February 24th 2016 - Harry Potter Part 1 - Food ideas

As per my previous post about Halloween preparation for the Harry Potter Party (HP) I am hosting this year for Halloween here is part one - Food ideas for Harry Potter.  I shall add to this as and when I find new ideas/possiblilites of food for the night that are linked to Harry Potter, witches/Wizards etc.

As well as having traditional party food I do try and have some healthy fruit/veg options for the kids as well.  Food and it's witchy/halloween/hp names are below, some are listed more than once with different names:

FOOD	WITCH/HALLOWEEN/HP NAME
cocktail sausages	mummy wraps
jelly with eyeball	jellied eyeballs
grapes	witches warts (HP)
gingerbread men with cuts etc	gruesome gingerbread
cooked dough on a stick	dough snakes
hot dogs	severed fingers
coffin shaped sandwiches with ham man	coffin sandwiches
choc chip cookies, marshmallows & icing	dracs fangs
white marshmallows/merangues choc chips	ghosts
chicken bites/nuggets/chunks	chunks of flesh
choc chip cookies	moon bites
liquorice sticks	wands
cinnamon dough (shaped as hats)	sorting hat bites
cocktail sausages	owl droppings (HP)
sausage rolls	owl pellets (HP)
dough twists with sugar coating	unicorn horns (HP)
rice crispie treat balls with red icing	brains
shreddies	monster scabs
green popcorn	bogies

treacle tarts	treacle tarts (HP)
Snake cake (use a bundt tin for effect)	Nagini (HP)
ferrero rocher/lindt chocolates	Golden snitches (need add wings) (HP)
raisins	owl droppings (HP)
cheese puffs	"cheese-huffle-puffs" (HP)
chicken wings (any flavour)	dragon/griffin wings (HP)
veg sticks (carrots, cucumber etc)	herbology bites (HP)
breadsticks/cheese straws	olivanders wands (HP)
coloured hard boiled eggs	dragon eggs (HP)
dorritos	troll toe nails (HP)
green food dip	cave troll snot (HP)
cheese puffs	pumpkin poo
cocktail sausages	dead mans fingers
pizza slices	severed fingers
custard creme biscuits	cauldron cremes (HP)

February 24th 2016 - Halloween Preparation

YES I know it's MONTHS until Halloween 2016 BUT i'm stating preparation early, infact I started it this time last year with my spell book.

This years theme is going to be HARRY POTTER (HP)!  2/3 of my sons really like HP, me and hubby like it and it's going to be very easy to do.  During half term we went to the Harry Potter Studio tour and I took loads of photos to help with ideas. All of the people who will be invited have been pre-warned of the theme so that they have time to sort out witch/wizard outfits or a character from the HP series if they wish to.  If they want to just dress halloweeny that fine with me.

I have pieces of paper and word docs all over the place that have various ideas on - whether for decorations, outfits, props, food, games etc.  I plan to add them to here so that they are all in 1 place and I can access them (as well as helping others with ideas).  I can't claim that alll ideas are my own, nor can I remember exactly what page/site on google that I found.  IF I am able to add a link to the source I will do, but if not I thank the original person now for sharing their ideas.

I plan to post ALL ideas on here and I wont be saying which ones I am doing - I will confirm some but not all as I want them to be a supprise for my friends at the party. 

I think I will make extra posts linked to the party - 1 of food ideas, 1 of games, 1 of decorations etc, that way they will be easier to add to and easier to find.

My house has an "L" shaped lounge/dinner and part of that is the under stairs cupboard.  YES you've guessed it this is going to be "Harry's bedroom" under the stairs.  It does mean that all my "junk" that gets chucked in there will need to be moved in order to make it work.   BUT it will be sorted by halloween.  This is also going to be accessible for all of the children to go in one at a time and have a photo taken which I will print out for them to take home at end of party.  I am going to print out some book images to fix to the underside of the stairs as well as making a meter box from cardboard.  There will be toy soldiers, an air bed and cover and shoes and not forgetting "Hedwig" the owl in a cage and dustpan and brush on the door.

