Celebrate the Holidays with Better Homes and Gardens ($3.99) is an app for the iPad that will help you put together a great party for the holidays. It contains recipes, craft ideas and music playlists that fit a specifically themed party, whether it’s for Thanksgiving or Christmas. All this content is delivered to you via a gorgeous user interface with a ton of beautiful photos for inspiration.
The primary focus of this application is for Autumn, Thanksgiving and Christmas, but they promise more holidays in the future. You begin by choosing which holiday you’d like to plan a party for. Each holiday contains several parties for you to emulate. These vary from small and casual, to big and formal. Once you’ve chosen the specific party, images start to flood the screen.
The main columns are food and special touches. There are recipes for appetizers, main courses, desserts and side items, each with a high quality photo for reference. Each recipe includes a list of ingredients and step-by-step directions on how to make it. In the special touches section, you’ll get ideas on how to make your home look and feel like the holidays. These special touches range from simple crafts to suggestions for activities. This section also provides a playlist of songs that go along with the holiday. You can download the entire mix, but only from the iTunes app on your desktop computer. The iPad will only allow you to download individual songs.
All of this great content is presented in a beautifully polished UI with smooth screen transitions and fades. Every photo you tap on goes full-screen and looks amazing on the iPad. The entire party-planning experience is a pleasure with this application. There’s even social networking support, so you can share the party ideas via Facebook, Twitter and email.
This is absolutely a well-developed application that I strongly recommend. If you’re having the family over for the holidays, this is a must-have app.
