked a bit like mandrakes:

And finally, the drinks. No wizard party would be complete with Firewhiskey, and I also really wanted to create a drink for Draught of Living Death:

The firewhiskey was just Fireball whiskey (no use making it more complicated than it needed to be), while the Draught of Living Death was a bit more on the fancy side. We used drop shot cups with cranberry juice on the outside, and black Blavod vodka on the inside. It’s pure black! It absolutely had that creepy, foreboding look – but was quite popular with the guests.

I really loved that our party guests all took the time to walk through and take in the detail we put into each shop, and Borgin & Burkes was definitely the most exciting one for crafts and artifacts. I love the scene in Chamber of Secrets when Harry mistakenly ends up here and wanders through some of the creepier things on display, so we wanted to try and recreate that feeling. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and stay tuned for the remaining two shops!

The first shop from our Knockturn Alley party that I am going to highlight is the Apothecary – which is the one I made! I have always loved Halloween spreads that include a bunch of creepy glass jars and vials, so I called dibs on this one to give that idea a wizardy potion bottle twist. Here’s what I came up with:

My shop focused a bit more on decorations than most of the others; I wanted to give the table the illusion of a pretty tea party that wilted and rotted after years of neglect. I was able to use a lot of things we already had in our house, actually. The tattered bunny was a leftover prop made for a costume I wore to a horror movie party, the doll with the bleeding eyes was actually Liz’s from the dinner party we went to last week. My favorite prop made specifically for this party, however, was the “doll in a jar”. I was inspired by watching a few two many episodes of American Horror Story:

The candy wands were kind of an afterthought, to be honest. I bought a tin of Pirouettes because they have that tea party feel, and realized as I was setting them out that they could double as wands. That’s the fun of throwing a themed party like this: the Harry Potter universe is so expansive that it’s really fun and easy to tie in just about anything.

Keeping up with crafts, here’s the array of potion bottles I made:

You’d be amazed how much of this stuff is entirely normal household items! From left to right we have sliced peaches in a light syrup, then the Eye of Newt bottle has yellow dyed water with sugar babies at the bottom to look like eyes. Next the fancier bottle has chopped up cauliflower stems in blue dyed water, and the Dragon Blood vial is simply Orange Crush soda. Second to last is an actual non-edible slime mixture, and finally the largest jar has cauliflower stalks and beef broth (which I thought looked a bit like cat brains).

Now that you’re good and hungry (haha) let’s move on to food!

These pastries ended up being kind of a mistake, but they worked out just fine in the end and were delicious as well! I meant to make little pastry purses but they all ended up opening while they were baking. That was just fine though – I thought the blueberries wedged inside the flaky casing made them look like a sort of poisonous plant, so Venoumous Tentacula they became!

I was quite proud of the drinks at my shop: This first one came in these lovely test tube vials and were dubbed Veritaserum. The potion is always described as colorless, but I still wanted to do something fun with it, so I created a raspberry vodka and tonic water mixture (because tonic water reacts under blacklights). You can’t quite tell in this picture, but these drinks were a perfect addition to the glow theme at the party (and were quite popular for it). You can get the test tubes and rack here on Amazon.

Next up was the Polyjuice Potion. I was quite proud of this one:

Just short of putting actual bits of things in the shots (no one wants to drink anything that has pieces of hair or fingernails in it, even on Halloween) we wanted to create a texture that still looked chunky enough to be Polyjuice Potion. These jello shots were a labour of love, creating three different colors of jello and spooning them into the cups separately after letting them firm up a bit. I used this recipe as a guide (though as cooking usually goes, they turned out a bit differently).

Needless to say, the Polyjuice Potion was another popular item during the party, though we did hear they were quite strong. Whoops!

So, that was the Apothecary! There are still three more shops to feature, so please look out for those. I’m more than curious to hear your thoughts, and let me know if you’d like the recipes for any of the food items mentioned above!

