My Harry Potter Tree

For many years I have thought about making a Harry Potter themed Christmas tree, however because I have a small addiction to holiday decorating (especially Christmas trees ) I knew that if I tried to sneak a Harry Potter tree into our already overly decorated house that I may push Shawn over the edge of tolerance. 

Luckily I work at a company that seems to encourage, if not foster, my love of HP so I decided that this was the year I would have my Potter-themed tree and set it up in my office.  For several months I have been trolling Pinterest and Etsy to get ideas on ornaments that I could craft myself and in early November I started fabrication. 

I found so many great ideas that I had to edit myself down to what would fit on the little 4 ft tree.

 I love the little potions bottles made out of heart-shaped glass ornaments filled with glitter glue and corked, the mini Harry Potter books were a breeze to construct using modge podge, computer printouts and wooden blocks found at the craft store.  I scored a great find on eBay, 6 little plastic cauldrons for $2 that I stuffed with fiber-fill to look like they were brewing potions.  I had so much fun painting the wooden game pieces to look like Harry, Ron, Hermione and Luna and one of my favorite projects was painting a tacky
fluorescent orange plastic dragon I found at the dollar store to resemble the Hungarian Horntail (I may have to go back to the dollar store this weekend to see if they have any more so I can create the other 3 dragons from the Tri-Wizard Tournament!)  The wands were made from rolled up printer paper, a glue gun and craft paint and my Marauder’s Maps were designed on PowerPoint and printed on the left over parchment paper I used when sending out resumes for my first post-college job in 2000 (see, my hoarding does pay off). Finally, the pièce de résistance was the sorting hat that I constructed while watching the 50^th anniversary special of Dr. Who (so the hat was imbibed with double awesomeness).

I love this tree, mainly because I have been dreaming of it for so long but also because I created nearly every ornament myself.  I am grateful that the others in my office suite seem to enjoy the tree as well, examining each ornament and laughing about my unwavering devotion to Harry! 

It was really important to me that I was able to share my labor of love with all of my friends, so rather than bombarding you with 50 pictures of my tree I opted for a fun video montage… because dammit I just can’t get enough of Windows Movie Maker.   Enjoy!