A 90th Birthday Celebration by Lita R. Lane

Published January 30, 2013

Celebrating a 90^th Birthday

Lita R. Lane

We recently hosted a 90^th birthday celebration for a dear friend.  All birthday celebrations are meaningful and memorable but there are some challenges when hosting a successful party for a senior citizen.

Our first consideration was that we did not want to overwhelm him so we choose to keep the gathering intimate with only a dozen very dear friends.  Then we thought it best to host it at our home, versus a restaurant as the birthday boy is comfortable and familiar with our surroundings.  Additionally, we thought by advising him a few days before hand what we were planning he could get himself prepared and not be upset or uncomfortable with the arrangements.

Upon his arrival my husband served the guests champagne and toasted him with a relaxed and humorous speech touching on memorabilia from his past, of which there was much.  This made Earl and our guests relaxed and social.  As his name is Earl and the nickname his male friends refer to him is ‘the pearl’ I carried this theme throughout the decorating.  We had a large ice sculpture in the shape of an opened clam shell with ‘Earl’s 90^th’ etched on the large round pearl on the inside of the top shell.  We filled the frozen clam shell with jumbo prawns and fresh Dungeness crab meat and served a basil aioli for dipping.  Seafood is Earl’s passion so we also included mini open faced smoked salmon sandwiches complete with a tray of Carpaccio with crostini and chicken liver pate’ on toast points.  We continued to serve champagne until the cake was brought in – again one of Earl’s favorite flavors is lemon so it was indeed a lemon three tier cake with butter cream icing.  It had a beautiful sugar oyster shell placed on top with a large pearl inside the sugar shell with many smaller pearls falling out around the shell.  All in all fun was had by all and it was a most memorable gala for Earl …. how many people do we know that are lucky enough to celebrate 90!

®    Remember, while many 90 year olds can hold their own, it isn’t fair to make them do more than they are willing or able so we stipulated on our invitation the ending time [3 hours] so the event did not fatigue Earl.