So, I have been hinting about this online for weeks – but my roommates and I have been tirelessly working on an epic Halloween party we threw at our house. I’m talking party committee meetings, organized shopping trips, and scheduled craft nights. We host a Halloween party every year, but this year… we went ALL out. Being a house full of Harry Potter fanatics, we decided it was time to give our party the ultimate theme: Knockturn Alley.

Upon arriving at our house, the first thing guests were greeted by was this flaming fireplace doorway and bucket of Floo powder. Our door is naturally lime green, so it felt only right that it would be connected to the Floo network. Wizards could shout “Knockturn Alley!” and throw a handful of sand, while unassuming muggles would mispronounce Diagon Alley as “Digonelly!” and show up in the same place.

Once inside, all guests were encouraged to put their name in the Goblet of Fire. We didn’t tell them why initially (just that they might be “chosen”), then random times throughout the night my roommate Justin (dressed as Voldemort) shown a dark mark symbol on the ceiling and drew names of guests from the goblet.

These selected guests would then become Death Eaters and would receive a green wrist band. Guests with wrist bands got special treatment (ie. prizes) throughout the evening.

To get down to where the party was, party-goers were encouraged to follow the spiders. A trail of spiders led all the way down the stairs, down the next hallway and into the living room.

Then in the living room, we created the illusion of the dark and creepy Knockturn Alley by covering everything in black tablecloths and shining a green floodlight across the room. Each corner had a separate “shop” with its own sign, theme, decor, food and beverages. The four shops we chose were actual ones from Knockturn Alley: of course we had Borgin and Burkes; this was the main and largest shop that took place at our built in bar. Next was the Spiny Serpent (which we know very little about from the books) so we turned it into a bestiary. The Cauldron Shop was next, which had food and drinks of and pertaining to all things cauldron-related. The final shop was the Apothecary, which mostly had interesting drinks as well as an assortment of creepy potion inspired decorations.

I will have blog posts up about each of these individual shops in the next couple of days (that I will eventually link to from this post) so please keep an eye out for that!

My favorite aspect of this party was that everything was supposed to be dark, creepy, and relatively colorless. Except, of course, for the drinks (to represent potions, and a wizard party, of course). We installed four black-lights around the living room, and used UV reactant cups as well as flashing plastic “ice cubes” for the drinks, so once guests started mingling and dancing and drinking, it kind of turned into a dark wizard rave. The image of a dark, foggy room filled with people in fantastic dark wizard costumes with only glowing drinks for lights was a pretty intense, amazing visual theme for the party; one I am quite proud of. It worked even better than we could have planned.

There’s so much more I want to share but I will save it for the next blog posts; in closing I will leave you with the creepiest aspect of the party: the bathroom.

Maybe it’s the Slytherin in me (sorry guys – newly sorted Hufflepuff or no, there will always be an element of Slytherin in my bones) but I really wanted to make people regret going to the bathroom. So we did this to our shower:

I tied it in by saying the brain was one from the Department of Mysteries… but even I’ll admit that was a stretch. I just wanted to freak people out.

It was a fantastic night, everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, and I was so thankful for all of the help I had in pulling it off. My roommates were absolutely amazing in helping get everything ready, as were a handful of my friends who came over early to help us finish setting up.

My roommates! Liz as a shop keeper, Justin as Voldemort, myself as Narcissa and Eia as the Grey Lady.

I don’t know if I’ll ever throw a party quite this grand ever again, but I’m pleased to be able to check it off my list. I don’t know if other people have thrown Death Eater or Knockturn Alley parties before but we had so much fun scouring the books for ideas. I’m curious to know your thoughts, as I know many of the people who read my blog are also huge Harry Potter fans! How did we do?

I’m not even going to be bashful about this one – I am awesome at roasting pumpkin seeds. I learned how to make them from my mom years ago, and now I’m always that drill sergeant during pumpkin carving barking at everyone to “save your seeds!” It’s well worth it though, because no one seems to complain much when we have a huge amount of roasted seeds on the counter for the week around Halloween.

