Cozi Blog

Send a Holiday Card in Cozi

Holiday cards are expensive! By the time you buy cards to send out to everyone on your list, you could spend well over $100, possibly much more if you have a large list or a fondness for fancy cards. This doesn’t even include the cost of stamps or special address labels.

Even with the cost, though, holiday cards are fun to send out, and fun to receive. The tradition of exchanging yearly cards is a good one, but modifying it slightly could save you money and time; Cozi can help!

Instead of sending printed holiday cards to your entire list, consider dividing your list into categories. Within your list, you undoubtedly have a wide range of people, starting with your inner circle of close friends and family, and spiraling out from there to include a range of far-flung friends from the past, neighbors, work colleagues and acquaintances. It’s nice to extend season’s greetings to all of these people, but it might not be necessary to send an expensive card to each of them.

For at least part of your list, consider sending out a holiday card through Cozi. You can create a special family journal entry just for the occasion, including a festive greeting and a special picture. From there, all you’ll need to do is click on “Send by e-mail," and add the e-mail addresses of those who will receive the card. Click “Send," and you’re done. It’s that simple!

You might even find that this option allows you to extend your holiday list to include more people you’d like to connect with, but couldn’t afford to keep on your list with the expense of printed cards. In addition to enabling you to reach out to more people, just think of all the time and money you’ll save by using Cozi to send out some of your cards!

Before you know it, you’ll be able to cross off “Send Holiday Cards” from your To Do list, and move on to the next item. That’s what Cozi’s all about; simplifying family life!

Use the Cozi Family Journal to send fast, free, personalized holiday cards this year!

Thanksgiving Planning in Cozi

Simplify your Thanksgiving preparations with Cozi!

Thanksgiving already? If you’re feeling overwhelmed by everything you’ll need to accomplish to put a fabulous feast on the table, let Cozi help. Here are a few ways that Cozi can help you simplify the pre-feast preparations and capture the fun moments of the event. 

TO DO LISTS: To plan your Thanksgiving celebration, you’ll definitely need lots of lists. With the new To Do list feature, Cozi’s got you covered. From “order the turkey” to “plan the seating arrangements” to “rent family movies,” you can use the new To Do list feature to organize your planning. You can even write a list of tasks and chores for each of your family members to delegate some of the workload.

SHOPPING LISTS: With all the ingredients that will go into your special Thanksgiving dishes, you’ll undoubtedly need several grocery lists. With Cozi Shopping Lists, you can keep a list for each store. You can then send your lists to your phone via text, or call Cozi to have your lists read aloud or sent by text. The Cozi number is 1-888-808-COZI, and our Cozi concierge will help you anytime, 24/7.

CALENDAR APPOINTMENTS: To make sure you have enough time to get through your To Do lists, consider adding appointments for key tasks directly to your family calendar. You could add appointments for shopping, cooking, and cleaning. You could even add appointments for all these chores for each of your family members to ensure that they have time set aside to accomplish all that you have in store for them. Don’t forget to set reminders for all these appointments to ensure that no one “forgets” their chores.

FAMILY JOURNAL: With all the work you’re putting into your Thanksgiving event, it would be a shame not to capture the fun, and to share these memories with your family. With the family journal, you can easily add a picture of your family’s annual Thanksgiving football game, or of Uncle Fred carving the turkey. Once you’ve added your picture, just jot down a few words and send the journal entry by email to any or all family members who joined in your celebration. Or, share all of your November journal entries automatically by signing up for the family journal newsletters.

Whatever you have planned for Thanksgiving, enjoy your time with friends and family. From the prep work to preserving the antics of the event, let Cozi help you simplify your Thanksgiving holiday.

 

Sign Up For Family Journal Newsletters Today!

‘Tis the season for fun family events, and connecting with loved ones. Starting with Halloween festivities and ending with New Year’s celebrations, your family will undoubtedly enjoy hundreds of special moments—and take hundreds of family photos.

With all these photos and memorable experiences, there’s no better time to use the Cozi Family Journal. There’s also no better time to share your journal with family and friends in the family journal newsletter.

With the family journal newsletter, you can share the special moments and fun photos you’ve added to your family journal, without any effort at all.

