Home decor business expands for holidays

Hundreds of snowmen. Dozens of nutcrackers. A couple of thousand glass balls, garlands and stars.

To Sheryl Amos, owner of A Whimsical Place in Woodbury, there's no such thing as too many Christmas decorations.

Amos, originally a floral designer by trade, now runs a side business decorating people's homes for the holidays.

For $35 an hour, Amos takes a combination of items from her shop, which stocks unique decorations and furniture pieces, and combines them with her clients' existing decorations, all in the style presented in the store. For larger projects, such as decorating an entire house, she works with another floral designer and an interior designer.

"We make it kind of whimsy and kind of different," Amos said.

One recent full-home project in Woodbury took three days of Amos' and Kandace Morris' time. Amos describes Morris as the "tree expert."

The homeowner, a decorating client for two years now, laid all of her decorations out on the dining room table for Amos and Morris to pick and choose from. Some items came from A Whimsical Place. Others, such as a 200-ornament collection, were her own.

"You leave a little of you with each piece you do," Morris said.

For now, Amos said the four-year-old store on Radio Drive, just north of Valley Creek Road, is still her primary business, but in the future she hopes the decorating and store will complement each other more equally.

This is the second year Amos and her staff have done home decorating, and she said the demand has nearly doubled since 2009. They've decorated six houses so far this year, and are booked for the rest of December.

For their recent house project, Morris and Amos estimated that they hung at least a thousand ornaments and decorations.

The side business grew out of requests from customers who came into the store, purchased decorations and said, "I love what you have, but I just don't know how to put it all together," Amos said.

Emma L. Carew • 651-735-9749