Welcome to my home.

Hi, My name is Chelsea Caulking.

I am a 32 year old coffee writer, recent author and blogger from the coffee break dot com.

Living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I make $50,000 a year.

I have 12 K and loans and 10-K and savings.

My apartment is 1300 square feet.

It's two bedrooms, 2.5.

I live here with my fiancee.

We paid $2000 a month in Rent 1 50 utilities, and we split everything.

My fiance, because they was born and he is a professional soccer player.

That's why we live here in Philly.

And he also has a lifestyle brand call Carvel, which is his last name, our future last name and its lifestyle brand that includes apparel photography events.

The thing I love most about our place is the light.

We have a lot of plans, and it gets pretty cold here and the winners a really long So the more light the better, just really brightens up the space that makes it feel really warm and welcoming, right?

This is my kitchen.

My fiance is a photographer, so a lot of The imagery that we have in the house is stuff that he shot or things that I paid it myself.

I think one of the biggest things about creating a space and wanting to design it is wanting to do it affordably.

So if you feel like you're talented enough, go for it.

Put your own stuff up these air from this really a great vintage store here in Philly.

Culture things.

Ah, lot of our stuff in the apartment actually is.

From there, we try to support local businesses whenever we can disclaim where the light bulbs or from Target.

So here we have our spices.

When I moved up here, Warren kept, um, a pie just naturally got put there, even though I can't reach, like, half stuff, we keep sugar in this whisky bottle.

I know it's kind of corny, but I thought the bottle was really pretty.

So I said, I don't want to get rid of it.

Let's keep it.

This one is our liquor cabinet.

Warren wanted to have, like, a proper far, and I was like, This is not bachelor pad.

We're gonna put them up in a cabinet, were getting married this year, so we cook a lot.

We are really trying to commit to making sure that we stay on top of our finances, so we cook as much as we can.

If we're out running errands, it's running late.

We'll run through a drive through and try to grab food.

Will try to have a date night at least twice a month, but other than that, we're in this kitchen making dinner.

Warren is a great cook, and the funny thing is, I kind of misunderstood him cooking so much as he loved to cook.

So I kind of let him take the lead on that.

He's like no child, like we just have to eat.

So I really tried to, like, take it up a notch and cook more and be more of a team player in that way.

It's just takes longer than 30 minutes.

I'm checking out.

I've always heard that weddings could be really expensive, but I feel like there's just no way to know how expensive they actually are.

Not planning.

When yourself.

Warren and I aren't flashy, there's nothing cute to us about being like Oh my gosh, we actually want $20,000 over budget like that's really not the goal for us because they have businesses and we work for ourselves.

It's really important to make sure that we're using the money.

How we want to.

It definitely has been a big change in terms of lifestyle, like a lot of the things that we would have wanted to do that we wouldn't have had to think so much about.

We have to be really conservative about now.

This'll is our living room.

We have a few different things that we've set up here in the space.

A few of them are especially sentimental for me here.

I have a fertility and I'll actually stole it from my mom's house.

She has them all over the place, and I've always liked them so much.

So I was like She won't notice if one is missing.

This thinking guy is just a reminder to stay locked and stay focused and on task.

I think it's something that I have to work really hard out because there's so many distractions of so many things pulling me in different directions.

He's my reminder.

Stick with it and then here.

This is like one of my favorite things in the house, where these little photo books that I made for Warren and eyes like one year anniversary.

So it was just kind of a way to commemorate our time together and highlight the special year that we had here.

We have the household intended, which I say that like it intended cheek kind of way because I do not play video games.

On the rare occasion that there's a group of friends over, I'll know that they're playing because the whole house is like erupting and the war of, like fighting and yelling here, we have warns.

I call it like his trophies, soccer ball collection.

Each ball has a significant reason for being here.

And I wish I could tell you exactly what those reasons where you know, sometimes you just walk in and say, Hey, if you want the balls out, we can put the pulse.

Not sure why this one is deflated, but I do think that it's really cool that he's found ways in kind of a subtle way to add, you know, part of a really big part of his life, entire design.

And then here we have a police planet which was like one of my coveted plants, like I wanted one for so long.

And then Trader Joe's started selling them for, like, $8.

You guys noticed there are a 1,000,000 different pots in here.

We definitely tried to find ways to mix it up, something that I started to run into as I looked around and I felt like all I saw was terra cotta does.

So I went from painting the pots myself to finding cool ones.

Now the one of the corner of the yellow one is actually something that we've had for a long time, and yellow is like kind of a subtle theme throughout our house.

So you find different ways just to kind of break up winner.

When it's like gray and dark in here, it's a little too much for me.

So yellow is like a bright, sunny, happy color that's really helped a lot.

This coffee table is something that Warren has had forever.

I don't know how many dinners sitting here, this coffee table watching TV, and I don't judges.

A typical Friday night for us is normally one of two Things were either making dinner at home.

We most likely will have some show on or even we're house hunting right now, so it's not fun.

But a lot of our nights have turned into meetings or work sessions, just trying to see if we can find I have sent me.

Like if the numbers make sense, If we had a living room, this little nook right here would probably be it.

I've lived here in this apartment of Philly for the last year and three months for that.

I was living in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn.

My apartment in bad story was like a room at the front, a room at the back.

And then there's this long, narrow space in the middle.

