A Travel Tip to Avoid Smartphone Withdrawal

I traveled to a tradeshow once, and one of my coworkers left his Samsung mini USB charger. Nothing’s worse than having 1% left on your battery, and none of your friends have a charger for you to borrow. (Otherwise known as nomophobia, a term for our first-world fear of being without our smartphones).

The next time this happens to you, ask the hotel front desk if they have a charger that matches your phone. Chances are they’ll have one in their lost-and-found box that fits. Rest easy, smartphone addicts.

My Favorite Recipes…But Not the Edible Kinds

Unfortunately, folks, this blog isn’t for Pinterest-worthy cooking recipes (though I have nearly perfected the art of cooking Eggo waffles and pizza rolls).

The recipes I’m talking about are in ifttt. Ifttt — pronounced like “gift” without the “g”, according to their website — is a personal automation service where you can connect some of your favorite apps like Facebook, Google Drive, and Instagram. The ifttt stands for “If This Then That” and with the service, you can create or browse recipes to automate tasks.

Here are my favorite recipes that I’ve found on ifttt or cooked up myself:

1. (Found on ifttt) Add a Favorited Tweet from Twitter to Pocket: If you’re guilty of falling into the same trap I do, you can spend countless hours just reading articles until bam! — you realize it is 12:30 AM. Rather than reading the articles in every one of your favorited Tweets as you come across them, this recipe will save them to your Pocket account, so you can read all your favorite articles at once.

   

2. Watch for Bills in Your Email Account: Now that everyone’s going to paperless billing, there might be times when that invoice gets buried in your email. To make sure you see them as they come in, I created a recipe that sends me a SMS any time I receive an email from our gas company.
3. Breaking News on Your Sports Teams: I love checking ESPN as much as the next sports fan, but I’m not on it 24/7. I edited one of the ESPN recipes within ifttt to send me a text message when there is breaking news on the Virginia Tech Hokies.
4. A Wakeup Call by patmcd: One of the small perks of staying at a hotel is the morning wakeup call. With ifttt, you can replicate that by turning on a recipe that automates a call from ifttt at a time you designate.

There are dozens of apps you can activate through ifttt to make your life a little more efficient, including connecting your home automation like Philips Hue’s wireless lighting. Enjoy a home-cooked recipe from ifttt!

Party Down with Google Apps

*Courtesy of Buzzfeed

The holidays are over, but it doesn’t mean that the parties stop on New Year’s Eve. In just under a month, we’ll be celebrating one of my best friends as she welcomes her second child, and all of her hosts are in party planning mode. Using Google Apps for Work makes the process a little bit easier, whether you’re planning an event for fun or professionally. Here are four ways you can get started:

1. Plan the Details with Google Docs - You have your inspiration boards started on Pinterest, but now it’s time to get into the nitty gritty with the party plans. Start a new Google Doc to jot down details like the menu, text for the invitation or other thoughts. You can throw the random scraps of paper away and have all your ideas in one place.
2. Manage Your Guest List with Google Spreadsheets - Whether it’s a small get-together or half of the city is coming to your party, you can use Google Spreadsheets to manage your guest list. This is particularly helpful when you have co-hosts. Include columns for the number of adults, children, and toddlers just in case you need it for your meal count. And, you can even include columns for RSVPs, the gifts they gave, and whether you’ve sent them a thank you card.
3. Create Tasks in GMail - Did you buy all the party favors? Mail the invites? Order the cake? There are too many details to count sometimes when you’re planning a party, so if you’re a GMail user, you can keep track of them all by creating tasks to manage your to-do’s.
   
4. Keep Slideshow Photos Organized in Google Drive - If you’re the photog or just all-around media nerd, you may have been “volun-told"to make a slideshow for the event. Rather than asking everyone to email you photos and then download them one-by-one, which can be a veritable nightmare, you can start a Google Drive folder and provide permissions to your friends to drop photos. There is a 15GB limit across Google+, Google Apps and Google Drive, but you can always purchase more space if you need it.

What other tools do you use for planning an event? (And P.S. Don’t forget to send me an invite!)

