Free Thank you Cards via email

Having to write a pile of thank you cards right after having a baby doesn’t seem fair to me. Especially when you’re sleep- and shower-deprived, and have who knows what kind of lactation issues to contend with every hour (just sayin’). And so while I appreciated (and devoured) the delicious chicken and stuffing my friend Erin made for us when we got home from the hospital with Liva, it was the iPhone app she sent my way that became the best gift I could have received.

Erin Newkirk is the genius behind this Red Stamp app, and as a working mom with a million things on her to-do list and an iPhone as her co-pilot, she came up with the smart idea of sending cards from your phone via text or email. You can choose from hundreds of well-designed digital cards, and many of them are photo-driven, so you can make it that much more personal with a shot of your kid waving at grandma or showing off her Halloween costume.

The fun part for me post-partum was that a gift would arrive for Liva and I could snap a photo of her sleeping next to her new lovey or actually wearing the outfit someone sent with a quick message: “Auntie Sari, Don’t I look smashing in the new dress you picked out for me? xo, Livie” And for the technophobes, I was able to mail paper postcards from the app for $2 a piece, which saved me the time of scrawling out a message, locating the address, and actually getting it to the mailbox.

Once I crawled out of post-partum land, I starting using the Red Stamp app regularly to thank someone for a play date or to show a relative what we were up to on our family vacation. I promise you, I’m not usually one to wax poetic about techie things (even if a friend is involved), but this one gets my big stamp of approval.