A fun day out with HP

Disclaimer:  We were invited to Westfield as guests of Hewlett Packard who treated us to a fantastic day out.  We also received a HP Envy 4500 printer which we will be using for our crafts and reviewing soon.

During the past few years as a Blogger I’ve attended a few events, some just for me and some the whole family can attend.  Rarely have the events catered for all of the family in such a fun filled way as our day out with Hewlett Packard at beginning of December. .

The day started with Paul, myself and the kids heading down to Westfield, White City – somewhere I haven’t been before, the journey for us was long but simple – 1 train with no changes for an hour – always a plus point not having to change trains with a buggy.

The shops were all still closed when we arrived which for me is a little surreal but nice to not be too busy on arrival.

We headed over to a private area HP had secured for us to meet with the team.  They had activities set up for us all to enjoy which were designed to show off the latest technology and apps.

We started off making a virtual Christmas card which is AWESOME! Think of the talking pictures in Harry Potter meets your front room.  You filmed a very short video – We all stood as a family in front of the Christmas tree and said ‘Merry Christmas’.  Then, using the FREE HP Live Photo app, which can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play, you can open the app’s ‘view’ tab, enter a user name and then print a photo from your video.  You can choose which frame to print.  You then hover your iPad or smartphone over the picture, and it brings the video to live on your screen.

Emmy thought this was fantastic and we have since created some Christmas cards at home using this for the family.

The kids then did some colouring and made paper chains that had been printed off using the HP printers.  They even made a Santa with the other children at the event which was then used to play pin the belt on Santa, which they all enjoyed.

Before Harry tried to pull the baubles off

Next, we made some recipe cards.  This I have decided these would be great to give to Emmy’s teachers for Christmas presents so this weekend I will be writing out our Nutella Mug Cake recipe onto recipe card and print out ready for next week.

Showing off her pictures to everyone

We then went to have some screen time fun with Emmy – she used the HP computers and the web cam to create some lovely pictures of herself wearing crowns, policeman’s hats and other accessories and she was even able to turn herself into a dog which she could control the head movements, make blink and poke it’s tongue out by doing those things herself.  She loved it.

After we had finished playing with all the ‘toys’ and having fun the children were treated to a wonderful experience seeing Santa in his 4d grotto – which I can HIGHLY recommend to anyone if you get a chance to go.  The children have their photo’s taken while queuing to see the film and then during the film they see their pictures on their very own presents from Santa.  Emmy and Harry loved seeing Santa who allowed them to have a present each early for being so good!

We then lunched at Pizza Express before Emmy and Paul we treated to Ice Skating (Emmy chose to go with Daddy so I was able to watch with Harry who was too small to try).
Emmy grabbed a penguin to help her balance and headed to the ice for the very first time!  She made me so proud – wobbly and worried, she took it all in her stride and only fell over once.  She went round the rink a few times clinging to her penguin and had a great time.