I am speaking without even a dash of irony when I say that Harry Potter Book Club is one of the best things in my life. I love it so much and I am so proud of what it has become. Two years ago we had our first meeting at Brick Oven, and we talked Hogwarts, cried a little, and played some trivia. It just felt SO NICE to have a group of people who understood and didn’t think I was crazy for crying about Dobby.

It has grown a lot in these last two years. We started out with about 15 people and now we have over 100 in the Facebook group and there are new posts every day. If you like Harry Potter or know someone who does, (even if they live out of state!) then join our Facebook group! Add me on the Face and message me that you want in and I’ll add you stat. We aim for monthly meetings/activities, but we also post links, talk about questions or predictions, and just generally nerd out about how much we love this story.

**FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT READ/ARE AMBIVALENT ABOUT HARRY POTTER**

It’s ok. I will not scream at you, I promise. Everybody’s got their thing – and this is mine. That being said – I do have all 7 books on audiobook which I will send you via Google Drive or drive them to your house on a flash drive at the drop of a hat FOR FREE. I also have physical copies of the books and all of the Blu-rays. If you’ve ever thought about trying it out yourself I will do whatever it takes to help you jump on this Hogwarts Express. Come join us. We’re a lot of fun, as you can obviously see.

Tuesday night was our first meeting of 2016 and we took some time to discuss big ideas and plan out what we want to do this year. Here is the general plan for 2016, with some flexibility planned in:

January – Planning Dinner

February – Umbridge’s Murder Mystery Tea Party

We are still piecing this one together. We had so much fun with our Murder Mystery Dinner Party last year we wanted to try our own! I am writing the story and script right now, and trying to lock down how many characters we’ll have. We need to find a place to host it and acquire a few tea sets, so if you have any leads for me please let me know!

March – Ron’s 60th Birthday Feast

In order to celebrate one of the most under-appreciated characters we are going to do one of his favorite things – EAT. Everyone is going to bring food inspired by the wizarding world and we will eat and swear (optional) and wear Weasley knitted sweaters (also optional).

April – flexible month

May – Wandmaking

Danica & Madi’s amazing brother-in-law is going to supply us with some bare wands and we will stain, carve, color, and create our own designs for our personal wands! So excited!

June – Book Exchange

This went SO WELL for our Christmas meeting and everyone expressed a desire to do it again, so we thought summer reading was in order. Everyone will bring their favorite non-Harry Potter, non-viral-popular book to exchange and will go home with a new book from a friend!

July – Harry’s Birthday Party & Quidditch!

Enough said!

August – flexible month

September – Pep Rally!

In honor of going back to Hogwarts we are going to host a Sorting/Pep Rally for everyone to show House Pride. Wear your house colors and come prepared to share why you belong in that house (particularly why you would have been sorted there at age 11). If you are unsure or “divergent” we will help you with that. 🙂

October – Slug Club

This will be a fancy dinner party where everyone will dress up and bring a date or otherwise interesting person (vampires, anyone?) for a night of socializing.

November – FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM PREMIERE!!!

I’m already in contact with some local movie theaters to try to get us an advance showing and as soon as Warner Bros gets them the pre-release dates we can hopefully book a theater. I’m finding some pretty good deals and I should be able to get us a theater where everyone could bring friends and family, see the movie early with popcorn and drinks for about $10 a person. So excited!

December – Harry Potter Gift Swap

For our annual Christmas Party we will each find/make a cool Harry Potter-themed present to bring and exchange Yankee Swap style.

For the flexible months we have an easy Trivia/Jeopardy night that can be ready at the drop of a hat. We also have ideas like HP manicures & nail art, tea leaves reading, reading the Robert Galbraith books, and fan fiction. In the event that one of our planned months has an issue it’s nice to have some months unplanned so we could move things around as needed. For now we are just very excited about the events we currently have planned!