Survival Tips For The Long Weekend

Survival Tips For The Long Weekend

Weekends, public holidays, school holidays - they're a fabulous time to be a parent. You have time away from work and the kids aren't at school or daycare, giving you the opportunity to spend some quality time together as a family.

But just quietly, are you also feeling a tiny but frustrated because it all seems a bit too much like hard work? If you're feeling:
Freaked out about entertaining the kids for all that time, without resorting to the TV or computer;
A bit annoyed that you still have to think about what to cook for dinner; and/or
that you just want to sit down and have a bit of time to yourself,
then HP's latest Print Apps could be the key to your weekend sanity!

HP Print Apps can help take care of some of the challenges faced with a long weekend by delivering you creative and useful content at the touch of a button from Yahoo! 7, Sesame Street, Martha Stewart Living, Myrecipes.com.au, Sudoko and more!

Print apps work by pulling Web content - text, photos and graphics - into nicely formatted printed pages, which you can choose and print directly from you HP Web-enabled printer, without having to turn on a PC. HP web-enabled printers start from $99.

HP Print Apps Problem Solvers:
1.Keeping the Kids Stimulated and Entertained:
Family outings can cost a fortune and while the TV or computer can be a savior when the kids need to be occupied, children need to avoid too much screen time. The Department of Health and Ageing recommends that children aged 2-5 should spend no more than 1 hour a day using screen technologies and children aged 5-11 years should limit their screen time to 2 hours.

HP has partnered with a number of leading children's brands to bring their favourite character, programs and movies to life through screen-free entertainment that will keep the kids busy for hours. HP Print Apps for children, including Sesame Street, Nickelodeon, DreamWorks and Disney, are jam-packed with colouring pages, puzzles, print at home books and craft activities. If you kids are old enough to access the content themselves, using HP Print Apps without a PC ensure that they can't reach websites showing unsafe or unsuitable subject matter.

2.Another day, another dinner… What to cook:
While most families will probably treat themselves to a takeaway or meal out on weekends, we all know that too much can hurt the waist and the wallet. HP Print Apps can help inspire you to create special home-cooked meals with a huge range of mouth-watering recipes from Martha Stewart Living and MyRecipe.com. With 'Recipe of the Day' recommendations and an extensive back catalogue from Martha Stewart Living, and meal ideas filed into useful categories on MyRecipe.com, the problem will now be deciding on just one recipe!

Many people have already used the internet to source recipes and may have experienced the frustration of trying to read the recipes on the small screen of a hand-held device, all while risking spills on their phones or running back and forth between the kitchen bench and computer screen or having half the ingredients cut off when the page has printed. With HP Print Apps, once you've decided on a recipe, just hit print from the printer device and it will be presented in an easy to read one-page layout. You can also mark recipes as favourites, so you can refer back to your short-list at anytime.

3.And what about me:
When family life can get chaotic, it's important for parents to take breaks throughout the day to restore energy (and sanity!) levels. So with the kids busy and the dinner problem solved, take some time for yourself to sit down and catchup on the news. With HP's latest Print App from Yahoo! 7, you can easily print out the day's news either with a one page 'Daily Summary', featuring news headlines and abstracts, or a six page 'Top Stories' print out, featuring news headlines and full articles.

There is also a very popular Sudoko HP Print App, allowing you to download puzzles to exercise your grey matter when you find yourself with some spare time.