If you build it, they will come!
Oh, we built it! And they did come!
What an epic night we had over the weekend. Had some of our favorite people over in our backyard, far past everyone’s bedtime and we curled up with blankets and pillows watching a movie in the great outdoors. It’s been one of my “must do” things for the Summer over the past 2 years now and it was even more magical that I ever imagined it would be. Last year we felt it was just a tad too early to be keeping Sofia up that late, but this year we thought she could handle it, her and us of course because you can fully expect repercussions in keeping a child up 3 hours past their bedtime.
Honestly, this was the most fun we’ve had all Summer with our friends together, and it wasn’t even that hard to pull off. I was worried sick about the whole screen thing, how we could manage without dropping crazy money on a professional screen, but we did and nobody knew any different. I wish I could send you a link to the fancy pants screen we used, but I would just be sending you to the HomeSense website, directing you to a queen size bed sheet. Fancy eh?! It’s all we used. Nailed that baby into our fence posts and called it a night; our only real fear was it being played with by wildlife before our guests arrived.
Snacks were my main concern, I didn’t wanna go overboard but I wanted it to be special. keeping in mind these babes were going to be up past their bedtimes and post movie were headed straight home to lay their heads down and hopefully fall asleep quickly. I kept it simple, popcorn, juice boxes, and a few candies. I mean what’s a movie without popcorn, right? We went all out, got the best of the best, Kernels Popcorn (Creamy Caramel, Say Say Cheese, & Double Butter).
We borrowed a projector off of my sister, who luckily nabbed this ancient artifact off of Craigslist for $30 (talk about score!); hooked it straight up to my laptop and projected the movie from there. Originally we had planned on just jacking the volume up on my laptop and making sure the kids kept quiet. Yeah! So plan B came in affect almost instantly and my neighbor saved the day with his portable speakers. He ran over to his place and got his BOSE bluetooth portable speaker, and from there the entire neighborhood heard the flick. Ha! Problem solved.
The night was amazing, I can’t even tell you. The kids had the time of their lives, the parents soaked it all in and believe it or not, we had not one late-night meltdown. Kids were all home by 10pm dreaming of popcorn, candy and Mater I’m sure. Would you believe this if I told you Sofia actually slept in until 8:30am? Very rare for our family to be still sawing logs past 7am; the weekend all around was epic. What a night! What a memory!
Disclosure:: Kernels Popcorn sponsored our movie night providing us with Popcorn, the opinions however on this blog are my own (we truly do love Kernels Popcorn).
Sherry moffitt says
Looks like it was a lot of fun, great idea.