Dan's Papers - April 25, 2008

I invite you to peruse this supplement, which serves as your handy guide to the 4th annual Hamptons Home & Garden Show. This three-day event is the most distinctive, elegant and high-end home show on Long Island. It has taken nearly a year to assemble the extraordinary line-up of exhibitors you'll be meeting on the expo floor. While exhibitors are coming from all over the tri-state area - and the nation as well - they all have one thing in common: they're serious about selling their products and services on the East End. They truly value your presence and really want your business and that's comforting to know in these challenging economic times.

It's all here for you, whatever phase of home improvement you are considering. We have what you need in order to prepare for the 2008 Hamptons summer season, whether you are planning to simply tint your windows or makeover your entire house. So, if you need a shot of inspiration or want to be juiced up by a plethora of home improvement ideas, we have it for you at the Southampton Elks Fairgrounds on County Road 39. Get ready to explore 17 acres of home improvement solutions. And you had better wear comfortable shoes!

1. It's fun to roam through the aisles of more than 200 eye-catching displays inside our 28,000 square foot, fully enclosed and carpeted tent. When you are done, there's another 20,000 square-feet outside, as well. It'll feel like shopping on Miracle Mile - the Hamptons home improvement version.

2. Get a free interior design consultation in the Designers Lounge. Bring your swatches and floor plans. And enjoy yourself.

3. Shop and compare with at least a couple of vendors in each product category. To paraphrase a popular banking TV commercial, when vendors compete for your business, you win.

4. It's a great chance to meet a handful of local, high-quality landscapers. Discuss your project and explore their creative pallitte in one visit, as they all vie for your business.

5. Find unique and rare products, ranging from statues, marble fireplaces and mantals, artisan custom-made furniture, garden antiques to unusual fish tanks, Persian rugs or fossilized paintings, to name just a few.

6. It's the best place to discuss your current energy footprint and how to save with alternative energy sources. Get practical advice on how to reduce your current oil, gas and electric bills. Meet the area's green whiz kids and the leading green builders, architects and suppliers.

7. Buy a raffle ticket for your chance to win a $2,500 shopping spree at Waldbaum's or the Food Emporium. If you win, it should hold you for six months. Does it get better than that?

8. An extraordinary chance to snatch a high quality, solar, green cottage - below the $75,000 market value - on Sunday at a 2 p.m. auction. Bring your checkbook, as it all goes to the American Heart Association. Have a heart!

9. Check out the NYS Comptroller's Office booth to see if you have any unclaimed funds. In prior years, one in three people that stopped by the booth got good news - and a check.

10. Pop into the coveted VIP tent, designed by Ligne Roset for New York Spaces magazine, any afternoon for a sampling of hard-to-find, exotic, specialty liquors from mondiliquor.com, as well as a tasting of delicious specialty foods from Waldbaum's. This will gear you up for the hippest summer outdoor entertaining.

11. You've been cooped up all winter. Get out and celebrate the first major event of the 2008 season. Meet and mingle. Don't be shy. It's about time.

12. Sit in on our highly rated how-to seminars, held in the theater on the expo floor. Our mistress of ceremonies, interior designer, columnist and radio talk show host Natalie Weinstein keeps the pearls of wisdom growing.

13. Time to get jazzed. Even our home improvement staples are higher-end and more compelling - from hi-tech kitchens, cutting edge security and the hippest audio-video systems, to well-built sunrooms, modular home extensions, outdoor pavers and slick outdoor furniture - I'm not even going to mention spending your tax refund/stimulus check here.

14. If you like attending hip, trendy parties and are "in the trade" (contractor, architect, real estate professional, celebrity, even B-level,) then stop by the Friday night Builders Bash and Welcome Reception (6:30-8 p.m.) and the Kentucky Derby Party on Sat, 4-7 p.m., hosted by First American Title Insurance.

So, it's all here for you on May 2-4, with convenient local resources, boundless ideas, rare finds, great bargains, doses of inspiration and the requisite fund-raisers and photo-ops. And the entire event is being made into a one-hour TV special by award-winning Hamptons TV-WVVH, which will air all weekend long on channel 78. How cool is that?

On behalf of the exhibitors and sponsors, speakers and hardworking team at the Hamptons Expo Group, I welcome you.