Once I was hosting an important dinner party at our house - everything was perfect, candles were lit, the house smelled amazing with great food and drinks ready. We lit a fire and the flue wasn't able to open, unbeknownst to us. We smoked out the entire house and the fire department had to come - it was a mess.
If I host something, even if it's just dinner at my house, I like the event to move. So that means cocktails in the family room, and then moving outside and having appetizers on the patio, and then moving to dinner at the dining table. It's just the idea of the event being curated to every little detail.
When I first became really interested in building furniture, I went to Toys-R-Us, and spent $200 on Transformers toys. By taking the toys apart and studying how they moved, I was able to figure out how to hide a table leaf, what type of contraption I'd need to slide it under the table. I'm a really visual learner.
I've had parties where I found photos of whoever is coming, put them in a cute little woven frame and used that as their place card at dinner. Then they get to take it home afterwards. It's the little things that make people feel special and like they were a part of the thought process that went into assembling a dinner.
At about age 25 I had a bit of a quarter-life crisis and expected to be at a certain place by then, which was unrealistic to some extent. I used to have a lot of passion for interior design but I somehow lost it along the way, and so fashion was what I thought to be a new beginning, but in the end it just solidified the love I have for design.