Gala Recap and Home, Sweet Home!

Miss Ginger is Home, Sweet Home after 6 tiring weeks and 3 really exhausting days! You know Miss G was REALLY nervous about having to walk her Senior VP (the one with the Miranda Priestly reputation) through the store. Well, she couldn't have been lovelier or more complimentary of both stores, so all those nerves were for nothing! Last night, all the hard work paid off with the Charity Gala benefitting NOCCA, the New Orleans Concervancy for the Arts. Miss G is not speaking out of turn to recap the Macy's presentation of a gigantic check to NOCCA for $250,000 dollars to help them establish a culinary arts programs to supplement the performance and visual art programs they already have. The Emeril Legasse Foundation also announced a donation, bringing at least half a million dollars in funding to NOCCA's program!

But Miss G is getting ahead of herself! It all started when Special Events teams from Atlanta, New York, and Houston all converged on the store to transform it from retail hotspot to Gala Central!

They tented, carpeted, and air conditioned a large section of the parking garage to create a FABULOUS ballroom, which Miss Ginger immediately dubbed the "GarageMahal". There was a special red carpet reception for the visiting celebrities and the "high dollah" guests in the tent, and then there was entertainment, food, drinks, and celebrity appearances all over the store. Tommy Hilfiger in mens, Martha Stewart in housewares, Russell Simmons in mens, Steve Madden in shoes- it goes on and on. After the "in-store" cocktails and buffets, all of the guests were ushered to the GarageMahal for Miss Ginger's favorite part of the night- a cooking demonstration by Martha Stewart and Emeril Legasse.

It started with Emeril showing Martha how to make a sazerac, with ensuing discussion about Peychoud Bitters vs. Angostura Bitters, blah blah blah.

Once Martha had her sazerac in hand, she never put it down! Girlfriend sucked on that sazerac for the rest of the demo! She showed Emeril how to make homemade shrimp boil, and I'm sure most in the audience noticed that between blabbing about bitters and sucking on sazeracs, they boiled the damn things for like 8 minutes, which surely meant they were like rubber by the time she took them out!

Miss G was so busy trying to get these great pics of Martha and Emeril for you that she almost didn't notice that Tyler Florence was standing like 5 feet away from her!

She managed to snap one shot before his handlers came to wrangle him into position. Dayum he is a cutie!

After the cooking demo, there was a FABULOUS fashion show created by the FABULOUS Lenny Matuszwski, who produces some of the greatest fashion moments anywhere. The white tent runway show was spectacular, as always! Miss G has worked with Lenny and his team on so many events she can't event remember the first!

Once the show was over Miss G and some of her teammates dashed out to dine, since they were starving! After an italian feast, it was off to beddy bye, and all we could think of was "WE GET TO GO HOME TOMORROW!!!"

This morning was marching bands, speeches, confetti cannons, ribbon cuttings, and mobs of shoppers as the 2 locations had their "official" public grand openings. Now the regional team has left their little birdies to fly on their own, and we have flown home as well!