Family movie nights are always a big hit in our house. With the amazing summers we get here we like to be outdoors a lot, so figured might as well combine the two together!
When I started coming up with this idea I wanted it to be a surprise for my family – so I spent a lot of time researching and figuring out if this was possible to do on a small budget. It is! 🙂
I looked at a lot of projectors online and they all seemed too expensive, until I found one on amazon for only $83, including shipping! I thought it would be more of a novelty item, so figured it would be good enough. Ends up, it works great! The quality is good – it’s not the most amazing picture of course, but it’s a lot better than you’d expect for that price. It’s small, easy to set up and use – and we find the picture quality is perfect for backyard shows.
You can hook it up to a dvd player to play movies – or to your computer etc. We bought a super long HDMI cable and can now run all our tv shows outside – what’s more fun than watching hockey playoffs in the backyard!
It has to be dark before you start the movie, this time of year it’s around 8:30 pm so for our family this is now our saturday night ritual. During the summer we’ll be able to host parties and also watch movies when the kiddo has gone to bed.
For a screen you have a lot of options – we picked up this inflatable screen in the Walmart clearance before xmas for $118. They no longer have them on the Canadian site, but if you go to the states they have several really affordable choices. You can use a pull down projector screen too – or if you want to DIY it, use a white sheet, the side of your house – whatever works for your backyard set up.
We went and tested speakers to attach to it – didn’t want it to be super loud as we do have neighbours that are pretty close. Found the IHome one worked for us and the sound is really good, it’s also pretty durable for ourdoor use. If you don’t have neighbours that are close by you could go with any speaker system! For cables, remember that dollar stores sell a lot of things like that – we were able to run out and grab a 6 foot cord for the speaker so we could sit further back.
You can really get creative with this too – come up with fun seating and snacks!
We plan on hosting a lot of movie nights this summer – and also set up some tents for an overnighter!
If you have a hot tub, this would be amazing! Sit and relax and watch movies, sports or even just regular tv.
Host a bbq, have a fire and wait until it gets dark to start the show. Somehow an outdoor movie is super exciting to kids – my daughter plans it out every week for Saturday night! We picked up a lot of old dvd’s to watch – so far the most popular showing was The Great Outdoors! Perfect movie to watch sitting outside.
If you live somewhere with a lot of mosquitoes you can set up a tent or even a kitchen type tent to watch the movies in. It only takes us about 5 or 10 minutes to set it all up – run power cords, set up the screen etc. We keep it all in one bin so it’s really quick and easy. Even if you’re not the most technologically advanced family (like us), it’s still very possible to do. I like how portable it all is – perfect to bring along to the lake, to friends houses.
Since the weather hasn’t been that hot lately we’ve mostly been curled up in our sleeping bags on lounge chairs but I’m on the lookout for some fun seating options for when it stays hot out late. There’s so many possibilities for this and it’s fun for the whole family. You can even watch old home movies and do picture shows which kids always enjoy.
Does your family watch movies outdoors? What are your favourite outdoor films? Any good suggestions for seating or snacks?
Update – since this has been many years, the exact projector we used and the screen are no longer there.
This projector is a good option and it comes with a screen.
I LOVE this idea. Will be trying it for sure!