Just sign up for family journal newsletters, and add the email addresses of the people you’d like to share with. That’s it!

Once you’ve signed up for newsletters, the people you’ve added will receive your newsletter automatically at the start of each month. You can add or remove recipients at any time simply by adjusting the settings in your family journal.

Only the new posts added that month will be included, so over the next few months, each newsletter will essentially be a holiday update of the fun events of the season. The October newsletter will be full of pumpkin-patch pictures and cute costumes. The November newsletter will feature the pictures of the kids in the Thanksgiving play at school, or maybe the Thanksgiving feast at Grandma’s house. December’s newsletter will be full of snowmen and holiday celebrations.

Wouldn’t your in-laws in Indianapolis love to see the cute pictures of your kids tromping through the muddy fields during your pumpkin-picking adventure? Wouldn’t your parents in Portland love to see the huge snowman with a top hat that your kids built after the big snow storm?

You might think you’ll remember these special moments forever, but they’re all too easily lost in the rush of new special moments that occur during this busy but wonderful season. And family and friends around the country won’t even know about these moments unless you share them.

Before these times are lost forever, just take a quick moment to preserve your memories with the family journal. Then, take an even quicker moment to share the joy of the season with your friends and family by including them in your family journal newsletter.

 

 

Communicate And Collaborate With Cozi

Cozi’s main mission is to simplify life for busy families. One key way to make that happen is to provide a way for parents to communicate and collaborate about family activities and responsibilities. If you work together to get through the chores and logistics of your day, you’ll have more free time to enjoy together.

How can Cozi help your family communicate and collaborate to simplify your busy life?

ADD ALL APPOINTMENTS TO ONE FAMILY CALENDAR: Having one central place to add all important family appointments and activities is hugely important for enabling good communication between family members. From Monday’s soccer practice to Friday’s date night, keeping all your appointments in Cozi ensures that everyone will be on the same page about family plans. If any of your family members keep other calendars, such as Google calendars or Windows Live calendars, you can import these to Cozi so that Cozi is the central family calendar for your whole household, and is the “go to” calendar when your family needs to know what’s going on.

SEND APPOINTMENTS FROM COZI: If you want to make sure everyone knows where to go and when, you can send their appointments to them via text by clicking on the Send To Phone option within the Cozi calendar. When you select a family member, that person will receive all the appointments for which he is listed as an attendee on that day.

USE COZI REMINDERS: With Cozi’s reminder feature, you can set reminders for you and your spouse for all your most important appointments. With reminders, you’ll be sure that you both remember the soccer game at 3:00, and the school conferences at 6:00. Don’t forget to add a reminder for date night!

SEND MESSAGES FROM COZI: You can communicate with your partner throughout the day via texts or e-mails through Cozi. If there’s a change to the schedule, or if you need to hand off a responsibility to your spouse, you can communicate directly through Cozi.

USE COZI LISTS: If you keep your shopping lists in Cozi, you or your significant other can call into Cozi’s 888# to retrieve the list from the store on the way home from work. No need to stop by the house to pick up the list; just call in. Or, if you want to let your spouse know to stop by the store, you can send a list from Cozi to any phone verified in your account.

SYNC WITH OUTLOOK: To further ensure that everyone is on the same page, you and your spouse can each sync Cozi to your Outlook accounts at work. With the Outlook toolbar from Cozi, work commitments can be synced to Cozi if you choose, and any appointment for which you are listed as an attendee in Cozi will show up on your Outlook calendar at work. If you’re supposed to pick your son up from soccer at 6:00, or meet your wife for your anniversary dinner at 7:00, Cozi will keep you in the loop.

CONNECT TO COZI MOBILE: With Cozi Mobile, parents can access their family appointment or list information directly from their phones. Cozi Mobile isn’t yet available on all phones, but if you can access Cozi Mobile, you’ll be in the know while you’re on the go. Try Cozi Mobile on your phone by going to m.cozi.com on your mobile browser.

Communicating and collaborating on the logistics of family life through Cozi will help simplify your busy day, and leave you and your spouse with more free time to enjoy together.

