Honeydukes at Home

I have already mentioned that I know very little when it comes to Harry Potter.  To create a Harry Potter themed couple’s wedding shower required a lot of browsing on pinterest and “borrowing” of other people’s ideas to nail down my theme.

One of the first items I came across in my pinterest searches was the iconic Chocolate Frog and I knew instantly this was something we had to have at the party.  As I continued to search ideas, I quickly realized the Chocolate Frogs were just one of the many magical candies in the Harry Potter realm and got excited that it was the perfect opportunity for a candy buffet.

I love candy buffets – the beautifully displayed candy adds a lot of visual appeal to the party and it is hard to find a party guests who doesn’t get just a little bit excited about candy!  It also didn’t hurt that after seeing the candy buffet at my son’s third birthday, my brother hinted that he would love his own candy buffet.  With him and his wife-to-be as my guests of honor at this party, I decided to seize the opportunity.

My candy stand was put together on a lightweight metal shelf we picked up from Ikea during Black Friday.  My husband tried to argue we didn’t need it, but it was on sale and I knew it would come in handy for parties.  I then Dolled it up by building a top valence out of dollar store foam core and gluing on some beautiful aqua and white chevron gift wrap.  To finish off the look, I printed of a Honeydukes logo I found online, mounted it to foamcore and attached it to my valance with a lot of hot glue and patience.  The 3D effect of the sign was partly a design decision, but more so a result of the size restrictions of my home printer and having to print the logo in two parts!

I found most of the candy at our local Bulk Barn and then labelled it with a Harry Potter spin.  Gummy Frogs became “Swamp Frogs”, gummy mice were “Ice Mice”, chocolate covered nuts were “Cockroach Clusters” and my rock candy suckers were called “Rock Candy Wands”.  We also had Choco Balls, Lemon Drops, Bertie Bott’s Beans, Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum,  gummy Slytherin snakes, gummy Butterfly Wings and Chocolate Snitches.

I ended up ordering a frog chocolate mold off ebay and melted my own chocolate down to create the iconic Chocolate Frogs.  It was my first time making molded chocolate and I was surprised how easy the process was!  I already had the leaf shaped platters from hosting a Gnome themed wedding shower for my sister so those worked well to display the frogs, snakes and snitches.

My sister kindly offered to help with the party so I put her to work making the chocolate snitches.  They were simply a Ferrero Rocher chocolate with cut-out wings taped to it.  They were displayed alongside gummy “Ice Mice” and gummy “Sugared Butterfly Wings”.

One of the biggest hits was the ridiculously long “Slytherin snakes” I found at the bulk foods store.  I had them coiled up in a leaf shaped dish so it was a surprise everytime someone would grab one from the dish only to end up with a massive gummy reptile.  My little guy was with me when we picked them up and begged me for two weeks to try one, but they were so big I only ended up buying six or so for the party and needed them all.  He finally got one at the party so he was happy little muggle.

I already had most of the glass containers for my display and the remainder I used were found at Dollar Tree.  The plastic cauldrons, cardboard Spell Books and Harry Potter glasses were all from orientaltrading.com and I found the small pink and white chevron bags in the party aisle at Target.  The Honeydukes labels on the bags were simply printed onto label paper on my home laser printer and then stuck to the bag.

After the candy was bought, the whole thing came together pretty easily and I couldn’t have been happier with the final look.   It looked amazing as part of my Harry Potter Couple’s Wedding Shower, and the guests all seemed happy to go home with bags full of delicious candy.

For other examples of great Honeydukes candy displays, please visit my pinterest board!