About Me

The need-to-know version:

• My name is Chelsey.
• I am in my late twenties.
• I live in Atlanta, GA, but I’m from West Virginia.
• I’m married. His name is Zach. He has a PhD in biochemistry and is a medical writer.
• We are both massive proponents of science. Fear-mongering of “chemicals” from people who clearly don’t know what they’re talking about are not welcome here. I’ve found the more often people use buzzwords like, “chemical-free,” “natural,” and “toxins,” the less they actually understand science.
• I have two cats who I’m a little too obsessed with.
• I don’t have kids and I don’t have plans to change that. Being an aunt is quite enough.
• I’m a self-taught cook, knitter, photographer, furniture revamperer, blogger, etc.
• I’m kind of an ass and I’ve made peace with that.

A few fun, less need-to-know things:

• I’m what many people have described as, “Weird and introverted” (though “cynical” and “abrasive” come up a lot, as well). I have no desire to pretend otherwise.
• Even though I prefer baking, my self-control is pretty terrible so I try to limit that to special occasions.
• I try to spend as much time as possible in sweat pants.
• I am tattooed.
• I don’t curse a lot on this blog, but I definitely do in real life. If you’re easily offended, I may not be the droid you’re looking for.
• I clearly enjoy nerdy pop culture references.
• I’m not a morning person. Coffee gets me through it.
• My favorite hobby is sleeping.
• I love to read, even if I don’t do enough of it. Friend me on Goodreads! I don’t always remember to update, though. Also, if I can’t find anything new and interesting, I tend to just read the same thing over and over again until I do. (It’s always Harry Potter.)
• I love board games! Zach and I run a board game blog called Gray Cat Games.

The longer story:

I started running a blog called Budget Girl in October 2012. because I needed a reason to keep getting out of bed in the morning.

When the name “Budget Girl” felt like it was no longer relevant to what I wanted to do with my site, I changed the name to Tastefully Eclectic.

As a motivator, I thought I could perhaps teach myself All Of The Things and that a blog would help me stay focused.

Since then, I have managed to learn A Few Of The Things–knitting, embroidery, photography, cooking, furniture refinishing, etc. This blog is often categorized as a “food” blog because I do an awful lot of that (a girl’s gotta eat), but it’s more of a “self-sufficiency” blog. Or maybe it’s just one very long tutorial on how to stay occupied.

I try very hard to put some level of “why” into what I do, which requires research. I think experimentation is important. Trying something different and completely destroying it is a better learning experience than getting something perfect every time and not understanding why it turned out that way. When you mess up, the first thing you do before trying again is figuring out why it didn’t work.

I believe you can teach yourself anything if you really want to and I hate when people say, “That’s cool! I wish I knew how to do that….” Everything you see on this blog I taught myself with little-to-no help. The fastest way to learn something is to stop making excuses and just dive in!

My Work:

• I’m a contributing author at Growing Up Gabel!
• Some of my content has been syndicated on BlogHer!
• My guitar shelf was featured in the April 2015 issue of Reloved magazine and on Bob Vila’s site.
• I occasionally blog for local realtors. You can see samples of my work on my Work With Me page.