SPEWW Banned Books Challenge

Posted on October 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

To ban a book is to fear its magic.

It’s Banned Books Week and while we aren’t doing anything specifically for the week, we have come up with a challenge for the month. Do you want to encourage more reading and also get entered to win 2 tickets to Yule Ball? Let’s stock those free little libraries around town with more reading material!

The challenge:

Donate a book (or more) to a local Free Little Library for House Points and entry/entries for Yule Ball tickets.

Rules for entry:

📕 Donate a book and take a pic of you doing so for 1 House Point and 1 entry.

📗 Donate a BANNED Book and post a pic of you doing so for 5 House Points and 5 entries.

📘 Donate an LGBTQ+ or other inclusive book that isn’t on the banned books list and post a pic of you doing so for 3 House Points and 3 entries.

📙 Dress as a witch or wizard while donating and we’ll give you a bonus 5 House Points and entries.

📕 You can donate up to 3 books for points through October 31. (this means you can earn up to 30 House Points and 30 entries)

📗 Post pics and tag us either on FB or IG and use #SPEWWBannedBooksChallenge and include your Hogwarts House. You’ll gain points for your House, which we’ll tally up at the end of the month, and entry/entries for Yule Ball tickets.

📘 You can still join the challenge if you don’t live in the area and can’t come to the ball. Donate a book to your local Free Little Library to encourage more reading in your neighborhood. You will still get House Points and the magical feeling of putting more books in the world. 📘

We will draw a winner on November 1 at noon PST and also announce the House Cup winner.

And don’t forget that we’ll be doing our Blind Date With A (Magic) Book event on Friday.

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Yule Ball 2025’s Charity Partner Is…

Posted on September 20, 2025 | 1 comment

Remember when Harry had to defend himself and his cousin against Dementor’s trying to suck out their souls, and instead of anyone believing him, he got in trouble twice? Once with the Dursley’s for Dudley’s emotional state and again with the Ministry for doing underage magic? He got a lovely court summons that said “As you have already received an official warning for a previous offence under section 13 of the International Confederation of Wizards’ Statute of Secrecy, we regret to inform you that your presence is required at a disciplinary hearing at the Ministry of Magic at 9 a.m. on August 12th. Hoping you are well, Yours sincerely, Mafalda Hopkirk“ and then had to go into the courtroom alone, as an underage wizard!? You can’t do magic to save a life, but you can represent yourself in court. Make it make sense!

Well, unfortunately, underage Muggles have the same problems, but they don’t have Dumbledore to swoop in and fix all them all like magic. Instead, they have KIND – Kids In Need of Defense. They are a nonprofit that provides legal council to immigrant children who deserve to have their rights upheld and not have to defend themselves in court in a language that might be completely foreign to them.

Right now, many organizations like KIND are being defunded by the federal government and are dependent on outside donations. We think everyone needs someone to stand up for them, and KIND does this for the most vulnerable among us. Help us conjure the galleons KIND needs to do the most good in this tenuous time, by buying Yule Ball tickets and raffle tickets at the event. We are lining up a great table full of amazing raffle prizes, including a stay at the Airport Sheraton with free parking and dinner, so we hope you’ll stop at Gringott’s on your way. (We also except those Muggle cards that are attached to their non-wizarding banks.)

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Get Ready to Dance the Night Away

Posted on September 14, 2025 | Leave a comment

Yule Ball tickets have gone on sale and we have a theme this year! Yes, yule is its own theme, but this year we’ll be adding dragons! Since we have our virtual Triwizard Tournament leading up to the Ball, we wanted to also bring that to our decor. That means if you are buying a Champion’s Feast ticket, you can choose a specific dragon-named table to sit at.

Unlike the dragons in the Tournament, our dragons will be free-range, much smaller, and won’t set you on fire.

Again, tickets for Yule Ball are $45 for Generally Magical tickets & $105 for Champion’s Feast tickets (this includes a buffet dinner + swag) and can be purchased here.

This event is 21 and over, an excuse to dress up in your wizarding best (or Muggle best), drink some adult Butterbeer (or other themed beverages), and dance with your fellow nerds. Come stag, bring your significant other, or come in a group. Everyone is welcome and people make new friends every year. It takes place at the Portland Airport Sheraton and will have some fantastic raffle prizes as well.

We also always look for volunteers for this event. If you volunteer, you get free general entry to the Ball. We need help setting up, tearing down, running the raffle table, and checking people in. Last year, we were blessed with so many great volunteers who worked their magic to set up so much more quickly than we have set up in the past. We would love to have you for 2025. You can sign up to be a volunteer on this form if you haven’t volunteered with us before. If you have, we’ll be sending out emails mid- to late-October.

Stay tuned for our menu. In the meantime, here’s a link for special room discount if you’d like to stay at the Sheraton. We can’t wait to see you at the Ball!

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Join Us for Blind Date with a (Magic) Book

Posted on September 11, 2025 | 1 comment

We love a good book and we love sharing our favorite books with people. The beginning of October is Banned Books Week, and we’ll be doing something special for that, but afterwards, we wanted to do something fun and book-related for you all in the Portland area.

