Home decorators get out the glow for holiday jobs. (Up Front).

Debi Staron has found a way to keep the homemade, less-than-refined ornaments of her clients' children out of the $3,500 trees she decorates.

When kids ask to have their ornaments included, she sets up a second tree upstairs and out of sight. "We never want to take the emotion out of Christmas, but if they're paying for your service, you've got to have standards," she said.

Staron is a partner at Dr. Christmas, one of a handful of holiday decorating specialists in L.A., where despite the soft economy, people are paying thousands of dollars for others to design their interiors and front yards.

The business, dominated locally by a couple of small operations doing less than a half million dollars in annual sales, long has been popular in other parts of the country, where pool maintenance firms and the like found a way to make their winters profitable by installing Christmas decorations.

In Los Angeles, entrepreneurs with similar ideas gained a foothold through the 1990s, as homeowners flush with cash spent freely celebrating the holidays.

"We've done $30,000 jobs," said Staron, who describes cut crystal ornaments costing $45 each and velvet ribbon at $500 a roll. Then there's the tree skirt. "You can go to Kmart, but if you can afford mink or chenille under a tree, goodie for you," she said.

Though business is still active, it's fallen off since the go-go '90s, said Bob Pranga, who launched Dr. Christmas in 1984, "My business is frills, it's not something that anybody has to have," he said. "It's a lot slower than it was."

Dr. Christmas is expected to generate $360,000 in revenue this year--about half of what it was doing in the 1990s. To help bolster revenues, Pranga opened a Christmas prop house renting holiday tshockes. In its first four months, the rental operation had revenues of $45,000, he said, enough to break even.

10 foot wreaths

There are still those willing to pay thousands of dollars for businesses like Dr. Christmas to design their interiors and front yards.

At Christmas Decor, owner Beth Anderson said business has been as busy as ever. "We have to turn work away," she said.

For anywhere from $500 to $10,000, a crew of Christmas Decor workers draw up a design for covering a property with lights and "yard art," like 10-foot-tall wreaths and wire-frame Santa Clauses.

Anderson would not reveal revenues for the business, a franchise of a Texas-based firm. "We do this for people who don't want to get dirty or don't have the skills of a hobbyist," Anderson said.

The business claims about 200 clients in Los Angeles this holiday season, said manager Mary Barron. New customers typically spend about $1,500, but that diminishes over time as customers reuse their decorations.

Clients range from older people spending a few hundred dollars for a job they have grown too frail to handle to movie stars who will spend whatever it takes to stop traffic.

Help for the lazy

Howard Maize, a chiropractor with offices in Woodland Hills, hired Staron, a patient, to set up two Christmas trees and string garlands around his waiting room.

Staron spent two days adding touches that reflected the chiropractor's hobbies and tastes--Hawaiian shirt and Marilyn Monroe ornaments, hand-blown glass balls, a tiny replica of a vintage Mustang car, and a rubber ducky on a cart.

"The level of detail was beyond belief," said Maize, who usually doesn't put up any ornaments in his home or office. "It's out of laziness. If I put them up, I've got to take them down."

Maize never discussed price with Staron. "I have a feeling I'm going to be surprised," he said.

Pranga launched Dr. Christmas in New York 18 years ago when, waiting for his big acting break, he took a job decorating Christmas trees at Macy's Herald Square store. Shoppers hired him to do their homes, and one dubbed the service "Dr. Christmas" because he made house calls.

Staron, also an actor, joined Pranga when he moved the business to West Hollywood in 1991. Over the years, she said, the firm has had Ten Garr, Diane Keaton, Andy Garcia and Ronald and Nancy Reagan as clients. Dr. Christmas has about 120 customers, with the average house call running $3,000, Staron said.

Special requests can run from predictable to outrageous. "We've done a lot of Titanic trees," Staron said. Rock star Eddie Van Halen wanted a full-size motorcycle in his tree, she said. "It wouldn't be a problem, but his wife shot him down."

Sideline to mainline

Christmas Decor got its start six years ago when Anderson was trying to figure out a way to make her Burbank pool service business more profitable in the winter. Imitating pool businesses on the East Coast, she began selling Christmas ornaments from the store.

Then customers started calling the store asking for help installing the decorations. "It happened so often, we closed the store and went to lighting," Anderson said.

During the off season, Christmas Decor managers Barron and Ronit Berkovitz install decorative lighting at businesses and homes around Los Angeles. But when October hits, the firm hires an additional 30 employees who work through January.

"A lot of people just don't want to deal with it," she said. "Some of these homes are so huge, and people don't even have a stepladder in the garage. A lot of time, I have to rent a scissors lift to do what I need to do."

But Flora Greco, who has smothered her home on Los Feliz Boulevard with decorations for the last 28 years, is sticking with the handson approach.

On her son's roof, green, blue and white lights depict the Dolomite Mountains of northern Italy, where Greco was born. The lit figures of the three wise men stood on the lawn, while glowing Christmas trees and statuettes of Santa Claus and reindeer twinkled on the other roof. The windows, eaves, bushes and fence were covered in lights.

"I don't feel I should pay people to do this. It's not the same. I have my feelings up there," she said, pointing to the twinkling handiwork that covered her house and her son's house next door.