Try the Cozi Family Journal

If you haven’t taken the Cozi Family Journal out for a test drive yet, you’ve got to give it a try. It’s awesome. Of course, I’m not completely impartial since I work for the dealership, but speaking sincerely:

The family journal is my favorite feature of Cozi.

I love how easy it is to quickly capture and preserve a moment or a memory, and I love that I can then email my entry to my mom, my sister, or anyone I choose. Or, if I don’t want to send it now, I can always send it via email later, or send out all the posts from the month automatically in a family newsletter. I could even share via Facebook or on my own Cozi web page. So simple, so fast, and so many good options!

My two main motivations for using the family journal are simple:

• To keep my extended family involved in the day-to-day life of my kids, because they love to feel connected

• To keep a contemporaneous record of life in our busy, chaotic household so that I won’t forget the hysterical and wonderful moments that happen every day.

I used to assume that I’d always remember the outrageous quotes or the daily events that seem so unforgettable. Sadly, that turns out to be far from true. For example, I know that my 12-year-old said adorable things when he was little, things I never wanted to forget and never thought I would forget.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I’ve done. I’m shocked and embarrassed to admit that I can’t remember even a single funny line from his childhood, other than a vague recollection that he spoke with an Australian accent for awhile.

I used to call my mom to tell her his funny stories, because they made her day. Plus, it seemed like telling someone the story was a way of ensuring that it would be remembered. As it turns out, these quick calls gave us both enjoyment, but they didn’t preserve the memories. The funny lines and milestone moments were swept away with the daily tide of activity and routines.

It’s too late to preserve the great moments of my 12-year-old’s early years, but my younger kids are still in the funny quote stage, and all my kids are doing great stuff that I don’t want to forget. The first lost tooth, the first soccer goal, the big lacrosse game, the school science fair; I don’t want to miss any of those events, and I don’t want to forget them later.

As busy and crazy as this chapter of life can be, I know it’s just about the best chapter there is, and when these years are gone, they’ll be gone for good. As the years go by, I’ll want to be reminded of these special times, and relive them. With the family journal, I know I’ll be able to enjoy these memories for a lifetime.

 

More Calendar Printing Options

To print for one, or to print for everyone? That is the question, and it didn’t used to be an option on Cozi—but now it is!

That’s right! You can now print the calendar for the whole family to post on the refrigerator or the front door, or you can print individual calendars for each family member to tuck into backpacks or briefcases. 

The development of this feature was in direct response to those of you who told us you needed to be able to print a calendar for each family member to take with them on the go. Thank you for your feedback, and for helping us to know what you need and want from Cozi!

To use this feature, just sign in to your account, open your calendar, and look up to the View bar across the top of the calendar. Click All to print for everyone, or click a particular family member’s name to print an individual calendar for that person. Then click Print at the bottom of the screen. It’s that easy!

The next feature we develop could come from you, so keep the feedback and feature requests coming!

Enter Your School Calendar Into Cozi

Is anyone else out there buried under a pile of back to school paperwork? With three kids, I have at least 50 forms to fill out, and some are two-sided. Plus, their teachers are giving extra credit for all the kids who get the whole pile back within 48 hours. Talk about pressure!

The bad news is that there’s no way to avoid filling out all these forms, so I’m pouring a giant mug of coffee, uncapping a new pen, and turning up/facing the music.

The good news, though, is that I don’t have to add three school calendars to my family calendar on top of filling out all these forms. Why, you ask? Because I’m lucky enough to have two out my three schools included in the Cozi database of schools.

That means that Cozi will automatically add my school calendars for those schools directly to my family planner. And, as long as the school district keeps the calendars up to date, Cozi will automatically update any school calendar changes directly to my family calendar.

Your school could be included, too! To check, just click “Calendar options” in your Cozi Settings. From there, enter your school information, click Search, and hold your breath!

If you get the good news that your school is in the database, you can immediately add it to your Cozi calendar.

If you get the not-so-good news that your school isn’t yet included in the database, you can vote to have your school add an Internet school calendar. To do this, just go to the School Calendars Now web site at www.schoolcal.org and enter your school information.

