Manion Amor: Harry Potter

As I'm sure you all could have guessed, Grant and I went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part II. And of course there was some preparation for the big event, including making my costume :)

I went as Luna Lovegood (my favorite character) and for my costume, I was determined not to spend any money. So for my costume I just wore jeans, my blue button-down shirt, Grant's blue striped tie, and my black v-neck cardigan. I printed off the Ravenclaw crest, cut it out, and pinned it to my cardigan to make it look like the school uniform.

I then made (with Grant's help of course) my wand! We actually ended up making 4 wands in total, because I couldn't decide which I wanted to use. I made the wands by first going outside and picking some sticks I thought would work well, and then making home-made modeling clay. Grant used a knife to help me take the bark off the sticks and smooth them out, and then I sanded them with some sand paper we've had for a while. Afterward I used the modeling clay to shape a handle that I liked, then baked the wand in the oven, then painted it after it cooled. It worked out pretty well! When Andrea came over and saw them, she thought I had bought them from a store :)

In addition to my wand, I also made a copy of The Quibbler that Luna Lovegood always carries around with her. I wanted to make the specific issue with the free Spectrespecs inside because it turns out that I have a pair to match :) I made The Quibbler by first printing this out, and then taping it to the cover of a small book I have, so that it looked like a real magazine.

I also made my own Hedwig carrying a letter. I got this idea from my sister Andrea, and I'm so glad I made it! It turned out perfect and I loved carrying it around with me! You'll see from the picture that I made Hedwig by drawing on a white balloon, and then scrolled up a page of newspaper and tied it with a ribbon. Pretty simple to make, and a great outcome!

And to top all of that off, I also brought with me the Harry Potter Usage Dictionary that I made two years ago, and my 20-Questions Golden Snitch. I was all Harry potter and I completely loved it!

I had a lot of fun making everything and had so much fun at the actual premier! We went with a group of 13 in total: Grant and I, Justin and Holly, Jamie and Nicole, Preston and Lindsay, Ben, Danny, Nikki, and two other girls that were friends of Ben. And because I got the tickets as soon as they came available online we had such great seats!! Right in the middle :)

I re-read all the books each time a new book or movie comes out, and this time was no different. I finished the seventh book on Tuesday night, just in time for the movie on Thursday night. And even though the movie wasn't as good as the book (they never are), I still really enjoyed it! I always have certain issues with the movies, since they don't include everything in the books, and a lot of the time they actually change things. And this movie was the same -- they left a ton of stuff out, and jumped to the end so quickly, but I still think it was really well done and I'll admit I even cried during it (and not just a little bit either). I'm really sad it's over and there will be no more premiers to go to, but I'll always have the books. I've honestly read all the books probably 30 times, and yet every time I read them, I always pick up something new and I just absolutely love them! Nothing has ever captivated me like the Harry Potter series and I won't soon be forgetting them!

For our graduation trip, Grant and I decided to take a week and go to Florida! We deserve it right? We’re college graduates! (I just can’t get over that.) We went with our best friends Justin and Holly and seriously had the best time. Having an entire week with family and friends where we could completely relax and catch up on sleep, and not worry about a thing was incredible.

So this trip actually got planned (well the idea came about) a year and a half ago when I first hear about Harry Potter World. As soon as I realized there was a Harry Potter World, I told Grant we had to go. This was back when Grant was living with Justin and all the boys, so Justin and Holly were also around for the initial conversation. It was simple really—I told Grant we just had to go, and he said his grandparents would probably let us come stay with them at their house in Melbourne Beach, and from then on we were all on board.

Over time we tried to convince our other friends to come, and we even had a couple of them at different points (including Jamie and Nicole about to hit “purchase” on their tickets just a night before we left, but then deciding it wouldn’t work out—we were so close!), but it turned out to just be the four of us. We really missed everyone else and wish they could have come as well, but the week was stinkin’ fun!

After graduation on Thursday and Friday, we moved into our new place on Saturday (more details to come—this deserves its own blog post!), and then spent Easter Sunday with our friends at Finn’s baby blessing, and both sides of our family. And then to finish the night off, we boarded a plane to FLORIDA!

We ended up taking a flight that left at 1am because it was the cheapest, but it turned out to be great because we arrived in Melbourne by 11am and had the entire day to relax by the ocean, which is exactly what we did. Grant’s Grandpa was really sweet to come pick us up from the airport, and when we got home his Grandma had lunch prepared for us (which we were very grateful for). We spent the rest of that day laying out, swimming in the ocean, and enjoying the sun! When we left Provo, it was still in the 40’s! Needless to say, we preferred the 80-degree weather.

The next day, Tuesday, we made a reservation to rent a car for the week and after picking the car up early in the morning, we took off for Universal Studios in Orlando. It was about an hour and a half drive and well worth it—the park was awesome! We decided to get a two-day pass since there are two different parks at Universal—Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. On Tuesday we mainly stayed in Islands of Adventures (although we did go over to the Universal side for a little at the very end of the night) and then made plans to go through the Universal side on Thursday.

