Pumpkin Juice Punch

My trusty drink dispenser was jazzed up by Elizabeth which sat near the Sorting Hat created by Laura. Special guest Hedwig kept an eye over the assembly of fully costumed attendees.

The library where I used to work hosted a Harry Potter Trivia event recently. Although I am an avid reader and my boys loved to read Harry Potter, I never had the urge to read it. That is until we had the trivia event coming up and I was totally clueless to help organize the event. I set to reading the first book and found myself turning the pages rather quickly. Elizabeth and Laura (two of my very creative co-workers) had created an incredible display and now the items totally made sense. The display case photo album can be seen on Facebook.

When it came time to think about what we would serve for a beverage; I thought about pumpkin juice. After reading the recipes out there and realizing pumpkin was really an ingredient, there was no way I was going there. Let's say my mixture had a pleasant pumpkin color but the flavor was totally awesome and contained not one hint of pumpkin. (Let's save that for a pie drowning in whipped cream.)

Basically I made a variation of my Sun-Drop Punch. Everything was diet and caffeine free except for the sugars in the fruit juice. By the time the group noshed on unique flavored jelly beans and triple chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing (in lieu of Harry's birthday cake), I thought we could pull back on some of the sugar in the drink. They all seemed to love it and everyone had an incredible time painting wands, playing table-top Quiddich, black out poetry, posing with props in the photo booth and several rounds of trivia with the Hufflepuff house (and one Slytherin) beating out the others. Now if I can fit in the Elsa gown I'll be donning for our special "Frozen" story time next week!

INGREDIENTS
(Chill everything before mixing)

2 - two liter Sun-Drops (Diet, caffiene-free is a good option)

1 - two liter Diet Orange Crush
1 - 64 oz. bottle of pineapple juice
1 - 12 oz. can frozen lemonade

1 - 12 oz. can frozen orange juice

Pour all ingredients in a punch bowl and mix well. Add several scoops of ice to keep chilled.