If you’ve been reading Something Pretty for longer than a year, you probably know that I have a soft spot in my heart for entertaining. The first party I ever blogged was this one–a Christmas card writing party I hosted in my college apartment. Since that day, I’ve shared recaps of many fun celebrations here…Charlie’s baptism party, an Irish-themed birthday dinner for Dave, a girly porch party when I joined Beautycounter, Friendsgiving brunch, and of course, Charlie’s first and second birthday parties, to name a few. In between and since then, we’ve also hosted a cookout almost every summer, I threw a Coffee + Crumbs brunch last Mother’s Day, and we try to have friends over for drinks on our porch as often as we can.

Based on this track record, it might be easy to assume that hosting comes naturally to me, which I have to admit, is not completely the truth. Every single party listed above has come with at least a few moments of nerves…that people wouldn’t show up, that they wouldn’t have a good time, that the food would be a disappointment, and so on and so forth. Dave’s extroverted heart and encouragement–plus my love for putting together a pretty table–keeps me going, but literally not a single party I’ve ever hosted has gone off without a hitch.

Hitch from this party: I made a mistake with the scones recipe and they were practically inedible. Everyone was polite about it though–I have really nice friends!

I worked on editorial shoots for years, and to be honest, that’s my comfort zone. I love the weeks spent pinning ideas and writing set-up notes leading up to a party, and the hours ahead of it when I’m bringing my vision to life, as simple or involved as that vision might be. At a photo shoot, it ends there! There are no people to please, and some of the food isn’t even really edible (melt-resistant Crisco “ice cream” sandwiches come to mind ;)).

But, God isn’t calling me to opt for photo shoots over community (at least, not anymore when that’s no longer part of my job!). And that’s the lesson I’ve learned over the past few years, navigating real-life hurdles like tight budgets, limited space and furniture, and the mild insanity of throwing a dinner party for 20 with a one-month-old baby.

Aforementioned dinner party…mismatched chairs, sub-par flowers, and all. One of my favorite evenings of all time.

I shared abut embracing imperfect hosting over on the Blessed Is She blog this week. If this is an area where you could use a little extra encouragement, I hope you’ll give it a read here!