Melissa Phillips, Guest Blogger

We would like to introduce you to Melissa Phillips. She is an amazing paper-crafter that will be guest blogging next week. Be sure to check out her blog, lilybeanpaperie.typepad.com for tons of project ideas and more!

Hi there! I'm so excited to be a Guest Blogger on the SEI Lifestyles blog....not excited to be chatting about myself, but here goes nothing. I am originally from American Fork, UT, but am now a country girl living in Southern Nevada with my two sweethearts...my husband Nate and little girl Sierra. These two are the wind in my sails I tell you...life revolves around them and together we have so much to be happy about. I started paper-crafting about 5 years or so ago and it has become a very rewarding activity that I hope I have time for each day...for just a few minutes, I get to let my creative mind take over and enjoy all things associated with it.

I have several fascinating quirks, but just for you I'll leave most of them out.
1. I don't text...never done it...don't even know how...am I pathetic?
2. I dream about all things crafty...from baking to quilting to card making...buttons, trims, glitter, fabric...I close my eyes and there they all are dancing across my dreams.
3. I don't know how to get the messages off of my cell phone...I know my box is full...and I wonder sometimes if I've missed out on something really important...but the secrets will stay there indefinitely. I don't even carry my cell phone with me...don't know where it is right now either :)
4. I would rather shop for paper than clothes...shoes are tempting, but I still think I'd go for the paper.
5. I love to read cookbooks back to front....over and over again...nothin' wrong with that though, right? I have such a lovely collection of these beautiful treasures....sigh...just one more simple pleasure.

Such a great movie :: 500 Days of Summer

Matt and I watched 500 Days of Summer last night and I really loved it. For sure, I'll be getting the soundtrack... but if you haven't seen it, please do! It came out a little while ago already and I'm sure most have seen it, but I was being cheap and waited until it came out at the $3 theater. Of course, Zooey Deschanel was as charming as can be...
Spoiler alert:

I was completely surprised at how refreshing and cute this movie was and loved the nice balance of artsy. Normally, I'm not a big fan of artsy films (I just really like good movies that are enjoyable and suspend my disbelief for 2 hours, blah blah), but this film did the best job of infusing bits of artsiness (if that's a word) throughout, which made for a very memorable film. I loved the karaoke scene and leaned over to tell Matt that, "it is so awkward, I think I'm going to vomit." Not many a film can achieve this feeling in me (the TV show, The Office, is great at doing this). Matt and I really appreciated the scene when they go to the art gallery and were looking at very modern art (that was literally sh!t), giggled, and were like, "you want to go watch a movie?" You see, we love really good art, but don't always understand super abstract and feel like it's for a secret society and we're not in the club. We also appreciated the very end when the main character looks at the camera after the girl says her name is Autumn. Impeccable timing. Genius. Don't we all have those moments where we have a huge realization? So much of this movie is so raw and funny and it really just isolates every ridiculous thing you do when you find yourself falling in love. Go watch it!

The official trailer.

Cute music video.

I like... no, I love this coat

I discovered Soia & Kyo coats today through for me, for you blog and I am in love with this one:

Cali. On the "want it" list.