Ideas for a Great Family Movie Night this Christmas

One of our favourite things to before Christmas is enjoy a family movie night; it’s the perfect excuse to chill and relax on those evenings where we’re not having to dash anywhere, especially at this busy time of year.

So when E.ON recently invited us to take part in their ‘Winter Watching Challenge’ to create the perfect movie night, we were thrilled to join in the fun.  We mentioned it to the kids, but didn’t give any details away as we set about planning a few surprises for the night.

The Props

Setting the room up for a movie night is important – make sure there are plenty of cushions and throws for snuggling.  Our kids love the excitement of going to see a movie on the big screen, so I wanted to try and capture some of the cinema experience at home, which meant shopping for a few fun props, courtesy of E.On, such as the clapperboard sign from The Range and light box from New Look.  Brand new onesies, featuring the hotly anticipated ‘Rogue One’ Star Wars movie for our youngest boys were their first surprise on returning home from school for movie night – and they couldn’t wait to wear them.

The Treats

One of the novelties of going to see a movie at the cinema is the soft drinks and popcorn.  We thought it would be amazing to give the boys their own ‘unlimited soda’ experience and therefore treated them to a fab soda stream machine.  You can buy drink flavours to go with the soda water, so we chose cola which went down a storm.  Watching their reaction to plain tap water ‘magically’ turning fizzy at the touch of a button was great to see.

It’s interesting to note that when E.ON did some research into our viewing habits they found that among 2,000 Brits four in ten of us (that’s 39%) say films are our saviour from the day-to-day stresses of life.  They also discovered that nearly half (46%) of Brits look forward to snuggling up on the sofa as Christmas gets closer – I’m definitely in that percentage!

We settled down to watched some trailers first to decide which family movie to watch (yes we were all there but not everyone wanted to be photographed!)

With boys aged 14, 11 and 8 it’s sometimes hard to please all of them, but certain movies are family must-sees.  We are all really looking forward to Rogue 1 and no doubt after a trip to the cinema over Christmas, they’ll be eagerly awaiting it to come out on Sky Cinema to watch again.

In the end we opted for a funny Christmas movie, ‘Get Santa’ on Sky – well, it had to be seasonal really didn’t, it?!