Hey all! I am new to the forum and thought I'd start off by contributing a little bit so people can get to know me better. I had some fun with the family last night and worth sharing it with all the Dad's out there.

When I was a kid we used to go to the drive-in movie theater almost every weekend. It didn’t matter if the movie was the same. It was so cheap (my parents didn’t make a lot of money) and we would pop a garbage bag full of popcorn to take with us. Yes, we would literally take a big black garbage bag full of real popcorn (not the microwave stuff) to eat all night long, Lol. Those were the days.

Well where we live there really aren’t drive-in’s anymore. I think there are a might be a couple further away in bad areas that we aren’t about to risk going to. So I went out and got us a little projector we started our own tradition with (it’s here if you want to take a look: my projector) It’s pretty simple and we literally just put movies onto it right from our computer. We now have our own family tradition of “movie night in the backyard!” Our daughter loves it and I hope she either passes it on to her children when she gets older or is inspired to start a new tradition because of it. Don’t forget everyone, it’s the little things that make life worth it Here are a couple pics we took to show off.

We don’t have a movie screen or anything fancy, we just put it on the back wall:

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Here is the actual projector we use:

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PS It's almost summer time!! I am getting so excited!! :woohoo:

Love this idea! Better than a drive-in really... the food is better, and the bathrooms are cleaner! (And you can pause the movie to pee!)

Hope our "next" house has a place we can do this. (As well as house a mini-ramp (skateboard)... for TheBoy of course.)

Welcome to DadLabs!

Welcome and thanks for sharing the idea! This just got added to my want list. I totally agree with you about the little things. Although this little thing doesn't have a little price tag I think it's probably worth the money.

Great stuff. I did a similar thing for a birthday party, but haven't done it in a while. The big challenge I always had was with sound. Did you use the speaker on the projector? Or do you attach external speakers? You must have good plugs outside your house as well.

BTW, we have this subject slotted for a video segment on DL very soon. Very timely post.

I've been wanting to do this with our cul-de-sac. We have 8 houses and showing a movie on a garage door would a lot of fun, but I think my boys (2 yrs) need to be a bit older to stay up aftr the sun sets in the summer.

My wife has been after me to do this for a couple years now. I guess your post just confirms that she has good ideas sometimes

The AAXA projector would be a great alternative to an expensive, heavy LCD in the kids room that might (ok, will) get damaged. Time to take some measurements...