So anyways, we got into the park around 10:30 and right away we were approached by someone offering us a deal to go watch a new TV show that Universal is thinking about premiering on NBC in the fall and answer a few questions, and in return get $20 cash. And seeing as we all just spent so much money on the park tickets and we’re very poor, of course we said yes! $20 each meant $40 per couple, which more than paid for all our food inside the park. And it turned out to be a great deal because we all really enjoyed the show we watched, so it was worth the money. Actually, we enjoyed it so much that when we went back on Thursday, we went and critiqued two more shows and got $40 more dollars each—$120 per couple in total! Definitely worth it.

So after critiquing the first show on Tuesday, we made our way around the park (towards Harry Potter World) and stopped at each ride to check it out. A few of the rides made me feel a little motion sick, so I didn’t ride them a second time, but over all I loved all the rides! I’m a sucker for amusement parks, and Islands of Adventure really was awesome. But of course the best part was what I had been waiting for for over a year: Harry Potter World! It was unbelievable. The accuracy of everything, the detail, the excitement from all the tourists—it was perfect. And the rides were insane! There’s one ride that’s actually in the Hogwarts castle and the entire time you’re waiting in line, it’s almost better than the ride itself because of everything you get to see. They were very good at making you feel like you were actually in the Hogwarts castle. They had all the statues and tapestries which they talk about in the books. They even had you go through a section that is outside the castle, and it’s made to look like you’re in a Herbology class. But inside the castle was definitely my favorite—they not only have cabinets and furniture set up to look like your in the dungeons, but they have talking pictures!! You can’t imagine how well it’s done. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn it was real (but Grant quickly analyzed how they must have done it—such a downer, haha). I took pictures to try to capture it, but since it was so dark in the castle, the pictures didn’t really turn out. When I didn’t use the flash, you couldn’t see anything because it was too dark, but if I used the flash then it washed out the picture, so again you can’t really see anything. But I’m doing to put them up anyways! So look hard, maybe you’ll be able to make out who’s in the pictures.

The talking pictures!

The entrance to Dumbledore's Office

Dumbledore's Pensieve:

Dumbledore's Office! Can you see him standing on his balcony?

Harry, Ron, and Hermione greeting us and warning us about the ride ahead!

Hogwarts Map

The Sorting Hat! (which talked and sang and everything)

The next couple of pictures are the ones I took while we were walking around outside the Hogwarts castle and inside Hogsmeade. You’ll see that we went to Honeydukes for sweets, Olivander’s Wand Shop to get our wands, and even to the Hogshead for some butterbeers!

I was very excited to be there, can you tell?

The Harry Potter Choir singing "double, double, toil and trouble. Something wicked this way comes!"

Hogwarts!

Walking around Hogsmeade

Olivander's Wand Shop!

The Hogshead, where we stopped for Butterbeers!

Honeydukes!

This thing was awesome! His hair was made of black licorice and you'd put a quarter in and the little elves would cut off strands of his hair and then drop them down to you.

My bag of sweets :)

Catching the Hogwarts Express!

More of Hogsmeade

Three random pictures we took at the park:

Everything was so realistic and I honestly felt like a little kid. That’s okay right? I mean I’ve grown up dreaming of Harry Potter and wishing I could actually live in his world. So this was somewhat of a dream come true :)

After Harry Potter World, we made our way back out of the park to go over to the Universal side to see a show. On the way we stopped at Seuss Landing to get something to eat, and the whole place was so well done! If I had been as obsessed with Dr. Seuss as I am with Harry Potter, I’m sure I would have been in heaven. Here’s some of the pictures I took:

The entire park was really fun and each little section was so believable! We had a blast on all the rides and at all the shows—I’m really happy we went two different days so we could see and do everything.

On the days that we didn’t go to the parks, we enjoyed sleeping in, playing in the ocean, swimming in the pool, and laying out! My favorite part of the trip was just being able to lay out for hours at a time and read! Since school kept me so busy, I wasn’t able to read any books for fun and now that I’m graduated I finally get to! In Florida I first read the book “Water for Elephants” which was very good, and I really recommend it. The night after I finished the book, we all went and watched the movie. It was good, but not as good as the book so I was pretty disappointed. But that’s always the case, so I should have expected it. The next day I picked up “Hunger Games” and loved it! I know I’m a little slow and most people read it a couple of years ago, but I told Grant I’d wait for him to read it with me, but after 5 months of waiting for him I kind of gave up and just read it. And I’m glad I did—it was great! After finishing the first one though, all I wanted to do was read the second one, so I made sure to pick it up in the airport during our flight home and I read the second one on the plane. Five hours straight, but I couldn’t stop. I feel badly because I’m pretty sure my reading light kept the guy I was sitting next to up the entire night, but the book was just that good. I didn’t quite finish the entire book on the flight, so the next day, while I was supposed to be unpacking our house, I read it until I finished. And it was so good that I just had to go and buy the third one, which I finished last week. Four book in two weeks—all because I don’t have to be in school :)

Well that was a tangent—now back to Florida! Like I said, we spent the rest of the week relaxing and had such a great time. We woke up late, ate delicious meals that Grandma made for us, went outside for a couple of hours, came back in to eat dinner, and then always ended the night by playing some Speed Scrabble with Grandma and Grandpa. It really was the perfect graduation trip, and I’m so glad we went with Justin and Holly. It was really fun being able to do everything with them and having an entire week to hang out with our best friends. Now for the pictures!

Grandpa & Grandma's house where we stayed: