Autumn’s finally here, and it’s that time of year again to wave the kids off to school each day. But in the midst of your hectic work schedule, drop-offs to soccer meets and ballet practices and cumbersome daily chores, there’s still some time to enjoy with your family.

These three easy tips can make your home the easiest, most convenient place to create unforgettable memories with your family with the help of some smart home tech.

Throw an Awesome Party

Who needs to invite guests to a party when the people you care about most live under the same roof as you?

When cooking for the family, stick to guaranteed crowd-pleasers like lasagna, chili, pasta or pizza – just to name a few. With that said, you might want to try something completely new like a delicious, healthy vegan or halal dish. To help you find the perfect one for you and your loved ones, LG’s ThinQ Recipe provides recipe recommendations via your phone, catering to diverse tastes and coming with online ratings and reviews. Easily accessible via the ThinQ app, it offers a seamless journey that allows anyone to search, plan, purchase and cook thousands of easy-to-follow recipes. Once you’ve picked your favorite out of the bunch, the app delivers step-by-step instructions as well as an “add to plan” option that helps you easily map out daily meals on your phone.

A party wouldn’t be complete without tasty drinks to go with your knockout dish. While a glass of wine may be a great choice for mom and dad, an array of mocktails and alcohol-free punch would keep things family-friendly. Of course, all these beverages will need to be properly chilled, which isn’t a problem when you own a smart refrigerator powered by the ThinQ app. Use it to easily adjust temperatures for your fridge and even the freezer compartment straight from your phone. If you’d like your drink especially icy – as fitting for bubblies and liquor – the latest fridges come with the “express freeze” feature, which heightens the freezer’s cooling functions to let you serve cool drinks in next to no time. Some advanced smart fridges also make slow-melting “craft ice” balls that elevate any drink for kids and parents alike.

The Perfect Home-Theater Movie Screening

Although family movie night delivers that all-important quality time together, there are ways to make the home cinema experience that much better and more convenient.

Your first job is to choose a film everyone will love. If you have several streaming subscriptions, consider which platform has the most appropriate content for your family. Time to narrow down your choices – keep in mind that everyone loves a superhero movie, a documentary would be great for adults and a comedy may satisfy teenagers. Once you’ve come together as a family and chosen a movie with the most potential, simply start the opening credits on your smartphone and “mirror” it to your TV to save time. Various devices now have a mirror feature, including smart TVs from LG that have a convenient and easy-to-use Content Sharing feature that transfers smartphone content to the TV’s display.

Just as important as the movie itself is making sure you’ve found a comfortable spot. Once you do, you’re ready to share snacks around the room and discuss the movie as you watch. Don’t miss out on priceless moments with loved ones and hit pause on the remote if you have something funny or insightful to say. If your remote has the tendency to disappear mysteriously as they so often do, no worries – the LG ThinQ app lets you navigate the connected smart TV from your phone just as you’d control the remote. Hitting pause and play, adjusting the volume and switching channels is all a breeze, so sit back and enjoy the show.

Finish the Day Strong

After getting the kids to bed after a day of family fun, it’s time to deal with the dreaded chores you’ve been putting off for hours. But not to worry, smart technology is at your immediate assistance.

Checking if appliances are turned off at the end of the day can be a hassle, but with “routines” provided by smart home providers like LG, that doesn’t have to be the case. With this intelligent feature, you can set automatic routines for your appliances’ settings however you want, so that your appliances – from home gadgets to smart lights and curtains – are either turned off or optimized for the night. Now you can sleep sounder than ever knowing that your appliances are taken care of.

With every new day comes several opportunities to put your appliances to good use. The best way to set yourself up for success is to check if your appliances are running properly with a few quick taps on your phone screen. With the app’s Smart Diagnosis feature, you can run diagnostics on your appliances and it will walk you through the troubleshooting steps for any issue it finds, saving you an extra call to customer care.

Home has always been the best place for family time, and that’s probably not going to change anytime soon with smart technology making it easier to create magical memories in the safest place on Earth. Check out this new video and website to discover how families around the world are getting more quality time thanks to smart tech at home.

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