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​We have a blast with Halloween. If possible, it has been even more fun this year. With the girls homeschooling, Halloween preparations haven't been rushed and we have worked them in to the schooling itself. 

The girls picked out their jack-o-lantern pumpkins several weeks ago at Hollin Farms, but they didn't carve them until the week of Halloween. Between the squirrels and heavy rains, the pumpkins they carved just over a week ago at a pumpkin carving party, have already met their end. To ensure we have jack-o-lanterns on Halloween, we carve them as close to Halloween night as time will allow. There have been times we carved them during the day on Halloween and that certainly is the safest move. 

This year Meg chose a gourd and created quite an unusual zombie pumpkin. Anne continued to insist she have as much independence as possible to carve her pumpkin, so we had to ensure her tools were as safe as possible. Clare consulted a few pumpkin carving manuals and finally turned to a favorite Halloween Picture book, Five LIttle Pumpkins, for inspiration. 

Clare has been the most excited for Halloween. She and a couple of her friends decided that would have a mini-Halloween party. We baked Halloween-shaped cookies for them to decorate. This is our new favorite cut out cookie recipe. They made glow-in-the-dark orange slime. But mostly they just danced and played. Clare decorated for the festivities by making rather nice Halloween streamers.   

For the day of Halloween itself, we began with pumpkin pancakes. At morning time, we read E. Nesbit's retelling of Macbeth, which is the best spooky Shakespeare play. We learned some of the most famous spooky lines from Macbeth. "Round about the cauldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw. ...Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." 

After some very typical school day work, like math and ancient history, Meg and Clare presented their Halloween costume essays. Meg fashioned her essay like an old newspaper. Clare's was a more traditional essay, but she went for an orange and black color scheme. Anne presented an oral essay about her costume, which mostly consisted of proclamations that her costume was much better than her sisters' costumes. 

Having saved our pumpkin seeds in the refrigerator after we carved our pumpkins, we were able to toast them on Halloween and snacked on them all afternoon. I follow this recipe, though I toasted them for a good bit longer than the recipe calls for. We believe the toastier the better. 

Finally, it was time to trick or treat. Here are my very scary girls. Clare was a colonial ghost (inspired by our trip to Williamsburg this summer). Meg was a voodoo zombie. Anne was a vampire queen. You might notice we re-used our Diagon Alley decorations from our summer Harry Potter party. 

Happy Halloween! 

Have you missed us? I have been otherwise occupied with a series of unfortunate dental issues amidst starting back to school and reorganizing the house after summer. But I had to report on our exciting adventure at the Maryland Science Center. 

The Maryland Science Center in Baltimore's Inner Harbor is a family favorite even when they are not hosting a Harry Potter event or a sleepover. The Maryland Science Center is part of the Association of Science and Technology Centers, which means membership at the Maryland Science Center will allow you free admission into hundreds of science museums across the country. 

The Maryland Science Center hosts a surprising number of sleepovers at a price significantly cheaper than many other museum sleepovers. When a friend alerted us there was to be a Wizard Academy sleepover, we bought tickets immediately. The best part about it was that the sleepover was open to kids 5 and up, which means Anne could join us for her first museum sleepover ever. Another bonus was that a family that includes close friends of both Anne and Clare were also at the event. The girls had so much fun experiencing the museum and the special events with their friends. 

Perhaps my favorite part of the sleepover was the planetarium show. I did not know how they were going to make a planetarium show specific to Harry Potter. Boy, was I ever surprised. Most of the members of the Black family are named after stars (which, of course, received their names from mythology). Some examples: Bellatrix, Sirius (which is known as the Dog Star--a significant tie to Sirius's animagus), and Regulus. Merope Riddle is also named for a star. Other characters are named for constellations or even galaxies, such as Draco, Cygnus, and Andromeda. 

Following the planetarium show, we went to Potions class in the SciLab. I was amazed by how orderly this proceeded. We proceeded from station to station following the detailed directions of how many drops of creatively named solutions we should add to our mixtures. 

The Wizard Academy included its own Diagon Alley. The kids were able to make wands using a pencil and brown, gold and silver hot glue. At Flourish and Blotts, the young wizards made bookmarks by placing a cloth on a hot pan and allowing crayons to melt onto the cloth. There were plenty of wizard clothes to dress up at Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. At Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, the kids sucked on hard candy and smelled different scents to see how it changed the taste of the candy. We were also given a map to locate our own golden snitch. 

Anne was getting quite tired as we reached Diagon Alley. Full days of Kindergarten have been taking their toll and this was her first sleepover. Just as we thought we would need to find a place for her to sleep, we ran into our friends and she got her second wind. The girls and their friends thoroughly explored the museum. One of the best things about this sleepover was that the kids were allowed to delve into the hands-on exhibits always present in the museum as well as the Harry Potter-themed activities. While not on topic, we had a fantastic time in the Dinosaur Hall and Newton's Alley. 

Just before 11 p.m., we set up our sleeping bags on the second floor of the museum in a spot that overlooked Dinosaur Hall. Air mattresses were not allowed, so it was a tough night's sleep. But we dutifully woke up at 6:30 a.m. so we could pack our belongings and head to breakfast. The sleepover ended with a viewing of the IMAX movie Superpower Dogs, which my canine-loving daughters thoroughly enjoyed. 

