Outdoor Movie Nights

In the gigantic list of things I enjoy, "watching movies" is somewhere near the top. It's always been a way to escape reality, if only for a little bit. Hard day? No problem! You turn off your phone, (if you have any wits about you) dim the lights down low, and get lost in a different world.

I can recall lots of my earlier memories, and countless Friday nights being tied to movies. I would ditch social gatherings to watch a double feature at home with my dad. I spent more money in college on buying DVDs than I did on booze. I can tell you my first "official" date was in 9th grade when I walked with my boyfriend (a term used very loosely here, because we never even kissed, and the whole relationship- although pleasant- only lasted a grand total of 2 weeks) to the local movie theater where we watched Corpse Bride. I could go on and on here with memories tied to movies, but the point being: I love watching movies. Regardless of if it's with friends, family, or solo. I love watching movies.

Now in the summer of 2020, we are approaching a strange time. COVD-19 has us changing our way of life. Many of us have been safely working from home with our loved ones for a couple of months now. While I absolutely love being at home and spending lots of time with my husband, we needed something new. We needed something that wasn't lounging on the couch searching for an episode of Bob's Burgers that we haven't already seen. We've already beaten a video game together (Overcooked2- which if you haven't played it, I recommend, but be warned- it will test your communication skills like no other) We've been improving our house as much as we can without breaking the bank. We've pulled more weeds, and trimmed more trees, than I ever hope to again. AND I already purged our house of any donation items. Everything is cleaned out, organized, and minimized as much as I'm comfortable doing at this point... So- what do we do?

We got a projector and an outdoor movie screen.

This would provide a different way of watching movies, and allows for us to have guests over in a responsible way. Everyone can social distance, we're still outside and enjoying the beautiful night air, and I have a new way to watch movies. Now, Drew loves to research and geek out about electronics when he can. He bought a projector and a screen off of Amazon.

The screen is 100" (90.5"w x 78.7"h) with a stand that's pretty much put together like a pvc pipe stand would be. The cloth is wrinkle free and made of polyester fiber. But, after we set it up for our first movie, I think we could have gone with a larger option.

The projector is a XGIMI MoGo Smart Mini Portable Projector with Wi-Fi Bluetooth. It's pretty small for a projector- although, my experience with projectors is pretty limited- but this one is about the size of a Crisco can, and can be put on a tripod.

The first movie we played Sahara. A 2005 Matthew McConaughey movie. None of us had seen it before, and I likely won't ever watch it again. BUT in watching a somewhat-action movie we learned that we need to test out better sound options, we could probably make it work on a better screen, and should invest in some better outdoor lounge seating. (For sound on this first one, we just hooked it up to our bluetooth JBL speaker, which works fine for listening to music, but not the best for movie quality outdoors)

Over the course of the summer we watched a few outdoor movies in the backyard of our old house and we even tried one at the end of September at our new house.

For the last movie of the season, at the new house, the audio wasn't as much of an issue because we no longer live off of a busy street. However, the movie ended at 11pm (it was a weeknight) and we noticed our neighbor behind us walking out on his patio to look at us. In the future, we'll likely set it up at a different part of the yard and be more mindful of the time on weeknights.

Hopefully next season we'll have the opportunity to do more movie nights safely, and we'll figure out more comfortable outdoor seating. It was a nice change-up from the couch this year and we're both very happy we invested in an outdoor screen and projector.