Harry Potter Marathon

Jesikah has become a very avid reader over the past year. At the beginning of the summer, she decided to start the Harry Potter series and see if she could read through book #6 before the movie came out. So, the first day of summer she started #1. Each time she finishes a book, she will watch the movie (we own them all, so far). Yesterday, she finished #5, and then watched the movie last night. She started book#6 today, but even though the movie comes out tomorrow, we'll wait until she finishes it before we go.

Well, in light of the new Harry Potter movie's release, the library was doing a "t'ween" activity for 10-12 year olds with lots of fun Harry Potter stuff to make and do yesterday. The kids could dress up and win prizes for the best costumes.

Jesikah was SO excited about it, and she wanted to dress up as Hermione. However, after looking for costumes online, I decided that I wasn't going to pay $40 for one. So, on Saturday, we headed to Goodwill to see what we could find that might work. It must have been our lucky day because Goodwill had everything in the store half off that day. I think we did pretty well in the end.

We found this black shirt that snaps up. It was a womens 3/4 length sleeve top, but the arm length fit perfectly and with the collar tucked under and the bigger size, it looks like a robe.

Then we found the dressy black gauchos. They were a little big around the waist, but safety pins work wonders. And then, of course, the maroon and gold tie. (Probably the hardest part was to figure out how to tie the darn thing while Eric and Alex were gone to scout camp--I sure could have used their expertise on that). We used a white shirt of Alex's that had gotten too small. The shoes we found in her closet (some she had never worn). We found the Gryffindor crest online and printed and laminated it. Then we (mostly I) sewed it on to the black shirt. We finished it off with curling her hair with the triple-barrel iron and she made a pretty cute Hermione for only about $4.25.

They made these pensieves at the library, and they did other crafts too. They also each got sorted into one of the houses with the sorting hat. Jesikah was in Ravenclaw which she said was second only to Gryffindor. But, best of all, she won the best Hermione and got a book for a prize. Now, she wants to go to the elementary dress-up storytime on Friday and she wants to keep her costume for Halloween this year. Score! One less costume to figure out for this year! :)