Making seeds is super easy. This is all you will need:

• Freshly scooped out pumpkin seeds
• Olive oil
• Johnny’s Seasoning (or sea salt)
• Parchment or wax paper

When you’re carving your pumpkins, keep two bowls out: one for guts, and one for seeds. Sorting them as you go is a lot simpler. After you’ve completely finished your lovely pumpkins (one thing at a time here) take the seeds into the kitchen and pick out any remaining bits of pumpkin guts. This step is obnoxious, but pretty important.

Next, dump your seeds in a strainer and run them under cold water. This will help make them less slimy and should separate any pumpkin that you might not have caught. Once they’re as clean as you can get them, pat them dry with a paper towel and prepare your baking pan.

I lined a pan with parchment paper, as see above. Then drizzle olive oil on the paper before dumping your seeds on top, making a single layer covering the entire sheet. Add a bit more olive oil on top, then sprinkle the entire sheet with Johnny’s seasoning (or your favorite substitute – you may also use sea salt, garlic salt; anything!)

The whole tray goes into the oven at 325 degrees F for about 20-25 minutes, or when they seeds get nice and crunchy. Remove them from the tray and enjoy! They’re particularly good while warm.

How do you cook your pumpkin seeds? Or are you one of those people who (gasp) throws them away? Let me know in the comments!

I was checking out this website today, that tells you the “Secret Language Names and Personalities” of people based on their birthdate. It’s kind of interesting; rather than being totally made up (like a lot of astrology) the Secret Language Name is derived from a study done on over 20,000 actual people over a period of forty years. The data is supposed to reveal your “true identity” based on the information collected from other people born on your same birthday. I’m a total sucker for stuff like this, so I plugged in myself and a few of my friends, and here’s what I found:

I mean… that sounds about right. I can’t deny that. Generally I’m of the mindset that this sort of cultivated life advice is generally nothing more than that: advice. Maybe the day we come into this world really does have some effect on who we become (how cool would that be!) but even if it’s all just coincidence – who’s to say it’s not still helpful to take a step back and evaluate ourselves and how we operate now and then?

The way this site works, having scrolled through it a bit now, is that it breaks down your personality traits on a few different planes. First it gives you a breakdown of the type of person your particular birthdate has made you. Then if you scroll a bit further, it takes you to the Week of your birth, and then there’s a section about your Path and your Way. Then it jumps out to the Month and then the Season. Each one obviously get a bit broader, but the larger picture shows you how it all fits together to make you a complex high functioning person rich with a lot of these traits.

The part that spoke to me most from my results was actually from my Path. There was a section about what my “fulfillment” is, which was the following:

Again, maybe it’s not that I was born on the 27th of December that set my path as someone who makes their own rules – but I think there’s definitely something to be said about that fact that I was able to sift through a huge page full of information and pick out this quote, realizing it to be true about myself. Now this statement is something I’m thinking about. Now it’s something that will help me make future decisions; not because some horoscope told me to, but because it helped me realize it was part of who I am already. I think that’s interesting.

I looked up a few of my friends to see if there was anything I thought was true or interesting about them, which was a lot of fun.  Most of them were pretty accurate, surprisingly, but this particular quote about my friend and roommate Eia made me crack up, but mostly because she always sleeps until midday:

Anyway, there’s a whole bunch of information to read through and it’s all pretty interesting, so if you have a bit of free time and wanna check it out, you’ll probably learn something about yourself!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Last week, my good friend Tara of the GeekyHostess threw one of the strangest dinner parties I’ve ever been to. All we knew upon arrival was that we should wear “whatever you would normally wear to a reading of a will for a distant relative/acquaintance in his fancy home. ” I took this opportunity to wear a lacy black dress from H&M I don’t have nearly enough reasons to wear, black heeled boots from Cathy Jean, purple tights, emerald nail polish, a peacock feather pendant, a sock bun and my favorite piece of jewelry – a “poison ring”, which has a hidden compartment for storing things.

