Harry Potter party!

So the last few weeks have been a bit crazy! I seem to have been here there and everywhere! One of the places I was lucky enough to visit over the last few weeks was the new Warner Brothers Studio Tour – The Making of HarryPotter.

I’m a massive Harry Potter fan, I’ve read all the books, watched the films, been lucky enough to visit the Wizarding World in Orlando and have just signed up to Pottermore! However the one thing that I had yet to do was have, or go to a Harry Potter party – what’s up with!

Well luckily this situation has now been rectified! A couple of my friends I work with who tweet over @Stace15  and @princessjrogers are also huge Harry Potter fans so a HP party was planned!

Stacey and Jess are both going to the tour in the next few month and Stacey decided to host the party before we all went (we’ll obviously have to have another once we’ve all been)! We drank Butterbeer, looked at Harry Potter photos and ate Polyjuice potion and pumpkin pasties! And well, all I can say is I feel every night should be Harry Potter night!

For the evening I made Cauldron Cakes which I saw on sale at the Wizarding World. I was really pleased with them and I’ll post a recipe and tutorial as my next post!

For now though, here are the pictures from the Harry Potter party! Hopefully they’ll inspire you to have your own HP party!

The polyjuice potion was scrummy butternut soup squash! Mmmm!

Mmm, hot pumpkin pastys coming out of the oven! Must remember to ask Jess for this recipe!

Bertie botts every flavour beans!

My Cauldron cakes!

YUM!

Trying out my new camera

I'm really not sure where this year seems to be going! I really seem to have neglected the blog recently!

Well, to make up for that I thought I'd post a few pics from my day out today to Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire.

I've always been interested in photography but never really had a great camera to try out some fancy shots.

We've now invested in a new bridge camera - a Panasonic Lumix FZ100. I've still to figure out everything it can do but here are some of my favourite pics of the day!

A few florals...

Bzzzzz!!

Was trying to get the rain drops on this one!

Hopefully on the top pic you can see the little white flower blurry in the foreground, then it up close on the bottom pic!

It's all about the framing!

Pictures in low light had always been tricky for me but I was so pleased with the way this turned out. It's actually a spinning lamp in the house part of the Abbey that projected dancing figures onto the wall! Very cool!

Now, I'm a massive fan of Harry Potter and they filmed quite a lot of the Philosophers Stone and the Chamber of Secrets on location here so you might recognise some of the next shots!

The cloisters at the Abbey are used in quite a few of the external shots at Hogwarts.

This pub is actually featured in the Half Blood Prince. Harry and Dumbledore walk past it on the way to...

Professor Slughorn's house!

I hope you like my first attempt at some fancy photos! And even if you aren't a fan of Harry Potter the village of Lacock is a beautiful area to visit! Plenty of little craft shops and tea shops! You can find out more about the area on the National Trust website.

10 minute make - Easy Easter display

Easter is coming up so I wanted to do a quick and easy display to brighten up my dining room table.

I used some yellow Laburnum from my neighbours garden as I thought it was so pretty (don’t worry, I did ask first before chopping up her tree)!

You could use any branches though to get the same effect.

Then I made up two little vases of Daffs. I used jam jars for the vases.

I wrapped sisal round the stems of the daffs to add a little texture. You can buy this online or in a florist wholesaler.

I then tied a raffia bow around the jar.

Then I decorated the branches with little hanging eggs. I bought these a few years ago but I have seen similar in poundland or the Works!

I then used a bit more sisal as on the table to look like grass!