gryffindorkshpa-blog

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One of the best pictures, ever. 

September Book Photo Challenge

Day 2 - Autumn

I can’t wait for autumn to get here already. All the leaves changing color, apple festivals, warm clothes, hot drinks, Halloween: it’s the best time of the year

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Looking back to when I had 3 followers.  Getting closer to that 25 mark.  Having just started my Deathly Hallows re-read, I thought a reblog of an older post was necessary.  Do people do that out here? Reblog their own stuff?  Well I just did.  So there. 

Hello? Is it me your looking for?

It is so quiet out here on the tumble.  Do you know I have all of 3 followers?  I have a few more out my Little Free Ginger Reads blog, but this guy - we could certainly use magic to get this page a moving.  What’s your favorite Harry Potter book of the series?  Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine!  ;-)   Mine is…. hmm.  I love them all so much.   But let me think.  

One of my most favorite Potter books is Prisoner of Azkaban, followed by Goblet of Fire and then of course, painfully so - Deathly Hallows. I love how progressively dark these 3 books became.  New characters were brought in, the return of a Dark Lord, determination, fighting til the end, standing up for what you believe in. Love, death, friendship.  Brilliance.  Pure brilliance from JKR.

So - what’s yours?  Share, ask your friends to follow and you can keep up with all the events and activities the Gryffindorks do this year.  

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Turkey Dinners & Dumbledore Awarding House Points.

*´¨✫) ¸.•´¸.•*´¨)✯ ¸.•*¨) ✮ (¸.•´✶ (★•**•. ★ 1st ANNUAL TURKEY DRIVE ★•**•. ★ 

The holidays are fast approaching, and we have been working hard in our house common room ensuring our community members are ready for all that is to come. As you may have seen, we have our 1st Annual Coats & Cloaks Drive coming up to ensure all of our wizarding friends are prepared for the MN winter! Our next step is to provide members of our community with a hot meal over the holidays. In particular, we are focusing our efforts on those people living with life-threatening illnesses and do not have access or funds to a hot Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone deserves to feel like they just sat down next to Ron and Hermione in the Great Hall and are about to see the golden platters turn over into the best meal they have ever seen.

I hope you will help us! We are hoping to raise $100 from each house. So far, Gryffindor is rocking it out with $50 in donations. Which house are YOU in? Care to make a donation on behalf of your house and see which house donates the most? (Dumbledore said 10pts to each house member who donates.).  Click on the link below to support our campaign. 

        Gryffindorks Open Arms 1st Annual Turkey Drive 

We hope you will consider donating to our campaign. House elves are standing by!  (All of course on their free will, as house elves are free now.  See the SPEW by-laws for further details).  

Thank you in advance!

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Got Cloaks?

If you’ve got ‘em, we’ll take ‘em!  The Gryffindorks will be hosting their first annual Coats & Cloaks Coat drive in just a few weeks.  On behalf of One Warm Coat, we will be holding our event at The Palette & Purl in Robbinsdale. 

Small business owner, Kelly Sadler has opened up her shop to us for this awesome event.  We think Hermione would have approved.  Seeing all of Kelly’s hand spun and custom yarns, she likely would have sat in one of Kelly’s chairs and knitted elf hats very feverishly.

Speaking of 'witch’, Hermione did ask us to collect as many new socks as possible.  We haven’t seen many house elves around our part of town, but there is a local shelter who would love the socks.  New warm socks are the most needed, but the least donated item at shelters.  Help further the S.P.E.W campaign by bringing new socks donations with you to the event. 

If you stop by the Palette & Purl to make a coat, cloak or cash donation, be sure to check out the hand knit items Kelly has for sale as well. We will have snitcherdoodle cookies, butterbeer drinks and special wizarding tokens for anyone who donates.  

We hope to see you there!

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Coats & Cloaks Drive 2015

The Gryffindorks is teaming up with small biz owner Kelly Sadler at The Palette & Purl to host out 1st annual Coats & Cloaks drive! We are working with One Warm Coat to donate all proceeds to Wayside Housing in St. Louis Park. Check out the fb link below. I hope you will join us! 

Gryffindorks Coats & Cloaks 2015 Drive Event

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Accio Books! A road trip to Kansas City, MO.

14 hours on the road, 884 miles, 1200 books delivered. 

Road construction, lots of coffee, and 1 storm that took us off the road briefly, project Apparating Library at Operation Breakthrough was a huge success. Back in June, we loaded up the Flying Ford Angelica and took off to Kansas City Missouri.   Okay, it was a bright red Transit, but close enough.  

Operation Breakthrough

Operation Breakthrough is one of the largest, single-site facilities in the state of Missouri offering early childhood education care & social services to families in need.  The facility serves over 400 children daily from the urban core.

Over 50,000 books were collected during the Harry Potter Alliance’s Accio Books! drive. I saw first hand the sheer volume of donations pouring in to the Kansas City donation site.