If your school isn’t listed, just select "School Not Listed" to add your school to the request list. Within a week, your school will be added to the School Calendars Now database of schools so that you can vote to add a calendar for your school. Once you vote for your school, pass the word along to your friends so that they vote, too. The more votes your school receives, the better the chance that they’ll add an Internet school calendar.

Check it out, and add your school calendar to Cozi. Or, if it’s not yet available, go to www.schoolcal.org to vote to have your school create an Internet calendar so you don’t have to manually enter all your dates next year. Good luck with your pile of paperwork!

Share Your Family Journal via Email

Are you having the best summer ever? With lots of summer fun come lots of photos and great memories. Now if you add those photos and memories to your family journal, you can share your entries with family and friends easily via email.

You can share just one entry, or include a link to all your Cozi Family Journal entries. You can share your entry with just one person, or with a whole group. The process is simple, and the choice is yours!

Sending your journal by email offers a quick and simple way to share your special moments. If you just hosted a play date and took some fun photos of the kids climbing trees, you can add a photo to your Cozi Family Journal and send it easily to the other families in the play group.

Or if you just hosted a birthday party, you can send a speedy thank you note to all your party guests via email, complete with photos! Or if you spent a weekend away with another family, you can share your family journal entry just with them.

The friends or family you share with don’t even have to be signed up for Cozi to read your journal entry or see the picture. What’s more, you can easily import all the email addresses from your address book in Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, or dozens of other email providers.

The people you share with can even add positive feedback to your journal entries with a smile symbol. By adding a smile, your friends and family can let you know that they received your email and your journal entry made them smile.

It’s good to share! Enjoy!

Get Your Account Info on the Run

If you ran out the door this morning without checking Cozi to see where you and your family need to be, don’t worry! Even when you don’t have access to a computer, you can get easy access to your calendar or shopping list information by calling Cozi. When you call Cozi from any phone number listed in your Cozi account, you can have that day’s appointment information read to you over the phone.

Or, if your phone number is listed in your account and is verified to receive texts, you can request that the information be sent via text. You can also receive any of your shopping list information in the same way. To utilize these send to phone options, please call 1-888-808-COZI (2694) and follow the prompts from the Cozi concierge.

Cozi even has a short code option if you prefer to receive your information via text without going through the concierge. To access the short code option, just send a message to 22694 (BCOZI), and text either “calendar” or “shopping” to let us know which information you want. By entering “calendar”, you’ll receive all of today’s appointments for your family via text.

By entering “shopping”, you’ll receive the first shopping list in your Cozi account. If you want to access a different list, just use the other send to phone option, calling in to the toll-free 888 number to let Cozi know which list you want read or sent via text.

Whether you’re at home or on the run, accessing your Cozi account information is simple and easy. If you haven’t already, just give Cozi’s send to phone options a try!

Keeping Summer Schedules Straight

With kids out of school for the summer, many families are adjusting to new schedules. Summer’s fun, but changing schedules can be hard, especially for families with both parents trying to juggle jobs and kids. Between summer camps, day care, swimming lessons, and the usual chaos of life, staying on top of the new schedules can be a challenge. Here are some ways that Cozi can help:

FAMILY CALENDAR: Keep all the plans in your family calendar, and then us the Send to Phone option in the Cozi calendar to send each person’s schedule to them each day by text.

REMINDERS: You probably had the school-year routines memorized, but with the new schedule, you might need a gentle nudge to get everyone where they need to be at the right time. Even if your summer schedule changes every week, setting Cozi reminders for your kids’ camps and lessons can help keep you on track.

COZI MOBILE: If you haven’t tried Cozi Mobile yet, now might be a good time to get started with this new feature from Cozi. This is a great new option for accessing your Cozi information when you’re away from your computer.

SHOPPING LISTS: With all the extra activities you have on your schedule this summer, the last thing you want to do is go grocery shopping. By using the list feature in Cozi, you can save yourself extra trips and make shopping more efficient. If you’re busy picking up the kids and your husband’s on his way home from work, he can make a quick stop at the store, calling into 888-808-COZI for anything on the list.

Keeping your new summer schedule straight might be a challenge at first, but let Cozi help you keep track and keep it simple so that you can enjoy some summer fun.