Little Man's Outdoor Movie Party

Little Man had his party to celebrate his 5th birthday this past Saturday, but I've had my wheels spinning on what to do six months beforehand.  I like to do birthday parties at home.  It reminds me of when I was a kid.  I like to think up (or steal) unique ideas to make the day extra special.  When I saw Ashley Ann's post on an outdoor movie party she did to raise books for charity, I knew Little Man would love something similar.

Now let's get real.  Anything Ashley does blows us all out of the water. So please, use her beautiful pics to get some kind of idea of what we did.  My pictures are a little less desirable.  Okay, a lot less desireable, but you'll get the point.

When planning the party, I knew I wanted the kids to have popcorn for the movie.  At our house you don't watch a movie without popcorn. I was going to buy individual popcorn bags (found at Hobby Lobby) for the kids, but I wanted to personalize some parts of the party.  Instead I took brown paper bags (all of the stores in our area were completely out of white paper sacks) and printed his own Cinemark name on them...

This was a real labor of love.  Feeding each individual sack through the printer one at a time, forty plus times.  It took a lot of patience.  Those little boogers got jammed so easily.  I'm glad my persistence paid off though because Little Man was so excited to have his own bags.

I also personalized a concessions sign.  Plenty of years of making spirit posters for cheerleading finally paid off.  It trained me for making a birthday sign for my son...

Since Little Man was born in the beautiful month of November, I knew it would be a bit chilly.  What goes better with chilly weather than a warm fire and s'mores?  Uh, nothing.  So that's what we did.  Our neighbors loaned us their outdoor fire pit, and I gathered pounds of chocolate, graham crackers, skewers and marshmellows.  I'm not sure the kids were too into the roasting of the marshmellows, but I saw plenty of the parents going back for seconds...and thirds...and fourths.  If we ever do this again (which we probably will) I will most definitely have s'mores again.  At least for my own personal sake.

As for the movie screen, we owe the creation to my step-dad.  We were going to build a contraption like the one featured on Ashley's blog, but Michael stepped in and put together a pvc pipe frame.  My grandma gave us a white sheet that had openings on each end to slide the pvc pipe through.  Michael and Steven then hammered reebar into the ground for the pvc pipe to slide over.  A few zip ties to the fence and slits in the sheet to allow the wind to pass through (and it was windy that night), and we were good to go.  The screen held together well, and the best part, the frame is easy to take apart and set up.

The last part we needed was projector and a laptop to play the movie.  Steven got special permission to borrow his work projector he uses for presentations.  That's all we needed and we were good to go.  Until...

...we realized it would be super dark.  Since I'm married to the best man ever, he strung our white Christmas lights along the back of the house for extra light. It was just perfect.  Enough light to see by, but not too bright for the movie screen.

When it was time for the party guests to go home, they all got little popcorn containers filled with birthday trinkets, and their own little kit to make a s'more at home...

I'm just wondering how many of the kids actually got to eat their s'mores.  I'm betting some of the parents got into the goodie bags before their kids realized what was in there.  You don't think so?  I guess I'm the only parent who would do that!

There you have it.  The small details on how to put on your own outdoor movie party.  We really had a lot of fun, and I think the guests did too. Feel free to steal any of these ideas.  After all, I did!