Prepping Your Yard for an Outdoor Movie Night
Movie Night Ideas — Everyone loves a good movie night in, and we’re sharing easy ways to create an epic outdoor movie night right in your own backyard…
The beauty of a good movie night is that it doesn’t matter what time of year it is or what the weather is like outside, they’re always a good time!
While we’ve whipped up some movie night ideas for our an outdoor movie night, you can easily recreate these for a living room party, too.
Since we live in Houston where the Summers can be pretty brutal, we’re just now starting to enjoy our backyard space again. Needless to say, it needed a little TLC after ignoring it during the 100+ degree months this Summer and we partnered with Black & Decker to clean things up!
I keep joking that Jared thinks he’s preparing for his “hot dads using power tools in the yard” calendar, ha! All joking aside, here’s how we cleaned up our outdoor space for an epic movie night and tips to recreate your own…
How to Prep Your Yard for an Outdoor Movie Night
Since we’ve spent a fair amount of time ignoring our backyard during the hottest part of the Summer, we had our work cut out for us on getting things tidied up!
We used a pole pruning saw to trim the low-hanging tree branches where we were planning to set up our projector screen outside so that we had a clear view of the movie.
And since we were in clean-up mode, Jared used the electric hedge trimmer for making the dividing bushes between our lawn and our neighbors look MUCH tidier. Serious regrets on not doing that sooner!
To clean up the random leaves left over from trimmings and to make sure we didn’t have any sticks or other pokey things underneath our movie night blanket, we used the cordless sweeper for cleaning up the deck and grass.
Equipment You’ll Need for an Outdoor Movie Night
We kept it to the necessities when we were setting up our outdoor movie theater. Once we cleaned up our backyard space (more on that below!) to make it family friendly, we set up a portable projector and screen in front of a DIY outdoor blanket
For our waterproof outdoor blanket, I painted simple stripes onto a canvas drop cloth for an inexpensive, oversized outdoor blanket and pulled up chairs from our patio.
When it comes to equipment, here are our top choices for creating your own movie theater experience —
- Portable projector
- Portable outdoor movie screen
- Outdoor seating — We used stuff-your-own lawn bean bags and our patio egg chairs.
- Something to use as stand for the projector
- Outdoor LED string lights for an easy, portable mood lighting
When it comes to styling your family movie night, you can go all out with the decoration and lighting, or keep it super simple and romantic for date night in. I like to think our setup has a little bit of both!
I loved the colorful stripes of the outdoor blanket but the battery-operated candles in the lanterns also make it feel cozy even after the kids have gone to bed.
It’s a nice change of pace when you don’t have to have a toddler-friendly movie or snacks on hand at all times!
Cute & Easy Movie Night Ideas
Once you have the basics covered when it comes to equipment, snacks, and your favorite movies and tv shows everyone agrees on, there are a few other fun ideas to customize your party with.
Since you typically think of movie night as a fun family idea, we’re catering a lot of these concepts to families with kids (looking at you Lion King and Harry Potter!), but you can easily make them as sophisticated as you’d like for a date night in as well!
Here are some easy ideas for personalizing your movie night —
- Roll out a faux red carpet for your guests to arrive on
- Repurpose decorated cardboard boxes to use as a snack stand and movie tickets
- Create DIY admission tickets from free printables as invitations
- Host a themed movie night (i.e. – Disney movie night) where guests dress as characters or wear their favorite jammies
Snacks To Serve At Your Outdoor Movie Night
No movie night is complete without a few snacks, and we’ve rounded up some of our favorite quick and easy bites to serve at your backyard party…
- Easy flavored popcorn recipes
- Easy champagne jello shots that can be non-alcoholic!
- No-churn ice cream recipes
- 3 healthy snacks under 300 calories
What do you think?! You can go as big or as small as you’d like with your home theater movie night, but we’re all about the bigger, the better!
Be sure to check out more of our movie night ideas below!…
Movie Night: Easy Movie Night Ideas to Recreate
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