LiveNeatlee Notable: Michelle Dineros Samson

I met Michelle many years ago through our mutual friend, Ciesther (of DCPG fame). Michelle is extremely talented and has a discerning eye for design. In fact, I am secretly a big fan of her on Pinterest (though I guess that’s not a secret anymore). I love seeing her selection of stylishly understated fashion, home decor, and brand identity pins.

Michelle translates this same aesthetic into her work at Taffy Floral. The designs are so effortless that you’d think they were thrown together in just a few minutes. But in reality, it took plenty of thorn pricks, weathering the moody Virginia weather, and picking just the right pieces to make the arrangement that beautiful.

Photo courtesy of DCPG

Neatlee: The thing that gets you up in the morning is…
Michelle: I make it a habit to get up at least an hour before the kids get up in the morning, so I am typically up between 4 am and 5 am. I think my body has a natural alarm clock because I usually get up around that time on my own. Sleeping in and oversleeping is not part of my vocabulary! I am a morning person by nature and have most of my energy in the morning which is why I don’t mind getting up that early to work on checking e-mails, proposals, research, etc. Plus I am less distracted. On days I need to pick up flowers and I am still not quite awake, a cup of coffee and Wu-Tang on blast does the trick! Right now I am lucky I get to walk the kids to the bus stop (and walk the dog at the same time), so I would say walking outside also gets me up in the morning!

Neatlee: Give me your bio (While I usually ask for a bio that’s less than 160 characters, I thought Michelle’s answer was so thoughtful that I wanted to include it all!)
Michelle: I have always been obsessed with plants. As a kid I would draw landscape diagrams for fun. I also pored through the flower section of the encyclopedia daily. However the fashion industry, not plants, was my calling in high school. I thought I had everything figured out in college when I interned at fashion designer Anna Sui’s showroom, but my inspiration and interest in fashion waned over the years. Last year everything clicked. Why not combine my appreciation for design with my love for plants and flowers into a creative career? So here I am today: foraging for flowers and foliage (and almost falling into ditches), visiting and helping out at flower farms, and putting together the perfect arrangements in an imperfect way. I am almost certain I will encounter snakes one day, but I don’t care. What I love most is teaching people about flowers in general and how to care for cut flowers.

Neatlee: A tip you’d give to other creative types to stay energized would be to:
Michelle: Take breaks. This is hard for me since I am a workaholic. I would probably work 24 hours a day if my body was able to stay awake that long!

Neatlee: Your arsenal of 3 creative tools (hardware, software, apps or just sheer brainpower) is…
Michelle: Planner. Calender. Routine in general. I think I am old school sometimes. I don’t use all those fancy apps! As long as I have my daily checklists and notes on calenders, I am good. As far as routine, every day in general is different, but I try to stick with my daily morning routine as much as possible because I get things done that way instead of putting it off. My morning to-do list includes responding to e-mails, research, and getting my main to-do list for the day together and figuring out what needs to be finished that day. Believe me that is really hard for me since I was born a procrastinator! Having a daily morning routine is a habit I have learned to follow over the years.

If you’re in need of a thoughtful arrangement for your home or special event, Michelle can be contacted at taffy.floral@gmail.com

Photo courtesy of Whitney Hunt Photography

A bit of floral art to brighten your home

For a wedding of Michelle’s close friend Rica

Project Management Systems: Too Hot. Too Cold. Just Right.

Over the past few years, I’ve sampled a variety of online project management tools, from the simple to the complex. Sometimes I feel a little like Goldilocks taste-testing solutions to find the right one. Does it pass my taste test? Does it pass the tastes of the entire team?

We used TeamLab to manage all of our marketing department’s projects including quick one-offs and more complex projects like an integration between our CRM and e-mail platform. I liked the ability to use milestones and tasks within each project, but those functions went largely unused by the rest of our team. We’ve since moved on from TeamLab onto Wunderlist, which I use personally for grocery lists and other personal to-do’s.

Are you ready to implement a system or make the leap from one platform to another? Here are a few things to keep in mind when “taste-testing” another project management system:

• Is it easy to assign tasks and set reminders?
• Do you like how project deadlines and milestones are displayed (i.e. in a Gantt chart or calendar format)?
• Are apps available for every OS?
• What integrations does it offer? Does it allow you to integrate with cloud storage providers like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Box?

It’s important to find the right fit, but jumping ship from one system to the next too often won’t give your team enough time to get into a groove.

Bon appetit!