O.G.’s 90th Birthday Party

January 9th, 2011 by justJENN

This week O.G. turned 90 years old! 90 is a big milestone, which must be celebrated with a party. This was a SURPRISE party, which was really hard to pull off since I spend every minute with/talking to O.G. Luckily none of her friends spilled the beans either and it went off without a hitch! Whew!

For the color scheme I went for a modern silver-y gray with hints of golden yellow. I made coordinating invites, rsvps and menus. I pulled those same colors into the decor and the favors as well.

I looked everywhere for the right location, from Pasadena to Hollywood. I eventually settled on Gonpachi in the New Miyako Hybrid Hotel in Torrance. The hotel is Leed Certified, which is hard to come by. Not only is it a ‘green building’, but it’s gorgeous. The restaurant offered an elegant yet affordable menu and space.

The staff at the Gonpachi were helpful, accomodating, and so friendly. It made for a great experience. I worked with them to create a SIMPLE menu with just three options. I’ve found that when throwing large parties it’s much easier to manage with just a few choices.

We set up an offering of three of their popular ‘Gozen’ lunches, basically glorified bento boxes. Homemade Soba, Salmon, and Beef. The side dishes for these were traditional zensai – basically pickled things. As I’ve said before, my family are bad asians so we didn’t know what the heck these side dishes were. Lucky all the old ladies at the party were familiar with zensai. Our family mostly poked at them and ignored them. We’re only Japanese one day a year, after all.

The food was fabulous and for dessert I made cupcakes. I found these cute Wilton flower liners, and added little edible lavendar pearls in the center. O.G. loves flowers so I thought they’d look great all lined up, like a little garden of cupcakes.

For the favors I took a picture of O.G. when she was in her 20s, and had it scanned onto edible sheets for cookies. They came out beautifully, more perfect than I could have hoped for. What I love about throwing parties is the little personal touches that you can do to make people feel special.

Speaking of custom – yes, in fact I did have a CUSTOM MADE PINATA of O.G. made up. And yes…that thing is 4 feet tall. (More on the pinata, here.)

In the end O.G. was surprised, happy, and full of good food and love from her friends and family. More importantly someone gifted her a box of mochi. Hands off the pink ones, those are mine.