Holiday trimmings on a trim budget

Interior designer Joni Vilhauer decorated her home with a “less is more” theme for the Divine Parade of Homes. She’s seated here with her granddaughter Aubrey, 18-months and Bichon frisé puppy, Mr. Higgins. (Photos by Zachary Kaufman/The Columbian)

Divine Holiday Home Tour visitors can poke around to soak up the details. Roma Bergstrom and Richard Paz set out a miniature village. At far left, Joni Vilhauer decorated a smaller children’s tree in her movie room, which features ornaments from Pottery Barn.

Divine Holiday Home Tour visitors can poke around to soak up the details. Roma Bergstrom and Richard Paz set out 2-foot-tall carolers, left, at the entrance to their home.

Joni Vilhauer decorated a smaller children’s tree in her movie room, which features ornaments from Pottery Barn.

At a time when everyone, it seems, is trimming their personal budgets, today’s Divine Holiday Home Tour offers an escape for the senses that benefits a good cause.

The 18th annual tour, which serves as a Walk & Knock food drive fundraiser, will showcase lavish homes that overlook Vancouver Lake. Five neighbors in this three-year-old Felida subdivision have been tapped to excite holiday spirit with their meticulously ornamented trees and intricate lighting systems. One of them, Roma Bergstrom, estimates that she’s spent $8,000 decorating her home, though it pains her to dwell on that fact.

“This time it’s overkill,” Bergstrom said. “But I didn’t want someone to pay money to look and just see my beautiful living room.”

The 67-year-old owner of Bergstrom Nutrition of Vancouver moved into her new home two years ago and was married in August. In the spirit of change, she bought new decorations.

“I’m doing the lime green, bright red artificial tree, the grandma-type stuff,” Bergstrom said. “You’ll see a lot of artificial poinsettias and a lot of glitter that seems to come off onto everything,” she said, adding that she was helped by a woman who also facilitated her wedding.

Not all of the decorations in Bergstrom’s home are new. She hasn’t recycled her prize Department 56 village that took 30 years to collect. She said it takes her five days every year to set up the Dickens-era village, with its miniature figurines and fake snow. Visitors at Bergstrom’s home should look out for the tiniest details — the nymph in the master bedroom bathtub, for example, and the Santa in the bedroom upstairs.

Across the street, neighbor Joni Vilhauer, who works as an interior decorator, embraced a more muted style than she has in the past. She used to hire two “elves” to help her set up for the holidays.

“I used to do Christmas in a huge way,” Vilhauer said. “Once my kids grew up, it was too much. I really scaled back probably 80 percent.”

In the family’s movie room is a tree dedicated to her 18-month-old granddaughter, Aubrey. It features animal ornaments from Pottery Barn.

Garlands and white lights snake down the two-story catwalk stairwell, and gold and silver accentuate the main tree, which is decorated with ornaments from Bedford Brown and Floral Mart in Portland’s Pearl District.

“The statement is, less is more,” Vilhauer said. “My house is very transitional, contemporary with traditional. That’s how I chose to do Christmas — a real simple, cleaner feeling that’s not so overwhelming.”

Still, she reckons that an appropriately dressed tree costs about $2,500.

“If you want your tree to look like this, it’s $2,500,” Vilhauer said. “Think about it. You’ve got an average 6-foot tree, you’ve got to have about 60 ornaments that are $5 apiece, and that’s a conservative estimate. And your tree is $400 or $500 for a good one, if you don’t buy a live one.”

But Vilhauer said she doesn’t want people to think, “Oh my gosh, I could never do this.”

“Wait until after Christmas for everything you admired at Pottery Barn to go half price,” she says. Or buy decorations at Goodwill, Target, West Elm or off Craigslist.org, she suggests.

The Divine Holiday Home Tour can serve as inspiration, but it’s not necessary to have an $8,000 budget to add holiday cheer to a home. Kate Sacamoto, owner of the consulting company Enhance by Design of Vancouver — one of the designers who helped decorate homes on this year’s tour — recommends bringing nature indoors.

“Probably the best greenery from outside is the magnolia leaf or bows from an evergreen tree,” she said. “The winter green has a really green, shiny small leaf with a cluster of red berries. Tuck that into cedar bows or Doug fir bows.”

The bows could be collected into a bouquet or placed around a plate, she says, which could then hold votive candles and red and green pears.

Sacamoto said that plain white lights are also a nice accent in a room or around a fireplace. Target sells small white lights for $9.99 or $14.99. If that’s too costly, wrap ribbon through iron art or mirror frames.

Linda Glover, manager of Divine Consign in downtown Vancouver, which has hosted the Divine Holiday Home Tour for three years, says those wanting to decorate their home for the holidays should first consider colors and budget.

“Do you want to stay with traditional red and green? Or pick up the colors in the home?” Glover said. Young people tend to seek out items that are “whimsical and urban,” she says.

“They want a unique, fresher style — long, skinny, stretched-out Santas, those kind of characters,” Glover said.

Glover says one way to find ideas is by leafing through the holiday issues of magazines such as Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Real Simple and Martha Stewart.

Isolde Raftery: 360-735-4546 or isolde.raftery@columbian.com.


Starting point for Divine Holiday Home tour


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