Join us for Blind Date with a Magic Book! Everyone will bring one (or more) book that they wrap up and write teasers for, so others can find a new book that they vibe with to take home with them. Your books should center around magic in some way – since we all came together for our love of Harry Potter – but can be any genre.

Wrap your book in kraft paper or plain wrapping paper and decorate it if you like. On the front, write a few keywords or a teaser sentence (e.g., “Time travel, Found Family, 1920s”). You could even include the first line of the book—just no spoilers. Aim for 3 clues that will help others determine if they might like the book.

The Portland Hostel Cafe has offered to host our event, so you have the option to order off their delicious menu or one of their many alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages.

We’ll also have cards for you to write down book titles that you don’t take home, but sound like something you might like to read in the future. We would also love if you bring a list of other magical books you think people would like if they enjoyed Harry Potter.

When: Friday, October 17, 2025 – 6-8pm

Where: Portland Hostel Cafe – 1810 NW Glisan St, Portland

Space is limited, so please RSVP on our Facebook event or on Discord

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Accio Yule Ball Tickets

Posted on September 1, 2025 | Leave a comment

We are working hard behind the scenes to finish out 2025 strong and make all of our events amazing. Even though we’re in the midst of Rose City Comic Con planning right now, we’ve had a meeting to talk about Yule Ball tickets and they will be on sale the day after RCCC. Mark your calendar or set your wand alarm for Monday, September 8, 2025.

We are apparating into the Mt. Hood Ballroom at the Airport Sheraton on Saturday, December 13 to bring you dancing, revelry, delicious food, Butterbeer, and Yule magic. While we don’t have all the info yet, we know where, when, how much, and most of the other details.

Age restriction is 21, as this is a more grown-up event with alcohol.

Generally Magical tickets are $45.

Champion’s Feast tickets are $105.

Yes, there will be a special room rate for those wanting to stay after the dance. Yes, there will be raffle prizes. (We have some amazing ones already!) Yes, we will try to get more non-alcoholic options available for non-feast wizards. Yes, we will have a DJ. Yes, we ill have a photo booth. Yes, we will have a photographer. (We have secured Daniela of No Rules Photography who captured the magic of 2023’s Yule Ball.) Yes, there will be free parking. Yes, there will be a Triwizard Tournament leading up to the Ball. Yes, there will be swag. Yes, we will announce our charity partner soon.

Want to win a pair of Generally Magical tickets before they’re even on sale?!

We’re giving away a pair at Rose City Comic Con! Spend $15 at our RCCC booth or correctly answer all 3 of the day’s trivia questions for an entry. Get the WIZard bonus question of the day correct for an extra entry. This gives you the opportunity to get up to 3 entries per day!

More details to come, but if you want to come to Yule Ball for free (generally magical) without winning tickets, we always need volunteers to help set up, during the ball at check-in & at the raffle table, and after for tear down. We had a fantastic group of volunteers last year and we, honestly, couldn’t have done it without them. Be a magical volunteer! (If you’re currently a volunteer, we’ll send out emails about availability in mid- to late-October.)

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SPEWW at Rose City Comic Con 2025

Posted on August 17, 2025 | 1 comment

Rose City Comic Con (RCCC) is just a few weeks away (Sept 5-7) and SPEWW will be there to rep our favorite witches, wizards, and magical beings. This will be our first con as SPEWW and we are excited to see how the new name is received. We had a lot of great feedback at Wizarding Weekend, and hope that is the case here, too.

Come see us outside Hall E, where we will be joined with a few other organizations. We will have our merch, including pins, stickers, magnets, jewelry, and our new Prophecy craft boxes. You can take your photo in our “falling” acceptance letters photo booth.

Try your luck at daily trivia. We will have O.W.L.- and N.E.W.T.-level questions that are new each day. Correct answers can gain you House points, which we tally up at the end of the weekend to announce the winning House. If you get all three questions for the day correct, you have the option to be entered to win a pair of Yule Ball tickets. Correctly answer the bonus WIZard question of the day and get another entry.

We will be bringing all our fantastic beasts, including our dragon Pyxus, our owl Virgil, and our Niffler Nyla. Nyla will be available with her shiny hoard for trinket trading. Bring something sparkly to trade her one-to-one items. If you happen to have some coins on you, she is will also trade with you, and be willing to part with those coins after the Con in order to donate to a deserving charitable organization (TBD).

HoH Summer conducting WotW at Wizarding Weekend

Each day of the con, our dueling witches will be conducting our Way of the Wand workshop for the littles in Rose City Jr. They will be loaned a practice wand and our witches will take them through some warm-up exercises to stretch and then some important wand movements to practice effective and safe spellwork. Every wizard needs to know how to properly hold and brandish a wand. Our times for these workshops are:

Friday 6:30 PM – 7:00 PM

Saturday 2:30 PM – 3:00 PM

Sunday 2:30 PM – 3:00 PM

We’re still looking for volunteers for RCCC, especially during these times. If you can work 3-4 hours over the weekend, we would love to have you. If you already volunteer, send us an email at PDXHPA (at) gmail. If you are new and would like to volunteer with us, please fill out our volunteer form.

