7 Essential Holiday Season Apps

Prepare for the big day with a little help from your smartphone!
The holiday season is an exciting—although invariably busy—time of year. While there are so many elements that people look forward to, including seeing their families, cooking delicious meals, baking sweet treats, taking time off work, and buying and receiving gifts from their loved ones, the stress involved in all this is no small matter.
Sometimes it seems that in our dash to December 25, we don’t enjoy a single element of the Christmas rush simply due to the fact that there is so much to get done. The good news is that this frenzy is avoidable with just a little bit of digital planning. In this era of the smartphone, there are numerous digital tools and tips that make your travel, shopping and party planning much easier.
Here are a list of the most helpful smartphone apps that can take your Christmas planning from chaotic to seamless.
Thoughtful Gift Finder: An app created by the popular online shop notonthehighstreet.com, the Thoughtful Gift Finder helps you give better gifts than a cliché mug or jumper. It starts by asking you what types of things your gift recipient likes—such as cooking, traveling, or art—and then gives you suggestions based on that and a number of other factors. Not only is this method less work than traipsing around shops looking for a gift, it almost always results in a more original (and welcome!) gift.
Gift It: You can think of Gift It as your personal assistant when it comes to Christmas shopping. It keeps track of your budget, gives you a countdown until the big day, tells you who still have to buy a gift for and even lets you share your list with others via SMS or email if you’re coordinating with family. Don’t attempt to get through your shopping list without it!
RedLaser: If you know what gift you want to buy, but aren’t sure where to find the best price on it, look no further than Red Laser. This app helps you price compare across major retailers and even gives you coupons and deals you might have missed if you shopped directly from a retail website or online.
Grocery List Ease: If you’ve got the presents down but your main concern is your never-ending grocery shopping list for the big Christmas meal, this app is for you. You can create organized and tabulated shopping lists and easily share them with family and friends with just a few taps.
WunderList: WunderList is the do-it-all app on this list. It’s an easy and user-friendly way to make various to do lists, be it travel planning, gifts, food shopping, or all of the above. It keeps everything in one place and allows you to share it across all your devices. It will also give you reminders so you don’t forget to pick up the turkey from the butcher and grandma from the station.
TripIt: If presents and turkey don’t have you stressed, then maybe it’s traveling home for the big day that gets to you. TripIt will help map out your journey over the river and through the woods—or wherever you’re going—so you don’t miss a beat. With flight, train, rental car or hotel itineraries all in one place, you won’t have to fumble around with sheets of paper or tons of emails, making holiday travel much easier.
Hotels Tonight: For some people, going “home for the holidays” is actually the opposite of relaxing. If you’re worried that you may not get on with your family as well as you’d like, Hotel Tonight gives you an easy way to make a last minute hotel booking in case sparks fly with you and your brother in law.
Are there any apps that you can’t live without at this time of the year? Let us know on Twitter @VPSNET!