Halloween Week: Harry Potter Dinner Party Invites (For Adults)

Oct 28

After the success of last years dinner party-it only seemed natural to have another one this year! It did not take me long to decide the theme would be Harry Potter as I have read all the books and own all the movies (yeah, I'm nerdy like that). Levi and I enjoy watching the movies on a lazy weekend and when I brought up the idea to have the party HP themed-he was immediately on board!

The first idea I had was the invitations. I wanted to buy some of the fake plastic owls farm stores sell to spook birds from nesting in the barn. They run about $20 each, but I thought maybe I could find some on sale at some point (since I decided the theme in April). I had my family on the case, so many eyes were out looking for discounted owls. Over the 6 months we were looking-I never found anything under $20. At least, nothing that I wanted.

Last month, I was visiting with my grandmother and explaining to her how we still don't have the owls for delivery. My goal was to deliver the invitations while everyone was at work-in order to surprise them when they came home-keeping the mystery alive! I have seen other parties use white balloons, but that wasn't going to be an effective solution as too many things can happen to the balloon on a porch over a few hours time. I needed something stationary. Grandma suggested I use white pumpkins and draw on them. Great idea! At my day job, they host a farmers market during the summer/fall months and a friend worked out a deal with a vendor getting me 5 white pumpkins for $20! Perfect!

To make the actual invitations was a real pain in the... I utilized Pinterest for inspiration and ideas and there were SO many Harry Potter font links that didn't work I spent over an hour downloading and searching and downloading and uninstalling-I'm not really sure which one worked and which one didn't-so I apologize for not having them on here, but I'm honestly not sure which one did the trick. It was a real mess finally getting the font, but I did eventually get the Harry Potter and Viner Hand ITC (for the handwriting font). A couple of tips:

the downloads are not very clear-so you have to regularly open and close your Microsoft Word to see if its listed under 'Fonts'
there are so many gimmicks and junk downloads attached to many of the fonts-so be careful!
the Harry Potter font only works if I write out my message in a regular font, highlight the message with my mouse and then change the font. If I change the font to Harry Potter first, it will kick it off after the first few letters or words

After getting the font, doing the rest was fun!

I used regular white printer paper and printed out my invitations. I used the font and wording from Pieces by Polly (I found her site the most helpful-overall). I also used the same owl stamp Polly used (this link has envelope and letter printables too) and printed off a couple 9 3/4 tickets to include in each invitation!

Photo edited for privacy

I made my own envelopes using the Word Art function in Word and some trial-n-error. I then stained all the letters and envelopes with coffee and dropped some instant coffee grounds over the top to give the paper a weathered look. After the paper dried, I constructed the envelopes and used a red taper candle I had to make the seal and the top of a decanter to press in the seal.

After that, all I had to do was deliver the invites and wait for the RSVP's to come flying in (pun intended)!