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Tree ornaments hang in display at designer Lori Magel's home decor shop in Eagle Point.Photo: Denise Baratta

November 01, 2009

Sarah Lemon

Whether it's an upside-down Christmas tree or animal-print ornaments, Lori Magel's holiday decor is never the norm.

Her Eagle Point store, Essentials Home Decor, is the local source for the latest yuletide trends that Magel brings from large trade shows and speciality suppliers back to the Rogue Valley. Sophisticated color palettes like platinum and champagne or unexpected adornments, such as feathers, deck her customers' halls.

"You're not going to find an angel on my tree topper; you're not going to find a bow," Magel says. "One year, I did purples and golds and greens, and it was an Egyptian feel," she says, adding that ornaments were bejeweled camels and elephants.

Even if they're not buying holiday haute couture, the public can see Magel's stamp on the season during the annual Soroptimist Holiday Home Tour, planned for Dec. 6. Magel, a 40-year-old building contractor, has helped homeowners featured on the tour decorate for the past five years, ever since she signed up, "went hog wild" and sold her Sams Valley home the following year.

"I went over the top," Magel says. "I had a tree in every room.

"We made all our own wreaths, all our own garlands."

Garlands alone filled dozens of boxes once the holidays were over, and Magel filled a 20-by-30-foot storage unit with nothing but Christmas decorations. That's when a friend and Soroptimist member suggested Magel put her vast collection at the club's disposal.

"I have all this stuff, so I might as well help out," she says. "Christmas just kind of became the fun thing."

Last year, Magel extended her holiday fun and opened Essentials, in a shopping center off Highway 62, with neighbor Joan Bucklin. Surpassing sales projected for an ailing economy, the store also surpasses expectations of many Eagle Point residents who retired to the area from California and are used to a wider selection than the Rogue Valley typically offers, Magel says. People come to shop from Ashland, only to ask why the store was founded in Eagle Point, she adds.

"There's nothing like it around here," Magel says. "You don't go to Macy's and find a leopard-print Christmas ball."

Her pet project this year is the East Medford home of Cecily and Jens Verloop. Just a few months old, the 3,200-square-foot, Mediterranean-style, stucco abode is adorned with columns, tile and dark woodwork.

Although Cecily Verloop says she wants a mostly traditional decor that includes a collection of nutcrackers from her husband's native Germany, she is planning several themed trees: a black-and-gold tannenbaum and maybe one hung with Legos or characters from "Star Wars" to please her 7- and 5-year-old sons. The 32-year-old teacher volunteered her home for the tour after visiting Soroptimists' holiday homes for the past five years.

"We go every year," Verloop says. "It's something we always look forward to.

"It's such a worthy cause."

The tour's homeowners volunteer their time and essentially donate their decorating costs to support local programs for women and children, including Community Health Center, breast cancer awareness and prosthetics, Dunn House, a shelter for victims of domestic abuse, and the Start Making a Reader Today (SMART) literacy program. The year's largest fundraiser for Soroptimist International of Medford, the annual tour hosts some 500 to 600 people and raises between $10,000 and $12,000, says organizer and Soroptimist member Claudette Moore.

"It's huge," she says.

And the event spreads "holiday spirit to the max," Moore says. A half-dozen homes typically compose the self-guided itinerary, which may take guests from Medford to Jacksonville, Central Point or Eagle Point. Hot cider and cookies baked by Soroptimist members await at each stop, and recipes usually are included in the program, Moore says. Addresses for featured homes are disclosed with each $15 ticket.

"It's a little high-society thing," Magel says. "You make a day of it.

"It's just a way to see the valley and what everybody else is doing."

The lavish displays come together over four or five weekends, with homes ready for their close-ups by Thanksgiving, Magel says. Soroptimists have been criticized in past years for the absence of live Christmas trees on their tour, Magel says, but the real thing simply isn't available in late October and early November. Participating homeowners may spend a couple thousand dollars on the entire decor, she says.

"It depends on how crazy you want to be," she says. "You can go a little over the top or anything in between."

One of last year's participants, Magel recalls, went to a Dollar Tree store and spent a total of $30 on her tree ornaments, which received a flurry of compliments. Eschewing "anything formal," Linda Dahl also plans a low-key decor for her East Medford abode's debut on the Holiday Home Tour.

"It's just homey," says Dahl. "I want people to come in and feel comfortable."

With pine flooring and doors, the 2,600-square-foot "simple house" lends itself to simple decor, says Dahl, adding that she favors "golds and more natural colors" paired with pine cones and stuffed pheasants that complement her English cottage-cum-Cape Cod home.

"I have a deer head, and I'll put a big wreath around it."

Dahl is declining Magel's assistance, based on the 22 years she worked at Molly Reed, the downtown Medford home decor store. Because she's distributed much of her decorations, including a collection of about 50 collectible Santa Claus figurines, among five children and 17 grandchildren, Dahl will conjure a more "woodsy" setting for the holidays.

"I'm kind of one of these people (for whom) more is less," she says. "I think I can probably pull it off."

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