Portraits & Painting

Wizards have overtaken my dining room table. Or, more accurately, I have no less than 22 framed images of various witches, wizards, ghosts, and magical creatures where most normal people usually eat dinner. Let me explain.

I am a nerd. But I was born in 1981, so I was already sixteen when the first Harry Potter novel was published and too preoccupied with figuring out what the heck I wanted to do with my life. Plus, I thought I was “too old” for children’s books.  It wasn’t until 2003 that I finally gave in and decided to see what the hoopla was all about. I was on a very long plane trip and the only movie they were showing that I hadn’t already seen was the second Harry Potter movie, so I figured it was as good an excuse as any to finally look into the series…thus began my fascination with the famous wizarding world. By the way, if you have not read the books, no judgement here, but I sincerely think you are missing out.

Anyway, when I got home, I rented the first Harry Potter movie before I decided that I did, indeed, want to read the books from the beginning. I even introduced my husband (then boyfriend) to the series and got him to listen to the audio books (he wasn’t much of a reader). It was he who accompanied me to a showing of every Harry Potter movie, whispering to me about the creative license they had taken with the film compared to the books (the books are always better). The day the final Harry Potter book came out, he received our pre-ordered copy and got an 8-hour head start on it because he happened to be off work that day and I wasn’t. Luckily, a friend had gotten her copy the night before and had already finished reading it, so she lent me her copy and as soon as I got off work, I joined my husband on our living room couch, devouring each page, both wanting and fearing to finish, lest the series truly be over.

Naturally, my husband and I raised our daughter, Zoe (who just turned 10), on Harry Potter and other such fantastic nerd culture. She started watching the movies before she could talk (we didn’t really give her a choice) but she didn’t decide to read the books until this year (she’s currently on book 5 out of 7). She said she wants to read the whole series before her 11^th birthday…for those of you who aren’t Harry Potter fans, 11 is the age when boys and girls get their invitation to attend wizarding school.

Back to my dining room table. Zoe has decided to redecorate her entire room in the Gryffindor theme. For you non-magic folk (aka “muggles”), Gryffindor is one of the four fraternity/sorority houses of the wizard school, Hogwarts. Since the halls of Hogwarts are filled with pictures of witches and wizards, Zoe decided she wants one full wall covered in framed photos of famous Gryffindors.

Of course, we spent two days cleaning out her room and deciding what was going to be kept, given away, or sold. I also told her that she had to fund her room redecorating project with her own money, which she was less than excited about, but at least she is learning the value of a dollar. After a few trips to the dollar store, a used book store, and Wal-Mart, we had about twenty frames, some LED candles, fairy lights, and a few other knickknacks to transform into more magical paraphernalia. Since I already had a color printer at home (luckily full of colored ink), we were able to print twenty-two photos to match the size of their corresponding frames without any extra cost…it took two evenings of meticulous scrutiny to decide which wizard, witch, ghost, or creature would be in each frame and which photos she liked best.

I’m not sure why, but I had saved several empty toilet paper rolls…we’re going to pretend I had a feeling that I knew I would need them for art projects. Anyway, with a little superglue, each of our cardboard toilet paper rolls holds an LED candle quite nicely. Zoe cut the rolls (short enough that she could fit her finger inside to flip the candle switch on and off), and glued the candles to the inside of them all by herself, complete with “drip” marks made from hot glue…to almost twenty candles. Then we painted them white and will finagle them with some twine so she can have hanging candles in her room.

We have a few more projects in the works, but I hope to hang at least most of the pictures this weekend to make room on my dining room table to eat…or, more likely, to start the next wizard decor project.