Stephanie Roskovski always loved everything about Christmas, until a few years ago.

That's when the thought of decorating her four-bedroom house in suburban Center began bringing out a bah-humbug side she never knew she had.

	Bill Wade, Post-Gazette Although he normally works when the homeowners are away, Jeff Double hangs evergreen trim as Stephanie Roskovski and her daughter, Sophie, 6, do a finishing touch on the hall tree. Mr. Double and his wife, Mary Jane, run a business in which they decorate interiors of houses for Christmas. Click photo for larger image.

"I'd start thinking about it in early November. It got to the point that, instead of looking forward to the holidays, I'd be dreading all the work associated with decorating," Mrs. Roskovski said.

It wasn't just the taxing labor of dragging out the boxes of decorations and wrestling with the lights and garland that seemed so onerous to Mrs. Roskovski, 36, and her husband, Scott, 38. And it wasn't just that the work came after a 40-hour week at their full-time jobs, hers in administration at Butler Memorial Hospital and his as a Butler County detective.

What bothered Mrs. Roskovski most was that the extra work would rob her and her husband of precious time with their children, Jacob, 9, and Sophie, 6.

Then came Jeff Double, 43, of Chicora, floral-designer-cum-personal-Christmas-decorator.

Mrs. Roskovski said she had known Mr. Double for his work with fresh and silk flowers at her favorite flower shop, Bortmas, The Butler Florist.

"One day, I just asked him if he would consider helping me out at home, and he said he would. Since then, he has transformed the holidays for our family," Mrs. Roskovski said.

That was about four years ago and it marked the start of an annual event for the Roskovskis and the beginning of a burgeoning enterprise for Mr. Double and his wife, Mary Jane.

Getting creative

Mr. Double, on a break from weaving fresh flowers into a charming arrangement, said he was not an interior designer or an artist. He says he is just a person who enjoys lovely things, is a "bit creative" and is "pretty good" with his hands.

His handiwork tells another story.

His home in Chicora seems, from the narrow street outside, to be a simple, though attractive, little brick cottage. Inside, it is an enchanting nest filled with beautiful collectibles, which run the gamut from his handmade swags and wooden figurines to finds culled from secondhand stores.

Each of the seven rooms in the house, the only exception being the bathroom, boasts at least one themed Christmas tree and is trimmed with an array of decorations such as fresh roses, sprays of pine and intricate Nativity scenes.

"We just love this time of year and we want to surround ourselves with things that create an atmosphere of Christmas," Mr. Double said of his family, which includes his wife, an administrative assistant for Butler County Commissioner Scott Lowe, and their only daughter, Manda, 20, a sophomore majoring in forensics at Mercyhurst College.

Though the couple works as a team in the personal holiday decorating business, Mrs. Double, 45, is quick to credit her husband of 22 years as their creative force. "He's the energy behind it all. I just do what I'm told," she said.

Matter of necessity

It all started with Mr. Double's artistic bent and a family-instilled waste-not, want-not philosophy.

"To be honest, all this started out of necessity," Mr. Double said.

The couple's jobs at the time, hers as a nursing home aide and his as a worker at JC Penney's at Clearview Mall, weren't bringing in enough money to provide as they wanted for their daughter. "We wanted to make some more money," Mrs. Double said.

At about the same time, Christmas was approaching and the couple wanted to give a gift to a family member but "we couldn't afford to buy her something," Mr. Double said. The sister-in-law had recently acquired a child's rocking chair, so Mr. Double decided to make a figurine that could sit in it.

Using scrap pine wood and old linens -- "My parents grew up in the Depression. They taught me to make use of what I had." -- he designed the figure of a floppy-eared rabbit and dressed it in lace and cotton fashioned after the styles of days gone by. Before he wrapped it, he brought it to work to show it off.

"I had four orders in one day and, over the next four to six years, I made between 400 and 600 of those rabbits," Mr. Double said.

Over time, he began making other crafts.

The next step came when the Doubles decided to display those crafts, everything from figurines to wreaths and swags, each weekend for the six weeks before Christmas at their home.

"We sent out invitations to everyone we knew then. Word started getting around, and we started getting total strangers coming over," Mrs. Double said.

She said she didn't mind the extra work at home because "we really are Christmassy people," she said. It wasn't always that way for her, though. In 1967, when she was 6, her father was killed four days before Christmas in Vietnam. She said the shadow of his death was a backdrop for many of her Christmases until she and her husband made the holiday so much a part of their year. "Now, I look at Christmas with pure happiness," she said.

Their annual open-house enterprise ended a few years ago as their latest entrepreneurial effort took hold.

He was working as a floral designer where he had an opportunity to show his creative flair to customers when he helped decorate the downtown Butler shop at Christmas. "Basically, people started asking me for advice for decorating and they wanted me to make wreaths or swags. It grew from there," he said.

He now decorates three commercial businesses and 11 homes for Christmas throughout Butler County. The sizes of the jobs have ranged from $45 for putting up and trimming a tree for a frail senior citizen to $10,000 worth of decorations bought for a mansion. They decorate for birthdays, weddings and parties, too.

Done in a day

Step one in decorating a house for Christmas involves a getting-to-know-you meeting, when the Doubles ask their clients to pull out their Christmas decorations and divide them into two piles: stuff that has to be used and stuff they're not sure of.

"I get a feeling of what we have to work with, and then I'll advise on what I think they could use, all based on what the person is willing to spend at one time. We generally add to the decorations a little at a time," he said, noting that he has decorated homes without buying anything new.

	Bill Wade, Post-Gazette Jeff and Mary Jane Double, who own a business in which they decorate interiors of houses for Christmas, work in the family room of Scott and Stephanie Roskovski, of Butler Township. Click photo for larger image.

Most jobs can be handled by Mr. Double or by he and his wife, but he will bring in help if the job is big.

"The idea is to get the work done within a matter of hours. People don't want it dragging out over days," he said.

For Mrs. Roskovski, one of the main pleasures of hiring out her decorating duties at Christmas is seeing the impact on her family returning after a few hours to find their house fully trimmed. "The transformation is absolutely magical. It's a thrill," she said.

The prices charged by the Doubles vary, depending on the number of people used for a job, the time spent and the amount of decorations purchased or collected. Mr. Double often gathers his Christmas treasures from the outdoors in the form of birds' nests, tree branches, grape vines, cones and berries.

Mrs. Roskovski said her bill had never exceeded $1,000 and had been as low as $250, including time and materials.

"I try to keep things reasonable. We're not just interested in decorating for the very, very wealthy," Mr. Double said.

No fuss, no mess

Most of the Doubles' clients are working families who don't have time to decorate and retired couples who lack the ambition to decorate the way they really want to.

"Our clients are people who don't want to give up a whole weekend or who don't want to come home night after night to do a little bit here and a little bit there. They want beauty and they want it in a controlled time frame and with no mess to clean up afterward," Mr. Double said.

He'll even come back when the holidays are over and pack things up if the client so desires.

For Mrs. Roskovski, the holiday assistance has transformed the season to one that's virtually carefree.

"The truth of it is that dragging everything out and working all weekend [to decorate] after a whole week at work just wasn't fun. Christmas is my favorite time of the year. I wanted trees and decorations throughout my whole house. Now I can have what I want and not have to worry about it," she said.

The styles of trees at her home include a Secret Garden tree, one with framed photos of family members and one with ornaments made by her children.

"It's worth every cent we spend," she said.