The second party, Year Five at Hogwarts, was June 21st, 2003, with 50 people in attendance – most of them playing Nerf Quidditch! The party prep is still forthcoming since that was before I started blogging, but for now you can read the Year Five at Hogwarts FAQ.
For my second Hogwarts Celebration in 2003, I had already been playing journalist keeping all my friends updated with the latest Harry Potter scoops, so I couldn’t resist my own play on words with Rita Skeeter, the tabloid reporter from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire…voila Britta Skeeter! This was before the Goblet of Fire movie had come out, so I was creating my own interpretation based on the books. I had originally planned peacock blue and royal blue custom robes with suit lapel collar, including buying all the fabric, but then at a thriftstore I came across a crushed black velvet bathrobe with magenta leopard print tuxedo-style lapels and pocket trim…it just screamed Rita Skeeter AND it was only $7! (Never fear, I eventually used all the fabric I bought for the Mrs. Peacock costume for the first Clue party.)
My mom’s vintage cateye glasses from her college years were the perfect shape, but I added as many self-adhesive scrapbooking rhinestones as I could cram around the rims. Since I couldn’t see through the glasses, I kept them perched on the end of my nose.
For my very own acid-green Quick Quotes Quill, I started with a white eagle feather from the craft store and neon green fabric paint leftover from the Batman Forever theatre promotion decor I did years before. I thinned the paint with water so that it would act more like dye instead of gluing the barbs together. That worked well enough for the barbs but the paint didn’t want to stick well on the slick center spine, so I left that white. Since I wrote the Quick Quotes branding along the spine by hand, leaving that white was easier to read anyway. I even cut the tip into a proper ink quill shape. 🙂
The bathrobe didn’t cover enough to be the entire outfit, so I wore it over a plain black multicolor glitter dress with some black satin dress sandals. I curled my hair and tried to pin it into mini victory rolls, and wore normal makeup, but overdone glam as described in the books. I found the fake crocodile skin handbag at the same thriftstore as the bathrobe, absolutely perfect! I rolled up a couple pieces of my parchment paper for my printer to stick out of my bag and to carry with my Quick Quotes Quill, put on my best suspicious reporter smirk, and I was all set to be Britta Skeeter!
You can see me in action as the magic behind the Golden Snitch for Nerf Quidditch, and maybe someday I’ll get the other Year 5 party photos narrated online!
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