Disney Movie Nights: The Lion King

One of my all time favorite Disney movies is the Lion King. I still get goose bumps whenever I hear the opening song and watch the animals come to meet the new baby Simba. Naturally one of our Disney Movie Nights involved showing the Lion King and transforming our house into the Pride Lands.

I had a lot of fun decorating for this movie night, using streamers, card stock, and images from the Lion King made it feel like we were part of the movie too.

Blue streamers taped to the ceiling created the water fall. You gotta love streamers!

The leaves on the jungle vines were made out of cardstock. Simply print a leaf template, trace it, cut it, and bam! You have a leaf. I cut the vines from brown ribbon; I chose a thin ribbon but you could use a thicker type of ribbon too. I also taped the leaves to the vines because I’m seriously lacking a hot glue gun, but they stayed on just fine.

I cut the grass of the Pridelands  out of cardstock and taped them to our coffee table. In order for Simba and Nala to stand up, I had to tape them to the grass and put something heavy behind the cut outs so they wouldn’t fall down. I like how they’re peaking out from behind the grass; it reminds me of the scene when they are trying to sneak away from Zazu and start singing I Just Can’t Wait to be King. 

The menu was slimy, yet satisfying. Ok, maybe not so slimy, but definitely satisfying!

We needed all of the grub too, because a whole herd of animals came to party with us.

To help the kids show off their wild side (as if they need any help in that department) I bought some animal masks like these for everyone to wear. At this point we were only two weeks away from our vacation and the Disney vibes were strong. We had a wild time watching this classic with our friends!  

Disney Movie Nights: Cars

It’s time to get revved up for another movie night!

My oldest son became obsessed with the Cars movie when he was 2 1/2. Can you blame him? The first movie was awesome and the second movie (while not as great as the first) was good too. Decorating for this movie night was easy because we already have every Cars toy known to man. This was a special movie night too because we were on vacation at the beach!

I made a sign to show which movie would be featured that night. You can make it by using google images to find a Cars picture, paste it into Microsoft powerpoint, type in your text, print, and tape/glue it to a piece of cardstock. Easy, right?

I made the rest of the signs by finding the picture I wanted on google images, printed it out, and taped it to cardstock. All of the signs you see here came from my son’s 3rd birthday party. Good thing I saved them!

Some of our buddies from Radiator Springs came down to the beach with us to watch the movie. I had a lot of fun setting this up, I love making it look like the characters are right there with us!

The orange cones behind Radiator Springs are our popcorn cozy cones. To make these just roll up orange cardstock to look like a cone, tape it shut, and fill with your favorite popcorn.

Here’s a look at the rest of the menu:

Mater’s Taters were French fries, Fillmore’s special fuel was lemonade, and Luigi’s tires were chocolate doughnuts. This was one of my favorite movie nights (aw, who am I kidding? I loved them all!) because we were able to use a lot of the boys toys to make it really feel like we were in Radiator Springs. And we watched it at the beach, does it get any better than that?

 Remember to have fun with your movie night, and get creative! Look through your kids toys and see what kind of decorations you can come up with. You never know what will inspire you!

If you love what you see here, don’t forget to share it! Follow me on Pinterest for more movie night and birthday party ideas.

Disney Movie Nights: The Little Mermaid

I absolutely love Disney. I’ve been to Disneyland once and Disney World five times and can’t get enough of the atmosphere, fun, and adventure. My family and I decided last year that it was time to take the kids to Walt Disney World and let them experience all the fun. So, off we went with one 4 year, four 2 year olds, and 8 adults. It was a crazy, fun time!

Leading up to the trip I decided it would be fun to have a Disney movie night every Friday to get us excited about going to Disney (as if we needed any help with that!). I started the movie nights six weeks prior to us leaving and kicked it off with my favorite, The Little Mermaid.

Ariel will always be my favorite princess. She’s just so free spirited and fun. When I was a little girl, I loved pretending to be a mermaid and would sing her songs until my parents couldn’t stand it anymore. Well, maybe I still sing the songs until my husband can’t stand it…

anyway…onto the movie night!

I made a sign to introduce what movie we were watching and decorated it with the theme for that night. Of course the Little Mermaid was an under the sea theme, so I gathered up as many sea creatures that I could find in our house, and made them part of the décor. I also used blue streamers to make it look like we were under water. (Tap into your imagination a little bit, then you’ll see it.)

Our living room became the bottom of the ocean where we found Ariel, Cubby, a crab, a shark, and treasure!

watching the movie through the water…feels like you’re under the sea, right?

Not only did we get to watch the movie, but we also had a fabulously themed dinner to go with it!  Here’s our delicious menu:

The “ocean water” was blue Kool-Aid, and each cup had a Swedish fish in it that made the drink extra sweet.

If you haven’t tried a themed movie night, you should! It kicks up the fun factor, but I’m a sucker for themes anyway. The Little Mermaid was a great start to our Disney vacation celebration. I’ll be posting all of our other movie nights here on the blog soon.

P.S. here’s a picture of me standing in front of Eric’s castle in Disney World! There was definitely some squealing with excitement going on. But that’s what I love about Disney, there’s no shame in showing your inner six year old princess.