If your holiday season is shaping up to look like ours, you might feel slightly in over your head. Between the boys’ upcoming (joint) birthday party, a few get togethers with friends, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and possibly some other holiday parties, I’m kind of overwhelmed with the planning part. Who is invited to what and when? Who has RSVPed? Which child of mine took off with the list for X-party and scribbled on it with marker before throwing it in a mud puddle? And so on.

Enter Microsoft Office Live.

It’s a handy little web-based tool that helps you organize all kinds of things. From planning events like the ones I’ve discussed above to sharing files between parties for work or school projects, Microsoft Office Live is a great, easy to manage tool. Here are just a few things that you can do when you go to create a new workspace:

• Blank workspace. (No restriction but no preset help either.)
• Class workspace. (Improve your grades using a contact list, date list, class notes, essay outline & syllabus.)
• Essay workspace. (Manage  your term paper or thesis with an outline, template, milestone list & more.)
• Event workspace. (Plan a successful event with an invitation, flyer, agenda, attendance list, to-do list & more.)
• Household workspace. (Share a to-do list, contact list, grocery list & more with family members.)
• Job Search workspace. (Organize your job search using an interview schedule, preparation notes, cover letter, resume template & more.)
• Meeting workspace. (Improve productivity using meeting notes, minutes archive, attendee list and a to-do list.)

Sounds helpful, doesn’t it? Especially for those of us who enjoy utilizing technology in our daily lives, as our family does, Microsoft Office Live helps with those little details that end up making a big difference.

I’ve enjoyed using both the Event workspace and the Household workspace for our current organizational needs right now. Previously, our grocery list was written in various places (on a sheet of paper, on the marker board, on my planning calendar) and, inevitably, things were always forgotten. Not now! To print, you simply click the Export to Excel button, enter your username/email and password for your Microsoft Office Live account, press okay and watch it load. Print. Grocery shop. Done.

FireDad is a fan of the Emergency Contact List in the Household workspace as well. What can we say? We’re a safety conscious family and having this information organized and handy is a great way to stay on the safe side.

We have made a Household to-do list with regard to some of the parties/events we have planned at our home over the next month and a half. Some of them are your everyday cleaning activities and some of them are party specific. Having everything organized that we can both see, so easily, makes it so much easier. We both know what  needs to be done. No questions. No miscommunication. Black and white.  Hooray!

I do believe that as I collaborate on projects with other individuals, we might use this as well. It’s a great way to put down, again in black and white, what everyone needs to do to contribute in order to see the project through to completion. Everyone can see that the others are keeping up with their tasks and, in theory, projects should go mighty smooth from start to finish. (Right?!) I’d even love to incorporate the Meeting workspace for a local group of which I am on the board. We’ll see if I can get them on the same technological page!

If you’re interested in utilizing Microsoft Office Live to get your household in order or plan some holiday events, simply head on over and register. It just takes a minute or so to enter your email, password and info. They send you a confirmation email and, bam! You’re ready to get organized!

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[Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Microsoft Office Live. Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.]

When Mom Central asked if I wanted to be more organized this year, I laughed. Don’t I always want to be more organized? Don’t I always fail? Don’t I always buy new planners… and then lose them? Still, I agreed that, yes, I do want to be more organized and offered to review Cozi.

What’s Cozi?

It’s an online calendar/scheduling system. Before you balk and say, “I like my iCal or Google Calendar or what have you better,” read through this review.

First of all, it’s easy to use and fast loading. This is imperative when you figure in the point that Cozi is meant to be used by the whole family. I’m not saying that FireDad is dumb when it comes to technology. But when you factor in that I also (purposefully) invited my mother and mother-in-law to use the service as well, ease of use and fast loading are, by far, the most important things. Why did I invite them? My husband’s mother never remembers his work schedule and my mother never remembers when we have plans elsewhere. The hope was that they would be able to quickly look without calling me during TheBrothers’ bedtime. It’s still my hope. Hasn’t happened yet. Hmm.

Anyway, other things that I love:

1. Shopping lists & recipes. I do my meal planning two weeks at a time, pulling most of my recipe ideas from online sources. Having a handy listing option right at my fingertips is totally right up my alley.

Cozi Groceries Screenshot

2. The downloads section. First of all: Syncing Cozi with Outlook. That’s perfect for our family (my mother included). They also have the ability to put a widget on your desktop so you can always look and see what’s coming up next. Also perfect for when I don’t know what’s coming next and don’t have time to pull up an entire website.

Something I did not like: there was no warning that by editing the info page with our cell phone numbers that we would receive a text message. We do not have unlimited texting. And, in fact, as my husband receives his cell phone plan through his (fire department) employer, he has absolutely no texting. He now has to pay for the one text message received and then one he had to send to turn off future text messages. I am now down two on my very, very limited plan. I didn’t know that by simply entering our cell phone numbers we would receive texts. I thought that was an option you could turn on, not an automatic function. I was really unhappy when all of that happened.

Despite that minor annoyance, we’re enjoying our use of Cozi. I’ve been able to make marks on each of BigBrother’s school days as to what need to be done (book order turned in, tuition due and so on). It’s big enough to read notes (important for the grandmas). It makes it easier for my family to stay connected. And it looks rather snazzy as well. Because, yes, I judge websites based on what they look like. You don’t?

We’ll be implementing Cozi into our family life this year. Will you?