Decking the Halls Without Lifting a Finger : Holidays: Some are too busy to do it themselves; others want picture-perfect results. So they turn to a handful of Santa’s helpers who, for a fee, will set up the tree and all the trimmings.
Monica Roach didn’t reach for the ladder when it came time this year to deck the halls with boughs of holly.
She reached for the phone and called someone to come decorate her Christmas tree and hang the stockings with care over her brick fireplace.
“When you get less younger, Christmas can get overwhelming,” explained the grandmotherly Roach as she admired her 8-foot noble fir while the tune “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” played in the background on her family room stereo.
Her gaily outfitted Arcadia home is one of a dozen that Kathy Brundage decorated this year. Brundage is among a handful of Los Angeles-area experts who will pick a Christmas tree and ornaments for you and set it up in the middle of your living room--for a fee.
Even better, she will come back and take everything down after Dec. 25.
Brundage’s Christmas clients include wealthy homeowners who want their homes looking sharp for holiday entertaining, klutzy bachelors who lack the artistic touch and people who are just too busy--or too frail--to hang mistletoe themselves.
“Having Kathy come in means I can spend my time enjoying the season and not have the stress,” said Roach, whose house and yard are filled with Santas, reindeer, angels and holiday ornaments of every description.
“I think I wouldn’t do it if I had to do it all myself.”
There’s a story to virtually every ornament in Roach’s house and Brundage uses photographs of past Christmas holidays to replicate their placement--right down to the last string of popcorn wrapped around her fragrant green tree.
“There are 40 years of memories here,” Roach said. “This little candy cane was made by one of my daughters. Another daughter made this angel. That little bird over there was given by the doctor who brought another daughter into the world 40 years ago.”
Others who hire outsiders to decorate their homes are looking for a new look each December, however. Some rent different ornaments each year.
“We change it each Christmas. You don’t want it to get boring. You don’t want people to think it looks the same every year,” said El Monte resident Sandra Pecarovich, who has hired Brundage to decorate her tree six times.
Pecarovich and her husband, Pete, operate a construction remodeling business that requires them to entertain almost nightly during the holiday season. That means everything must look just right.
The same 300 ornaments are used annually on their 10-foot artificial tree. But Brundage adds new decorations, plus “a touch of garland here, a little ribbon there, so it never looks the same,” Pecarovich said.
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Every client has a different idea about what looks good and what doesn’t, according to Brundage.
“We did a single guy three years ago. Then he got married and he and his wife decorated their tree. But they fought over how the decorations should go. Now, they’re getting a divorce. This year we did his tree for him again,” she said.
A few florists and interior decorators in the Los Angeles area will do Christmas decorating if valued customers ask. But Brundage’s service evolved from requests by customers at her Arcadia gift and furnishings shop called All Seasons.
“People would come in and look at displays and say, ‘I’d like to have a tree just like that one,’ ” she said. Brundage charges $40 an hour for a two-person decorating crew; the typical home-decorating job takes about six hours.
Holiday decorating done by Chatsworth designer Farla Binder costs from $800 to $10,000, depending on the size of the job and whether the homeowner rents or buys lights and ornaments.
Binder’s residential work is an outgrowth of an 18-year-old party-decorating and office building decoration service she calls Creations by Farla.
Some of her clients are embarrassed to ask for help, Binder said. Others are in a panic: “We get a lot of last-minute calls from people who are having a party and want the place to look festive,” she said.
“Some people want the trees to go with the color scheme of their house. They’ll have a mauve decor, so we’ll go with cranberry and mauve ribbons, and maybe a touch of gold.
“A lot of times people in the film industry don’t want people to know that they didn’t do the decorating themselves.”
A few years ago a television executive wanted a Simpsons cartoon motif for his home, Binder said. So her staff--which more than triples in size to 40 workers each Christmas--painted Simpson characters on cardboard cutouts and mixed them in with the normal tinsel and bows.
Brundage said her most unusual decorating challenge was at a house owned by a big-game hunter.
“We had to garland all of the stuffed tigers and deer,” she said. “It was very strange having all of those glass eyes looking at you as you were hugging the animals.”
Back at Roach’s house, Brundage was putting on the final touches--making certain an electric train circled an 8-foot Christmas rug and checking to see that fresh batteries were in the Santa Claus candy dish that went “Ho-Ho-Ho” when a chocolate drop was lifted out.
“If you relinquish tradition, you relinquish part of your life,” explained Roach--smiling as she listened to the tingling of tiny Christmas chimes over her front door.
“If you can’t decorate yourself, ask someone to help you--a friend, or the Boy Scouts if you don’t have money to pay someone.
“Everybody who feels like Christmas is getting to be just too much should reach out to a person like Kathy.”
