I wasn't planning on posting these photos here, but Christian hasn't had time to edit my next couple outfits so I'm lifting these from my Harry Potter fan site! Merchoid, a store dedicated to geek merchandise, sent me a couple of their officially licensed Harry Potter Christmas sweaters to review. The range includes House designs, replicas of the Weasley Sweaters and more!

Direct from Diagon Alley comes this year’s Hogwarts offerings! Naturally, each house has been represented to the highest standard. Along with the highly sought after house garments, you can now show your school spirit with the exclusively designed Hogwarts For The Holidays jumper, expressing the desire of many Wizards, Witches and Muggles who wish to eat their Christmas dinner in The Great Hall.

But that’s not all. The Merchoid House Elves have been busy, under the watchful eye of Mrs Weasley, to ensure that everyone can experience a little bit of Weasley Warmth this festive season with the iconic ‘H’ and ‘R’ jumpers. Now you can feel like one of the Weasley family.

The full range of Harry Potter Christmas Jumpers – as well as many other fandom-themed sweaters – are available to order on Merchoid’s website. And don’t forget to check out the rest of their Harry Potter collection! If their Zelda Christmas sweater ever comes back in stock I'll be picking it up as a gift for Christian!

The Harry Potter: I’d Rather Stay at Hogwarts Christmas Sweater is perfect for the fan who has a love of all the houses. You get a beautiful outline of Hogwarts castle along with all the house animals in a festive pattern.

This is a house of Ravenclaws, so when it came to choosing our house sweater the choice was easy – The Ravenclaw Knitted Christmas Sweater! I chose this in the Men's medium so we can share.  It will be a fight for who gets to wear this gray and blue sweater.

If we ever find ourselves at Universal Orlando during Christmastime again these will definitely be coming along! Even if it will be hot in them.

P.S. Isn't Christian a great model? (We decided not to show his face since we took these for my fan site and not for Instagram/the blog.)

I wasn't in the mood to take outfit pictures in the heat when I wore this outfit so we decided to do an indoor shoot with my collection wall! These two shelving units are from my grandparents house. My grandfather made them YEARS ago (we're talking way before I was born) and offered them to us when we moved. There were 3 separate pieces but we weren't sure if we'd need or be able to fit all three and just took 2. They weren't painted so rather than having dark brown wood shelves we painted them white so whatever we put on them would pop.

90% of the items on the shelves are mine, thanks to my understanding fiancé. He let me have them to show off my collectibles and he gets to turn the finished basement into a video game/man cave area. Luckily he loves Harry Potter too (and likes Disney) so he doesn't mind having that be the focal point of the living room. Most of my Harry Potter items (left shelving unit) are pretty rare. This is only a small selection of my collection, I have at least 5 rubbermaids full of more stuff. This is just the best of the best.

The other unit is a mixture of Disney and other items. You'll see some Game of Thrones, The Princess Bride, Lord of the Rings, a nod to Gilmore Girls and some of fiancés books. I also have some of my gemstones mixed in here and there. They used to be displayed all in one place but I decided to spread them throughout the house. I don't have as much rare Disney memorabilia but I hope to change that eventually, it's just hard to know where to start! I do have more that's not on display since it's in boxes, so we'll see what comes and goes from the shelves as we organize.

Tee: Vince (The Outnet), Floral Shorts: Zara, Suede Mules: Franco Sarto 'Dolly (DSW)

I wanted to wear these boots one last time before they go away until next Winter so I chose this throwback outfit since it is a liiiittle more Springy. The bright red definitely lifts up my spirits when wearing it but the off-white vest tones it down a bit. Sadly the alligator brooch from the original look broke a few years ago so it just sits on my dresser instead of on my clothes.

Sweater: Madewell 'Wallace' - also here and here (Shobop), Vest: French Connection (Marshall's), Jeans: Genetic Denim, Boots: Grandma's, Harry Potter Golden Snitch Necklace c/o Magic Alley, Sunglasses: Gucci, Eyeglasses chain: Tinksky (Amazon)




The Original:

On the first day of our trip we cheated on Disney and went to Universal to check out The Wizarding World of Harry Potter all decked out for the holidays! This was the first year that both parks were decorated and there was even a light projection show on Hogwarts Castle. The show goes off about every 20 minutes after dusk, which is super convenient if you can't be there at a specific time. There's just something so much more magical about Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley when they're decked out for the holidays!

We made sure to ride Escape From Gringotts and the Hogwarts Express while we were there since my sister hasn't been to Universal since Diagon Alley opened. We also rode The Mummy (one of my other faves) and the Jimmy Fallon ride. I was hoping to ride Hulk, since it's another favorite, but it wasn't working when we wanted to ride and we had so much else going on.

I dressed on theme by wearing a green snakeskin sweater even though I'm not a Slytherin. This was the only day I wore sandals on the trip because it was so cold! I brought these jeans hoping to wear them with sandals because they don't look good with boots, but warmth is more important than fashion so I wore them with boots the rest of the trip.

Cardigan: Banana Republic, Sweater: T.Babaton (Aritzia), Jeans: M.i.h Jeans 'Farrah' Tomboy cropped jeans (Net-a-Porter), Sandals: Ancient Greek Sandals 'Alethea' (bought in Greece), Sunglasses: Ray Ban 'Erika'

Let part 2 of my photo diary commence! Here's the rest of what I got up to on my Potter filled trip. As usual I took hundreds of photos so I had to narrow down quite a bit.

Let's Go!

Cabana Bay hotel is 60s themed, super fun!!

Portofino Bay hotel is modeled after Italy

On the boat to CityWalk from Portofino Bay Hotel

Stole Matt's seat after the press conference was over

Getting some drinks at The Hog's Head in Hogsmeade

Lunch in The Leaky Cauldron at Diagon Alley

Exchanging our muggle money for Galleons at the Gringotts Money Exchange

Weasley's Wizard Wheezes

Weasley's Wizard Wheezes

The namesake of my Harry Potter fan site

Playing LEGO Dimensions at the Harry Potter Expo

Having some issues playing Harry Potter trivia with Audible

Representing my Hogwarts houses at the Cursed Child booth

The most magical number

Wise words from Remy at Disney Springs