At the time of our arrival, the book shelves were starting to look bare and the staff was beyond thrilled to have fresh titles to offer to not only their younger crowd, but their middle grade, teens, and adults who frequent their facility as well.  We arrived bright and early with our 1200 books in tow, and we were ready to get to work!  We set up shop upfront outside of Operation Breakthrough to help draw in visitors.   I absolutely loved seeing the look on people’s faces when they realized the books were free… free!  

The garden area at Operation Breakthrough was converted into our very own Apparating Library.  Close to 4,000 books filled up the back garden.  Stations were set up for face painting, book creation, sing alongs, and reading.  

We had had a great time meeting up with the Kansas City Keepers. What an awesome event put on by such an enthusiastic and ambitious group! 

Our time with the keepers had come to an end, and we said our goodbye’s to our new found friends.  

Many hours and miles later, we arrived back home to Minnesota.  

Our hearts filled, books delivered, Accio Books! was a not only a huge success, but a event filled with memories we will have for years to come.  

Stay tuned for Accio Books 2016!  We hope you will join us and follow along!

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Gryffindorks of the Twin Cities Take Action

Ollie ollie oxen free!  Is anyone out there?  Well if you are following the Gryffindorks, you know we have been up to a whole bunch!  Want to know what we’ve been doing?  Grab your broom, let’s go for a ride. 

Arc Value Village - Good Deed’s Day 2015

The Gryffindorks spent March 15th, Good Deed’s Day, at Arc Value Village in New Hope to help with various tasks around the store.  We had a great time bringing out clothes, unloading boxes and stocking the sales floor.  

Arc Value Village was so excited to have us, they contacted local Channel 12 news to do a cover piece on us!

How cool is that?  Fun was had by all, including the muggles.  

Half Pint Library Donation Drop Off 

In partnership with Half Price Books, the Gryffindorks collected over 200 books.  As part of this drive, HPB matched our collection - making our donation over 400 books!!  

Weasley Wizarding Wheezer 5k 

Gryffies are on the run!  As part of a virtual run put on by Hogwarts Running Club, we joined forces to support Dogs on Deployment, an organization that connects loving foster homes to military personnel who are deployed over sea’s.  How awesome are they?!?

3 generations of Gryffies ran, we got to support some awesome poocheroo’s and we got out to enjoy some lovely spring weather.  I would say that is all kinds of wizarding trifecta right there. 

Light It Up Blue for Autism Awareness

We lit it up blue for April 2!  Great way to get out and show awareness for Autism.  

Way to light it up Gryffindorks!

There ya have it.  That’s what the Gryffies have been up to for March & April.  Check back to us see how our Accio Books campaign is going and what we do this summer. 

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Hello? Is it me your looking for?

It is so quiet out here on the tumble.  Do you know I have all of 3 followers?  I have a few more out my Little Free Ginger Reads blog, but this guy - we could certainly use magic to get this page a moving.  What’s your favorite Harry Potter book of the series?  Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine!  ;-)   Mine is…. hmm.  I love them all so much.   But let me think.  

One of my most favorite Potter books is Prisoner of Azkaban, followed by Goblet of Fire and then of course, painfully so - Deathly Hallows. I love how progressively dark these 3 books became.  New characters were brought in, the return of a Dark Lord, determination, fighting til the end, standing up for what you believe in. Love, death, friendship.  Brilliance.  Pure brilliance from JKR.

So - what’s yours?  Share, ask your friends to follow and you can keep up with all the events and activities the Gryffindorks do this year.  

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“A Wizard of Their Age” Critical Essays from the Harry Potter Generation

I had the privilege last month to attend a book reading at Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis for the release of, “A Wizard of Their Age: Critical Essays from The Harry Potter Generation”. The book is a collection of scholarly and personal essays of students and professors from St. Kate’s University who either grew up reading the books and were heavily influenced by the series or fell in love with the series as adults. 

(photo: Cecilia Konchar Farr, Professor of English and Women’s Studies, St. Catherine University) The essays explore the parallels of JK Rowlings work with that of fanfiction as we know it today as well as the similarities of key characters to Hitler and the underlying theme of Nazi ideology and influence throughout the later half of the series. One student explored the psychological comparison of Tom Riddles character with the 14 traits children can exhibition when they grow up without the attachment, love and bonding from a parent or caregiver. Other essays explored number symbolism than ran through the text, while one examined the “detrimental limitation” a children’s classification had on the books on a grander scale considering how progressively dark and more adult themed the books became later in the series. 

(photo: Kate McManus reading an excerpt from her chapter, “Loading the Cannon, Harry Potter and Fanfiction”.)  

The event was fascinating, intellectual and thought provoking. It left me completely in awe of these women and their in depth study, research and compilation of the essays. I was able to speak to one of the professors afterwards about our HPA chapter (#GryffindorksofMN), where she insisted I connect with her and her students on future events. When I was done fangirling and speaking incoherently, I said,  “Yes, most definitely.” 

By far one of my most *favorite* things I have done so far this year.