So, we decided to go all in on the Harry Potter birthday this year. First there were his presents. I found a bunch of Harry Potter stuff on clearance at Walmart over the past few weeks, so we got him the invisibility cloak that used to cost $60.
I think it was marked down to $15. We got him the Harry Potter electronic wand that lights up and makes tons of sounds. It used to cost $25.
I think I got that for $9. And there was a set of Harry Potter dolls from Mattel that used to cost $20 a piece.
They were $4 a piece. I kind of expected those to be pretty lame, but since they were so cheap, I got them anyway. In the end, I thought they were actually pretty rad. I think I liked them even more than he did, but I am a bit of an action figure addict, after all, and these look more like action figures than dolls to me.
Those presents were all additions to what we'd gotten him originally. I added them in because of the steep markdown. His original presents were all Harry Potter too. We got him several Harry Potter Lego sets.
The Great Hall, which came with:
The boat that crosses the lake with the first years on board.
The Hogwarts Express.
And the Quidditch Match.
Oh, he also got a bunch of loose Harry Potter minifigures.
Okay, I probably ought to go back and clarify. Those aren't actually Lego sets. They're Chinese knockoffs. I could never in my life afford all those sets if they were real Lego.
Anyway, he spent the whole day working on those Lego sets, which actually stretched into half of a week to get them all put together, but he did a majority of the work on it. I helped him for a long time on Saturday and Sunday, but he kept going through the week until he had them all assembled, and they look great.
Later, we did a big Great Hall dinner for him. We hung candles from the ceiling to look like the magic floating candles:
I think they turned out great. We also put Hedwig on the table. I guess he'd just arrived with some owl post.
And my daughter made the house banners from dollar store tablecloths.
My wife tried to make a bunch of food that came from the books. So, she did meat pies, bangers and mash, chocolate frogs, and butter beer.
I wonder if any of the British listeners would find this stuff authentic at all.
To finish it all off, we gave him a cake that was a reproduction of the one Hagrid gives harry in the movie. The movie one looked like this:
Here's ours...with my son's name cropped out...sorry, that kind of makes the photo awkward, but I'm just one of those paranoids, I guess.
Anyway, it all turned out pretty rad, and I think Little had himself a great birthday. I wonder how much longer this Harry Potter obsession phase is going to last. At the very least, I can't imagine he will ever not look at that entertainment property with anything but fondness and nostalgia.
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