Hedwig is a soft toy owl that came from £1 shop, however, its more grey than white so I am going to keep looking for a more white one.


My spell book that I started last year is now in it's final stages.  From my original idea of printing the pages and sticking them to pages in an old book didn't work as the printed pages were the same size as pages and made the book too thick to close, so I have used a make your own book website and had the spells professionally printed.  This is going to be fixed (somehow) into the original cover I made.  Watch this space!!!  I also made a second book of Witches food and meals (not that I would want to eat them) but this has been printed as well.

December 31st 2015 - Happy New Year

Happy New Year and all the best for 2016.

Today is  the last day of my 365 pins, 1 a day.  It has been hard but worth while.

December 30th 2015 - School uniform

For the past 3-4months my eldest son has been wearing a school blazer that has been too tight and too short in the sleeves.

I have ordered him a new school blazer a couple of sizers bigger than his current one so hopefully it will last for while.

December 29th 2015 - Comms and Listening skils

Although SJA don't meet during the holidays I don't fully get a break from them as I need to sort and print out the next courses.

The next course for the cadets is Communication & listening skills.  I don't have 1 pin for this but a whole board as I have used many of the pages linked to it for games/activities etc for the cadets to use during the course.

I never realised how hard it is to find activties linked to comms and listening.  But I have managed to do so and got enough extras than what come with the syllabus from SJA.

December 28th 2015 - year in review

As there is only 3 days left of 2015 I thought I would do a review of the pins of the year.

At the beginning of the year I started out with the following:
2 accounts
a total of 121 boards (58 of these are linked to the SJA courses),
on these 121 boards I have 7,016pins (681 are on SJA). 
Some of those on my personal account are already in a board named challenge and completed - a total if 19! 
This means that I have 6,316pins

Therefore the pin a day should have been relatively easy to do!  Wrong!  this was much harder than I thought it would be as some days when I wanted to do a "set pin" I was unable to, mainly because of the pain in my knee etc.  However, I have almost done it, yes some pins have been duplicated and I have pinned many new things.

At the end of the year I have:
2 accounts
a total of 146 boards (57 of these are linked to SJA courses)
on these 146 boards I have 11,000 pins (1,200 are on SJA)
19 were previously done as a challenge
this means that I have 10, 981 pins to do the challenge and that I have made 25 more boards and added 4,665 new pins. 

I think that's pretty good considering how much time I spend on Pinterest, I thought I would have added many more than this.

I have enjoyed this pin a day even though it hasn't been easy.  A few times I wanted to give up but I don't quit things unless I have to!

December 27th 2015 - santa and reindeer

My lil man was playing with an empty box and this reminded me and my sister of us many years ago when we were kids and we were using an empty box as a car.

My sis started pushing him round with the broom but was worried she would break it so we spent a good 10-15minutes trying to work out what we could use to move the box instead.  We decided that we could use string and duct tape.  Lil man decided that is was a sleigh and he was santa - he ran off and came back with a santa hat.  Then when my sister started pulling the box he said it was his sleigh and my sister was a reindeer.  To which he ran off and came back with a set of antlers for her!

At this point we did have a bit of a laugh, but my sis played along and was pulling santa in his sleigh around the room.  Then it got even funnier as he wanted to be the reindeer and made my sister be santa in the sleigh.  He couldn't pull it on his own so his brothers helped and as they did my sister split the box as she fell out of it!

We fixed the sleigh with more duct tape and the older 2 took turns in it as well.  THEN I decided I was going to be santa!  I got to the floor and in the box (just) and put my santa hat on.  My sis was still upfront as the reindeer.  Hubby had the camera and we couldn't do anything but laugh, it was so funny!  My sis tried and tried to pull me which made us laugh even more and then she managed to move it and i broke the box as I fell backwards and her forwards which made us laugh even more.

There was no alcohol consumed in us being silly  and having a good laugh but it was a great evening.