Reese's Birthday Party

Reese had a party a week and a half early this year so she could have it before school starts. It was Harry Potter themed.

We started out by getting everyone a wand. If you know Harry Potter, you know that the wand chooses the wizard. We had five questions that each represented a feature of a wand (such as long/short, thin handle/chunky, natural wood/ colored accents, etc). Each girl was asked 3 of the 5 questions (chosen randomly) and the wand chose each girl. 

In the end we admitted that the wand and the witch needed to choose each other, and gave the girls the option to trade their wand with the ones left over.

Next, we led the girls into an escape room experience!

" Professor Aesop Dollos is a new Hogwarts teacher this year, though he did attend as a Hufflepuff student many years ago. He teaches the subject of Magical Mendacity, (the study of riddles and deceptions) An optional upper-division course for students interested in careers as Aurors, certain Ministry jobs, or jobs with lots Muggle contact.

Unfortunately, he is rather strict, and he confiscated a huge amount of Bertie Botts Every Flavor beans from one of your classmates during class. You’ve come up with a clever solution: you created a spell that bewitches this hourglass to tell you when he will return, so you know exactly how long you have to search his office.  Right now, it shows that he will not return for a whole hour.

When you get into Professor Dollos’ office, you will discover that he has set riddles and puzzles to prevent anyone from recovering the stolen candies, but you are clever enough to figure them all out!" 

There were puzzles and clues

That led to opening of locks

That led to more puzzles and clues

That led to more puzzles, locks, and rune translations

Shout out to Aunt Shelly who decorated the room and helped me plan the puzzles and riddles!

Some of the puzzles led to using spells to summon keys for locks.

This included ciphers, invisible ink, magic mirrors, secret codes and more!

In the end, they found the stash of Every Flavor Beans with about 6 minutes to spare!

We then dared the girls to try the beans, some of which had terrible taste! We used the Jelly Belly Beanboozled game for this part. 

Then we had cake and butterbeer (thanks for helping, mom!)

And opened gifts

And then the girls went back into the Professor's office to play Harry Potter until it was time to go