We arrived at Tara’s place and were met with the creepiest tea party I have ever seen. Don’t get me wrong: the food and drinks looked amazing (Tara always outdoes herself); no, it was the dolls placed everywhere with broken faces and bleeding eyes that set my teeth on edge.

Then, even though I was surrounded by my best friends, we entertained the most forced, awkward dinner conversation of all time – pretending no one knew each other and all had to discover how we were acquainted with the deceased (Harold Winchester the Third, a man who loved dolls more than anything else). It was the craziest meta-game ever. I can’t even explain it.

After dinner was the reading of the will, or rather, a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill where we were instructed to find Harold’s favorite room in the house so the will could be read there. The only catch – we were the characters in the game. Quite literally:

The game turned into a crazed hunt through the house to find the voodoo doll versions of ourselves and destroy them before Harold’s equally frightening attorney could kill us as keep us as dolls in his newly inherited collection forever. I was a paper doll, as seen above. I died.

I don’t want to spoil too much, as Tara is writing up a post on her own blog about the evening, and there’s a Team Hypercube video about the event as well. Basically it was another perfect example of how weird/awesome my friend group is, and how I don’t think we’re even capable of doing anything normal. Of course we’d attend a murder tea party. Of course we would.

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I’m just gonna put it out there… this month’s Ipsy bag was kind of lame. There’s nothing particularly wrong with any of the products, but I kind of feel like it was a lazy month. Hardly any of it is even makeup, and what I like most is seeing the different products my friends and I get based on our preferences and skin tones and whatnot – but the bags my roommate Eia and I got this month were identical, down to the very last item. I’m still obviously going to review everything; I was just sort of disappointed.

Starting at the top left…

Nourish Organic Coconut & Argan body lotion: Always a fan of body lotion, but I’m not too sure about the coconut scent. It sort of reminds me of sunscreen, which is confusing when you live in the Pacific Northwest and it’s currently fall. My hands smell like it’s time to go to the beach, but my sweater and leg warmers say otherwise.

Zoya nail polish in ‘Giovanna’: I did really like this polish. It lasted at least a couple days without chipping (which is sayin’ something on these hands) and the color is a gorgeous emerald green color. It’s actually perfect for the Narcissa costume I am putting together, as I don’t actually own any green polish quite like this.

Big Sexy Hair Blow Dry Volumizing Gel: I’m not the biggest fan of lower-end hair products – my hair tends toward the greasy side already, so unless I’m using really great products, anything I put on it sort of just weighs it down or quickens the already fast-moving process toward oiliness. This product was just meh – my hair blow dried a bit straighter than normal, but it feels heavier rather than voluminous.

LA Fresh Oil-Free Face Cleanser: I am a stickler about washing my face every night before bed, but every once in awhile there’s that lazy night… for me, it was when I watched American Horror Story after dark and was too afraid to go into my bathroom alone. Haha. I grabbed one of these cleansing wipes, and while I definitely wouldn’t resort to these every night, they do work in a pinch! They smell lovely and get rid of a fair amount of your makeup, which is a plus. They’re also biodegradable and compostable, which rocks.

Starlooks lip liner in ‘Tickle Me Pink’: I’ll be honest – this is my very first lip liner. I’ve never used one before! I have no basis for comparison! It seems good, it’s a nice muted rose color, and I’m excited to get used to it!

Let me know if you subscribe to ipsy and if you use these products, or if you’ve tried them on your own. And as always, if you want to sign up, you can do that here (subscribing through my link gets me ipsy points I can use toward free gifts!).

My friend Rosianna is one the loveliest people I know, and she’s tagged me yet again in her annual LADIES SURVEY! It’s a chance for all of us, each year, to check in with yourself and your viewers on what you’re personally doing and thinking about women’s issues both on and off the internet. It always inspires such interesting, insightful discussion and I was happy to take part for the second year in a row:

Just a quick little blog update about this today, but I promise I’ll be back with something exciting again tomorrow!