And it was like, What are we gonna do with this face?

How we're gonna make it interesting?

Warren came across this piece of wood and he got it, and he's like Charleston thing about making it a shelf.

And I was like, Really, he and his grandpa actually like, came over to my apartment.

They had a heck of a time trying to get into that brick wall.

But it's just such a great memory for me, So I would love to always have this in our spaces.

Wherever we end up the chair is another purchase from jinxed.

This pillow is from Target.

My favorite designed moments of the ones that happened by accident.

We were setting up the space, and I think it was the first time we had to water plants.

And I remember Warren like he put just like a random nail and I step back and I was like Big and I was really pumped.

I was like, Let's do it straight through So we ended up having this one.

We put up that with that when this has been a great way to kind of create like a water down urban jungle in our house.

The hanging planters that we have here are Macron May and I made those myself.

I think Ivy's are just really easy to take care of.

Another good thing about this is it's not always the easiest to get to them to water them.

I obviously have to use a ladder, so I love that they are pretty hardy, and they will do okay if you skip them every now and then for watering.

We get asked a lot how long it takes to water our plants might be surprising when it only takes about an hour to hour in half, and it kind of depends on the time of year.

So in the summer, watering plants all the time and in the winter time it's once a week.

This is our office space.

I spend most of my time in the apartment at my desk.

I work from home, and when Warren's not trading, he's working from home to intentionally wanted to create a space where I could work that felt like a proper workspace.

This wall was great when we moved in, and we decided to keep it.

It's a great way to kind of signify that this is a different space from the rest of the house, this space he put together on his own and my space I put together on my own as well.

It's cool because we've been able to keep our personalities, but in a way that feels concurrent.

The picture at the bottom was a picture that my mom had in our kitchen.

Born and I are both entrepreneurs, and I always pretend that, like they have their little business going in my mind, lets me and Warren like we both have our own thing.

But we're working together and we're making it happen.

This is our guest bedroom.

We obviously wanted to have a space for a guest when they come visit us.

And we also do Airbnb here.

We have a full length mirror whenever I stay at someone's house and there isn't a full length mirror.

I'm like, How am I gonna look at my off it?

It drives me crazy.

So you tried to make a point.

Tohave mirrors throughout the house of people can always get a good look of what they have on to feel good going out the door.

The night stand that we have here is one of my favorite pieces.

It was when I finally got a job and got my own place that was so excited to decorate because I just went on a budget for, like so long my 30th birthday.

I wanted Teoh have a seventies glam birthday party and my event planner who also is our wedding planner.

She went all out and I just was so excited because she actually took these fans that she got from my kid.

She spray painted them gold, and it's just one of my favorite things.

It's a great alternative for a headboard, and it saves you a lot of money.

When you have a bed, that's just the actual amount at the bottom.

People always ask if it's weird having Airbnb guests stay with us because they're physically in the house while we're here.

So when you know that you're gonna have strangers in your home who a lot of times on that being friends, by the time that they leave, you just do things differently.

You don't leave your valuables out.

You don't have an obvious places on average is around $200 a weekend for guest.

If we have guests just two weekends out of the month, we've taken care of all the groceries for the month.

Welcome to a room here.

We have our bed.

We originally had a black bed, and then we wanted to bring in something that was a little softer in terms of colors.

And we want for some natural wood bed for my Kia, our pillows or from Target.

We have these two signs that I may inhale exhales like my brains.

I was going like a 1,000,000 MPH, even if I'm like, kind of two.

So I think it's really important for me just to prioritize that.

I remind myself that, like sometimes it's OK, just a step away and take a breath.

Here we have our photo gallery wall, and it was really important to us to create a space that felt personal but still kind of brought in elements of photography and art.

Here we have our backup dust space.

Warren really wanted ago to just in case we had, like, guests over, or we needed to make an important call before we had, like, a clothing rack here.

But I really loved here, and I was like, I wanted to still be there, and he's like Charles, you need another space.

So I gave it my camera, one of Warren's cameras and this is actually my book, so I spent a year writing it.

It's a book of affirmations.

It's called Speak those things 52 affirmations to build a life you love.

If I had known that it could be that easy to publish a book like I would have done in a long time ago, I think I was just intimidated a little bit by the process.

This is kind of our knickknack table, the Etch A sketch.

I'm just a sucker for anything small.

When I saw the set discussion, I was like Oh my gosh didn't even make them that.

And it was just like something I couldn't pass on.

So I thought that was so cute.

And then we have giant playing cards, which, ironically, we've never used.

It's just they had cactus on it, and I thought that that was so cute, so I grabbed it.

This is one of my favorite vintage pieces.

It's from a Houston based vintage shop called Top Vintage.

They have an amazing selection, and they donated a lot of stuff on more than one occasion to my non profit meals closet.

Shout out to them for not only being good people but having great prices.

I've had a lot of different seasons financially, so there been times I've had a lot of money in the bank.

There's been times where I felt like I had no money in the bank.

There have been times where I felt really secure and really study.

Right now, I call it rebuilding.

I'm not a financial adviser.

But if there is one recommendation that would make for somebody who has credit card debt, it's to consider getting alone.

About six months ago, I reached out to a credit union and I said, I have these credit cards like I want to get them all on one payment and I wanna have one interest rate, one fee, Like I just like I need a fresh start with those.