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Something happened this spring that has never happened before. I’m still kind of reeling about it. I did something I have never done before. I didn’t host a birthday party for one of my children until months after the child’s actual birthday. Eeek. No Mom of the Years awards are heading my way any time soon.
Usually, I start planning well in advance of my child’s birthday. I ask them what kind of party they want. I pick a place to have the party or we plan to have party/sleepover at home. I plan. I google. I stockpile party favors, supplies, and paper goods. I send out invitations. Whatever I do, I have the birthday planned well before the actual birthday. After 17 years of planning birthday parties, I didn’t plan a party back in April when my son turned 10. I still feel bad about it.
You see April was hectic to say the least. My husband’s Easter break didn’t coincide with the kids. I had a ton of work to do. I injured my knee and was limping a lot. We roadtripped to another state for a volleyball tournament. April was insane. By May and early June, I was too bogged down with the end-of-the-school madness of teachers’ gifts, concerts, class activities, and picnics to plan a party. I decided to wait til school let out.
I’m SO glad I did. With a clear head and a bunch of time, I planned my son’s birthday in record time. He chose to have an at-home laser and water tag party. Invitations were sent out. Party favors purchased. Pizza and cake ordered. His special party for friends and family was a hit. Who knows I may even be back in the running for Mom of the Year!
On the day of the party everything ran like clockwork. The laser and water tag people arrived early to set up. The cake and pizza were delivered and ready to go. Balloons were inflated. Party favor bags assembled. Once the guests arrived there was nothing more for me to do than sit back, let the party coordinator do her job, and oh yes, take photographs. And take photos I did. Many photos. On multiple devices…my phone, my husband’s phone, our new DSLR camera, and even my dad’s phone! The kids must have thought that the paparazzi was on the scene!
When the last guest left and everything had been cleared away, I set up a slideshow of photos for my mother who missed part of the party. But, I was only able to include photos from one camera, not every camera. The slideshow I showed her wasn’t a complete picture of my son’s experience with his friends and family at his birthday party.
Recently I learned about Tapsbook. Tapsbook is an innovative visual storytelling mobile app for iPad. Tapsbook allows you to create a photobook from photographs tucked away on mobile devices, computers, and social photo sharing services. With all your photos in one “place,” you can create organized, attractive, and automatically updated virtual photo books to share with family and friends on iPad and any browser.
Tapsbook is easy to use. Here’s what I did:
- I downloaded Tapsbook from the App store.
- I uploaded photos from my Google+ cloud to Tapsbook. I tapped in…get it! …to my images on stored on the Google cloud, but I could have easily accessed images from Facebook, Drop Box, or images stored on my iPad’s photo album.
- Once all images were uploaded — which incidentally took no time at all — I got my creative juices flowing by selecting the type of photobook I wanted. I sifted through my photos. Added embellishments to the photobook pages…colorful theme-y backgrounds, text descriptions.
My photobook looked very sweet indeed.. I liked mine so much that I showed my teen daughter how to make a Tapsbook Photo Book. She was impressed!
The Tapsbook interface was very simple. All I needed to do was use two fingers to move a photo from one spot to the next. Or I spread out my fingers to make the photo smaller or larger. You can rate your photos by favorites. I love the idea of creating a yearbook to chronicle my family’s adventures! Plus you can share your Tapsbook with family and friends online.
Here’s what you need to know about Tapsbook:
- Tapsbook is free to download from the App Store.
- You can store up to 500 shared photos for FREE.
- Tapsbook offers 4GB of storage — about 10,000 photos for a monthly fee of $2.99/month or $24.99/year.
- All photos are stored in the secure Tapsbook cloud.
- Or you can use your own DropBox or Google Drive storage account to buy 1,000 photos for $1.99 or 10,000 photos for $15.99 (a 20% discount).
- Like Tapsbook on Facebook.
- Follow @Tapsbook on Twitter.
