Bailey Potter

With the release of the final Harry Potter movie last Friday, we (I) decided we should join in on the Potter-mania. On Thursday morning, we found out about a party being held at City Centre that night before the midnight showing at Studio Movie Grill there. The outdoor plaza was going to be transformed into Diagon Alley, and they were trying to set a Guiness World Record for the most people dressed as Harry Potter in one place. Honestly my first inclination was not to go because I was pretty tired by the end of the week and had things I needed to do at home that night, but then I decided that since I'd never been to a release party for any of the books or movies (I was a late Potter-bloomer and not that big of a geek) and this would be the last one ever, and since Bailey would make one heck of a cute Harry Potter, why not? That day I went a little crazy trying to put together a Harry costume. After a little imagination and improvisation, this is what I came up with:

Cutest. thing. ever.

Now, I suspected this would be cute, but I honestly did not expect the reaction we got from people. They went NUTS! I think just about every person there must have come up to us and asked to take her picture. They really thought she was a boy. We were interviewed by three news stations, plus a guy who had no camera, just a microphone (I am thinking maybe he was doing a podcast?). We were on at least two of the news channels on the 10:00 news that night (they didn't show my interviews, thank goodness, just shots of Bailey) and she was in some picture slideshows on their websites.

Click here to see the slideshow on the KHOU website and here to see a video.

I saved this picture from one of the news websites.

The hat is my favorite part!

The girl in the purple pants was Luna Lovegood with her lion headpiece

Too much excitement makes Harry hungry.

All the Harrys standing together to try to set the record.
I think they were 40-50 people short, though.

Holding up wands

On our way out, we stopped to get a picture of Harry and Voldemort

Playing at home in her hat.

There were also lots of people dressed as other characters, including Bellatrix, Snape, Malfoy, Hedwig, Luna, Voldemort, and the house elves. We also saw one other baby, another girl, dressed as Harry. It's funny how much people get into this. We had fun participating in the craze for the first and last time, and I'm glad we went. We did not stay for the movie as it did not start until midnight and that's way past our bedtime, and it had probably long since sold out anyway. I have yet to see the movie, but that will change soon.

How I made the costume:
I made a mad dash to Party City to try to find a scarf or a tie or something that she could wear, but of course they were sold out of everything HP except a full costume, which I wasn't going to spend that much money on and wouldn't have fit anyway. So I improvised and went to Ross and found a plain red tie for $10 (I wanted to get a little boy's tie but they had none so I had to get an adult one), then went to Joann's and bought a roll of gold ribbon and some safety pins. I cut pieces of ribbon and wrapped them around the tie to make stripes and then pinned the ribbon to the back of the tie. I also bought some party hats and a black square of felt and wrapped the felt around the hat and hot glued it together and then glued it to the hat. I have a black short-sleeve button-up shirt that made a perfect robe, and she wore a white onesie that we already had underneath. I went online and found images of the Hogwarts crest and Gryffindor crest. I cut the Hogwarts crest out myself from a yellow file folder (it was the only paper I had that was stiff enough) and drew the "H" on it by looking at the picture, and pinned it to the hat. I printed out the Gryffindor crest, glued it to a manilla folder (again for the stiffness) and cut it out, and pinned it to the "robe." I also found a printable template for the glasses that I printed and cut out. For the wand, I just rolled up a piece of paper, making it a little bigger at one end, taped it together, and colored it with a black marker. I drew the lightning bolt scar on her forehead with black eyeliner. And, since owls became somewhat of a theme of Bailey's nursery, we aready had several stuffed owls, so I picked one that was a good size and she carried it. It wasn't white, but it worked. I spent maybe $15 total, and the whole thing turned out better than any real costume I could have paid more for.