We can’t wait to see you!

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Wizarding Weekend Wrap-Up

Posted on August 12, 2025 | Leave a comment

2025 Wizarding Weekend was bit quieter than usual, but we were lucky to have a steady stream of magical people come through McMenamin’s Kennedy School to play trivia and bingo, hunt for Pixies, enter our costume contests, and shop our awesome vendors.

We tried some new things this year and some went well and some might need another year to get going. Our Sunday Magical Mash-Up Costume Contest was a hit with the kids who entered. Of course, we allowed everyone’s magical costumes to enter, but we had a large percentage of children who took the challenge.

Our try at doing House meet-ups wasn’t that popular, but we also didn’t do much in the way of announcements, so we will try again next year, and maybe add some other meet-ups into the mix, and hope we do more in the way of letting people know they are happening.

Another new thing we did this year was incorporating Way of the Wand into our programming. We had a small, but enthusiastic group of children learning to do wand techniques and move around. We did this on Sunday evening, which might not be the most ideal time to do it. In 2026 we may try to move this to Friday evening and/or Sunday morning.

We were blessed with some awesome volunteers who were willing to jump right in and help wherever needed, including hosting our Saturday costume contest.

As always, we threw this whole weekend for charity. We collected school supplies and raised funds for Rose Haven day shelter for women. People turned out with bags and boxes of supplies. We had some witches come with adorable House-themed supply bags and another couple come with two backpacks that they said was filled with one of everything on the list we posted. We love this community! At the end of the weekend, we had an entire car filled with backpacks and supplies that will be donated next week, along with a check from SPEWW for $3200, to Rose Haven. We are so proud to do this for those in need and hope it helps their school year start off better than it would have otherwise.

Thank you to everyone who came to Wizarding Weekend to make it the success it was. We are always honored to have such wonderful people engaging with our events and helping to make life better for those less fortunate than us. Harry was lucky to have a vault full of gold and a second home at Hogwarts and we know for certain that he would do his best to put that money to good use in the real world. He may not be able to do that, but we are proud to do it in his name, while having a great time with new and old magical friends, drinking Butterbeer, and also supporting artists from our community.

We can’t wait to do this again in 2026. Next up, Rose City Comic Con!

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Crafting at PickleCon

Posted on July 29, 2025 | Leave a comment

Last week we had the opportunity to join some other vendors & organizations from Rose City Comic Con at a Portland Pickles baseball game to talk to fans about what we do and also get them involved in some magical crafting. Our witches soft launched our new name with brand new signage and had a chance to speak to quite a few people about our mission and future events.

We made Bowtruckles and broomsticks with the kids, because who doesn’t love having a takeaway from an event. The little magical people were very focused on doing their best and were sent off with a new keepsake and a puzzle (or 3) to use their new broomstick pencils on while watching the game.

  • Setting up
  • We always have a sign-up sheet for volunteers and a sign for upcoming events.
  • Stan loves our new banner!
  • Look at those nachos!
  • Some kids were more creative with the Bowtruckle supplies

Dillon T Pickle came to visit us in his spellbinding wizard robes and even showed off his wand skills. A pickle wizard is a new one for us, but we don’t judge and we all had a great time hanging out with him and doing a little bit of dueling (family-friendly, of course).

If you came out to the game, we’d love to hear about your evening, and if you stopped by our booth, we’d also love to see any pictures you may have taken. Tag us on Instagram or on Facebook, because it was kind of a big dill for us.

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New Website URL!

Posted on June 15, 2025 | Leave a comment

We have a new website URL! Now that we’ve changed our name, we need a new website address and we have one. Our new magical portal can be found at SPEWWpdx.org. For now, you can use both. We will continue to use both URLs for the time being, as SPEWWpdx will apparate you to the old HPA site until we completely switch over by the end of the year, so make sure you update your info.

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SPEWW at PickleCon

Posted on June 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

Do you like superheroes and baseball and fun? If you do, come see us at PickleCon, a collab between Rose City Comic Con and the Portland Pickles, on Tuesday July 22nd. The Portland Pickles will be facing off against the Springfield Drifters. Folx are welcome to come in cosplay of their choosing and every ticket you purchase through our link helps support us (plus you get $2 off with code PDX).

Before the game, the witches of SPEWW will be among some other great organizations talking to fans about our Society, our upcoming events, how they can get involved, and also doing crafts with your little wizards. So, bring them out, stop by and create a Bowtruckle friend or craft your own broomstick, and have a fun time while helping some great organizations. Don’t forget to say hello to Dillon!

When: Tuesday, July 22, 2025 – game starts at 7pm

Where: PickleCon – Walker Stadium, 4727 SE 92nd Ave, Portland, OR

Tickets – Use code PDX

If there’s more info to come, we will be posting on both our Facebook event and on Discord.

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