Last night we had our first backyard movie night, and it was SUCH A BLAST! Creating a backyard movie theater has been on our upcoming summer to-do list, however this quarantine has expedited a few of our plans. We want to make sure we are spending as much time together making memories as possible during this time, and last night we did just that! It was so sweet to see the kids faces light up as they walked outside and saw the movie screen with their candy and popcorn containers!

We have slowly been planning the landscaping area around our new DIY shed (for an updated shed photo click HERE) and while we don’t have a patio set up with outdoor furniture yet, that didn’t stop us from enjoying a family movie together. We improvised by moving the older boys futon outside! It was a little chilly so we also brought our camping sleeping bags out, too! We had the string lights on during this photo, but unplugged them while the movie was playing!

The mini indoor/outdoor movie projector we purchased was SO incredible crisp, just like it claimed to be, and compatible with our sons’ Chromebook, which made our movie night really convenient! The HDMI cable makes this movie projector compatible with several different devices, which we loved, so even if you don’t have a Chromebook you could make this projector work for you!

We had the movie projector sitting on our ladder, but the reviews say it can also work as rear projection (we haven’t tried it…yet!), so you can also place it behind your screen so that it’s not in the way of your movie night set up! Our movie screen we purchased was SO incredibly user friendly and inexpensive! Luckily we had two pine trees perfectly spaced allowing us to attach our screen to the trees using these hooks! The screen comes with two separate packs of string to attach, we only used ours on the top of the screen, and the hooks for the rest!

Our kids love to watch Impractical jokers so when business’s started to shut down at the same time their newest movie was going to come out in theaters, we knew this would be the first movie for our backyard movie theater! It was so funny and didn’t disappoint! We kept the food and candy for our movie night pretty simple. We did Instacart for popcorn, candy and s’mores and put them in little containers for the kids so they felt like they were at the actual movies!

Another fun idea for backyard movie theater seating would be to use your trampoline! (We will most likely do this next time so we don’t have to move any furniture outside!) This would also make clean up easier if you have rain in the forecast (like we did the next day) so that your seating can get wet and you don’t have to worry about it!

For the upcoming summer nights we’re going to put these mosquito plants and spray at the top of our must haves! We have a lot of mosquitoes at our house. We hope this inspired you to make some of your best memories with your families outside! Our backyard movie theater was so much fun, and such a big hit. We cannot wait to make this a weekly tradition.

To get your backyard outdoor movie theater going we put together a product round up in case you wanted to purchase any of the same items. You can shop them below!!

We created a few pins for you to use on Pinterest in case you want to save this outdoor movie theater post for later! Make sure you’re following along on Pinterest so you can see what were loving and currently sharing!