I fully recommend a sleepover at the Maryland Science Center. 

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​We did it again. We threw a birthday party for a fictional character. In fact, we threw a huge birthday party for a fiction character. We had around 40 people at our party celebrating Harry Potter's birthday (July 31), with guest ages ranging from 2 to parents (we won't discuss the age of the parents). Lest you think that the party was only for the kids, parents came dressed in character as well. One mom had the best Professor Trelawney costume I have ever seen. 

This year we decided to make a few stores from Diagon Alley. I painted bricks and stones on folded display boards. The girls very much wanted to help and I was so pleased with their work. Meg made the sign for Ollivanders. Clare found an old display board we had used for another party and made the Apothecary entirely on her own. We initially placed these outside as a way to greet our guest, but the sky threatened rain, so we moved them into our front hallway. 

We also set up a wand making station for the kids in the front hallway. Most of the tutorials online suggest using hot glue to make the wands. With so many kids making wands at one time, I decided we should do the hot glue portion before the party and just have the kids pick out a wand and paint it. I used this website as a guide for making the wands.

You can see in the second picture above our line of spiders leading to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, which has become a staple of any Harry Potter-themed party we throw. Links in this BuzzFeed article helped us in creating our Moaning Myrtle bathroom. 

The girls worked very hard on their costumes. Clare embraced her red hair and transformed into Ginny Weasley. Meg decided to spray her hair purple and go as Tonks. Anne still loves all things medical, so she went as the school nurse, Madam Pomfrey. Amazingly, we had two Madam Pomfreys at the party as well as two Moaning Myrtles. I loved that people were so creative with their costumes! 

There is so much food in the Harry Potter books. We had a blast with the food for the party. For drinks, we served Pumpkin Juice (recipe here), Love Potion (Pink) Lemonade (that one was Clare's idea) and Polyjuice Potion Punch (recipe here). For effect, we put twinkle lights in the stand that holds the punch bowl, so the lights would twinkle through the Polyjuice Potion Punch.

For food, we again made pumpkin pasties. To make these easy, I used canned crescent rolls, flattened the dough and cut out squares. I scooped a spoonful of the pumpkin filling (recipe found here) and folded the dough over it. They weren't as pretty as many on the internet, but they served my purposes just fine. 

We added a few new food items from last year's party. I made Pensieve Jello, which is just blue jello with whipped cream on top. I got the idea for that one from here. We also made Butter Beer Popcorn, for which I found the recipe here (the blogger tells a sweet story about making this popcorn every October for her niece as they watch the Harry Potter movies together). One family brought chocolate-coated pretzel wands, which were stunningly beautiful. Another family brought butter beer cupcakes. Just after the party, Meg and I sat down on the couch and split one of the remaining cupcakes. I can tell you they were perhaps the best cupcakes I have ever tasted in my life. 

We decided to make a Honeydukes Trolley this year. I found the idea for the trolley here, but the focus on Honeydukes was inspired by a book Anne picked out for me for Mother's Day, which is a scratch and sniff Honeydukes book. She picked it out so we could read it together and we do, in fact, read it together all the time. On our trolley, we placed jelly beans, chocolate frogs and peppermint toads. Meg and Clare made the chocolate frogs and peppermint toads all by themselves in the days leading up to the party using a chocolate frog mold we purchased from Amazon. We have used this mold over and over again and washed it repeatedly in the dishwasher. It has held up beautifully.​

For our birthday cake, we bought a sheet cake at our local grocery store. Clare took off any flourishes on the cake and then topped it with store bought icing dyed pink. She then wrote "Happee Birthdae Harry" just as Hagrid did on Harry's eleventh birthday. Obviously, we could have made a cake, but we were pressed for time. For one of the families our party was their second Harry Potter party of the day. They graciously brought nearly half of a similar birthday cake they had made for the earlier party. Our cake was a white cake. Their cake was chocolate. It was perfect. The kids could choose whichever they preferred. 

We had several activities for the kids. Because we knew we would have so many kids running in different directions, we tried to make them self-directed. We turned a corn hole set into Quidditch by using a Sharpie to draw the Quidditch rings on the set. A beautiful example of a Quidditch corn hole set can be found here. We set out a Harry Potter "Would You Rather" game which I printed for free from here. We used several Harry Potter-inspired "Minute to Win It" games that I found here. 

I did set up a directed Potions class and I found this site extremely helpful in developing plans for that. However, the kids decided they would prefer to make their own potions. I knew from last year they would likely enjoy that more and so I did let them. Things did get out of hand initially because I had foolishly left the food coloring on the table from our guided experiment. Once the kids had only vinegar, baking soda and dishwashing liquid to play with everything was fine. Sure there was a mess, but it was a mess of cleaning solutions. Basically, my kitchen received a wonderful disinfecting from their potions experiments. 

I will leave you with pictures of some of our favorite decorations. As the girls get older, they help more and more with these projects. In fact, five-year-old Anne put together our golden snitches that you can see above in the food pictures. Clare put up the dementor that you see below. Meg and Clare made the floo powder pot together and created their own floo powder for inside. The party was very much a team effort, which makes it all the more special.