A few years ago, we started a tradition of hosting an annual Friendsgiving at our home and every year has been so special. This year, we decided to get creative and curate a festive and cozy Harry Potter Friendsgiving. It was an absolute blast to put together and we worked hard to bring a few creative ideas we had envisioned to life. From a DIY cloud ceiling, to a festive Harry Potter trivia game, we poured a lot into the little details. Below is a deep dive into our setup and the work that went into our unique Friendsgiving dinner. Drop a comment before you leave to let me know what your favorite part is and share your own ideas for themes we can do in future years!
*Disclaimer: this post does contain affiliate & partner links which I may receive a commission for if used at no additional cost to you. Read more about my advertising policy here.
Harry Potter Friendsgiving: The Decor
The Harry Potter Friendsgiving decor was spread out over two main rooms in our home: the dining room and living room. Our vision for the dining room was to create a space that looked like the Great Hall with a few Easter eggs woven throughout. The cloud ceiling was definitely the star of the show and what I believe brought the whole space together.
The Great Hall Cloud Ceiling
To create the cloud ceiling, we just laid out a white king-sized bed sheet, taped down an LED strip light in a zig-zag pattern and then used gorilla glue adhesive spray to attach poly-fil to the entire surface of the sheet. The more messy you apply it, the more it looks like real clouds so this did make it a little easier to assemble since we didn’t have to be too precise. We then attached the finished bedsheet to our ceiling along with floating candles using thumb tacks. We also filled in any empty spots with more poly-fil as needed. It was definitely a lot of work and took some patience, but it was well worth it in the end.
For the LED light strip, we used a lightbulb adapter to plug the LED strip into. We just took out a light bulb from our chandelier and pooped it in there for easy access. The light strip had app connection capabilities which is something I would highly recommend if you are looking to recreate this yourself. It allowed us to switch the light settings to add the lightening effect and change the colors as needed.
The Tablescapes
Both tables for our Harry Potter Friendsgiving were decorated with pages of the book that I ripped out from an old copy (yes, I know – I tore up a book, but it was all part of the vision!). The dining room centerpiece was a replica of the Triwizard Cup that my husband 3D-printed. For the rest of the centerpiece, I just added some faux greenery and a mix of tapered candles and tealight candles to give the room some additional moody lighting. For the centerpiece on the living room table, I just added a long 9-foot garland on top of the ripped book pages to add some texture and filled in empty spaces with more tealight candles and tapered candlesticks. We also added a few floating candles in this room too to give it a complimentary whimsical vibe that matched the overall theme of the night.
The Final Touches to our Harry Potter Friendsgiving Decor
To pull everything together, we strung a Hogwarts acceptance letter banner out of our fireplace to give the appearance of flying letters coming down the chimney. We also hung a brick wall curtain and Platform 9 3/4 sign from the doorway that leads into our living room. This was such a simple and affordable way to bring the space together and give our guests a more immersive experience!
I found this Marauders Map Trivia Advent Calendar on Amazon and we used it to host a little trivia game with our guests during the dinner. We assigned everyone to a Hogwarts house and awarded jelly beans as points to the teams that answered questions correctly. This was such a fun way to add to the overall experience and give us a little something to do as a group.
For the younger guests, we set up this Owlery station so each kid could “adopt” an owl to take home with them! I repurposed this gorgeous antique bird cage I have had since our wedding and it was the perfect final touch!
The Small Details
Guest Place Settings
Each place setting for our guests was assembled with three easter eggs from the Harry Potter series: a Golden Snitch, a bottle of Felix Felicis and a Chocolate Frog Box. For the chocolate boxes, my sister-in-law found a template online and just printed them out on standard paper. We printed them to assemble like a 3D box and she also made real chocolate frogs using frog molds found off Amazon. I did find a “make your own chocolate frogs” kit on Amazon if you are looking for something easier, you can get that here. The cherry on top was these custom wizard cards we made for each box. We used AI to generate images of all our guests as wizards, edited them a bit until they looked realistic enough, and then printed them out to laminate and place in each box.
For the Golden Snitches, we bough Ferrero Rochers and glued golden wings that we 3D-printed onto them.
The last thing each guest got was a little potion bottle of Felix Felicis that was just apple juice with edible glitter mixed in. I truly love how each place setting turned out, I think it was such a fun way to introduce everyone to all of the special touches we had planned throughout the night.
The Honeydukes Candy Trolley
In the corner of our dining room, we set up this candy trolley that was made to look like the candy cart that makes an appearance on the Hogwarts Express. On it, you would find a few notable favorites like jelly beans, lemon drops, chocolate bars, rainbow lollipops, and Fizzing Whizbees gummy candies. We also displayed a Funko Gringotts Bank with chocolate gold coins spilling out for an added festive touch!
Hogwarts Potions
In the dining room, we also displayed this incredible potions station made completely from scratch by my sister-in-law. She really outdid herself with these and I can’t take credit for any of it! If you look closely, you will see all of the work she poured into each one but a few of my particular favorites are the Polyjuice Potion (which changes colors when you shake it!) and the Gillyweed with faux vines displayed inside. She really did go above and beyond with these and I am obsessed with how they turned out! We displayed them using risers to elevate a few for depth, strung some LED lights around them and covered the empty space with extra poly-fil to bring it all together.
Moaning Myrtle in the Bathroom
We had to add a few easter eggs to the bathroom for kicks and giggles. Using a red glass marker, we displayed the infamous message: “The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir…beware.” For a funny festive touch, we added a cutout of moaning myrtle to the inside of our toilet seat cover and had a recording of her voice and other bubbly potion-making noises playing in the background.
Our Harry Potter Friendsgiving Invitations
A few weeks before the Friendsgiving, we sent the below graphic out to our friends as a “save the date.” I just made it in CANVA using a pre-made template and altered it a bit to look like the front page of the Daily Prophet with a few pertinent details so everyone could mark their calendars. Then, a few days later, we sent out a second one announcing a Harry Potter movie marathon event that we ended up hosting every Friday night leading up to the Friendsgiving.
Then, a couple of weeks before the dinner, official invitations went out that were designed to mimic Hogwarts acceptance letters with a few minor changes to include the information needed for the night. My sister-in-law made some incredible replicas of the train tickets complete with gold foil letters and everything to include with the invites. We sealed them all in envelopes with an official red “H” seal and sent them on their merry way by owl.
The Harry Potter Themed Food
For the food, we prepared all of the traditional Thanksgiving food dishes and arranged for the meal to be potluck style so every guest brought a side dish of choice. However, we planned a few themed dishes to compliment the night like butter beer, poly juice potion (sherbet), nimbus 3000 peanut butter cup sticks and the famous Aunt Petunia’s cake made from scratch by my sister-in-law.
To add some ambience to the overall evening, we had the complete Harry Potter music collection on vinyl record playing on repeat all night long. We added some moody lighting to all the small corners of each room, lit some candles, decorated a few Christmas trees and it was all oh so cozy just like the books and movies themselves.
That’s a wrap on our Harry Potter Friendsgiving! I hope you enjoyed this complete “behind the scenes” look at our annual event and I hope you stick around to see what we have up our sleeves for next year!
Shop all of the tools, decor and DIY essentials we used to bring our Harry Potter Friendsgiving to life:
Looking for more festive inspiration? Check out the blog for recent posts, DIY project tutorials, reviews and more!
PIN IT:
