Harry Potter Party-ness

Do you know what's inspiring? Secretariat. Love that movie. Love that story. Perfect post-horse race movie. We missed the Preakness today. :( Turned the TV on right after it finished. Sad day.... But that's what packing does to you. I'm putting the Belmont in my phone, though. Not missing that one, especially since I'll Have Another has won the first two races!

Today was a packing day, as I said before. That meant it was a really long, tiring day. And I'm pretty sure we don't have even half our stuff in boxes yet. But I boxed up my sewing machine and all my crafting stuff, so my only project will be packing. And cleaning. Lots of cleaning.

Only one more sport left this season! Softball and golf are officially done now. And baseball only has one more week of competition. At least home competition.

Jeff's birthday party went splendidly. I actually got everything finished. :) Although the treacle tarts came out of the oven right as everyone was arriving. The butterbeer was great, although it was a little too foamy. The cream mixed too much with the cream soda fizz.

Everybody loved the snitch Oreo truffles. I was pretty proud of myself for figuring out that the white chocolate wings would stick to the wet candy coating. Those things are really good... And really rich. And so incredibly easy to make! Some of the wings didn't quite make it to my parents' house, but a majority of the snitches made it there in one piece. :)

The pumpkin pasties tasted good. (Sorry, the picture was too dark. I'm getting used to manual mode.)

The treacle tarts were interesting. I've never had treacle tarts before, so I don't know exactly what they're supposed to taste like. Maybe next time we go to England I'll find one to taste. I didn't take a picture of them because they were kinda ugly. And I over cooked the tart shells. Oops...

These are the chocolate frogs. I made a few dozen, but they didn't end up being a hit for whatever reason. They were yummy, though, because I used Cadbury chocolate! I figured that was the most authentic kind to use, since that is THE English chocolate. I filled some of them with poprocks so that they "hopped" like they do in the movie. :) I thought it was clever, but I don't know if anybody but Jeff got it.

We also made chocolate frog boxes with cards in them. Gotta be authentic, right? I printed them out, but Jeff had to put them together because he was the engineer (and therefore much better at constructing things) and because I just kept getting frustrated when they wouldn't stay glued together.

These were the peppermint toads (or frogs or bears, as Nick has called them).

Licorice wands. I would have done them with Red Vines, because that is by far the best kind of licorice, but Jeff prefers Twizzlers, so we got Twizzlers.

This was "Fluffy's Three-Layer Pie", AKA the famous Hawks family three-layer pie that Jeff requests every year for his birthday. I made it in (semi) Gryffindor colors and cut the Harry Potter style letters out of homemade fondant. The pie didn't set quite right, so it was really soft. But it tasted good. Unfortunately I'm only 1-for-3 on making a correct three-layer pie. The first time I put it in the freezer to set a little quicker and we ended up with a three-layer fudgecicle pie.

Jeff and one of his presents--the last Red Pyramid book on the Nook. I also bought him Harry Potter in Spanish for the Nook.

For some reason I didn't get any pictures of all of us. But here are the cute babies and their daddies!

I also didn't get a picture of the cute signs I made for each of the dishes, nor did I take pictures of the acid drops, lemon drops, every flavor beans or butterbeer. I was a little rushed because of the treacle tarts...

Aperture. :) See? I'm kinda learning this camera stuff.