ago, but he loves that banner.

The more I looked for birthday party supplies, the more I found cool things. I went into Dallas to the Garden Ridge Pottery and bought two dozen little clay pots for a Muggle herbology class we would have at the party. I thought it would be fun for each child to decorate a pot and plant a flower in it to take home as a favor.

While at Garden Ridge Pottery, I also found the red bags for goody sacks, the cups, plates and tablecloth. I chose red for all of the utensils as well. I found some really interesting confetti with stars and moons in their birthday party supplies section and bought that to sprinkle around on the table.

One day when my stepson was at school, I drove to a birthday party supplies store in McKinney. They had a lot of items there for just about every conceivable birthday theme. I found Harry Potter glasses with no lenses to put in every child’s treat bag.

I went to the local birthday party supplies store for invitations and more Harry Potter odds and ends. I kept thinking of more and more elements for this party. The more that I planned, the bigger the party seemed to grow. I wanted a really nice cake with a Harry Potter image on it, so I found someone selling edible cake tops.

I found trading cards for the Harry Potter game. I’ll bet no one has ever considered those to be birthday party supplies before. I bought a frog mold and made molded chocolate frogs for the guests.

I also included baggies with lemon drops. I labeled these birthday party supplies with a tag that proclaimed them to be Dumbledore’s Favorite Lemon Drops. I labeled baggies of Hershey’s miniatures as Dementor Relief Chocolate Bars. I don’t even know if the five year olds were going to be able to understand all of the references, but I knew that the parents would.

The parents at the party liked the birthday party supplies that I provided for them as well. Each of the parents guessed how many jelly beans were in a large jar I had set out. The person that came closest got to take home the star shaped jar filled with Jelly Belly jelly beans because they taste better than Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.