Your Mastercard melted somewhere

around the 18th Christmas-gift purchase, and your wallet's thinner

than Calista Flockhart. Looks like that midwinter trip to the Caribbean

is out.

So why not bring the tropics

up to you?

When the snow is swirling and

the angry wind whips, having a little patch of paradise in your own home

is like insurance against the wintertime blues. There's nothing like

sipping rum from a coconut shell under a palm tree's canopy to boost

you out of your funk, even if it does require a healthy suspension of

disbelief.

That sense of escapism is what

led Lynne and Dave Stauffer Sr. to turn the lower level of their Montville

Township, Ohio, home into a tropical hideaway.

"Makes you smile,"

Dave Stauffer said. "I think that's the thing. Makes you smile

when you go down there."

The Stauffers created the cheerful

gathering space for family and friends in their walkout basement, complete

with sunny yellow walls, a fake palm tree, a palm-leaf paddle fan and

plenty of pictures of tropical scenes. There's even a beaded curtain

that, when closed, creates a palm-framed ocean scene to hide the doors

to the furnace room.

The whole room was designed

around the wicker bar, which looks like the gondola of a hot-air balloon.

The Stauffers, who own Stauffer's Furniture Village in Sharon Center,

Ohio, spotted the bar during a buying trip to the International Home Furnishings

Market in High Point, N.C., and called from the dealer's booth to

cancel the run-of-the-mill bar they'd already ordered.

Dave Stauffer said he and his

wife chose the tropical theme for one simple reason: "because in

February you're so friggin' sick of gray skies."

Ain't that the truth.

Michael Beringer has his own

antidote to winter weariness: artificial palms trees and tiki huts created

The palm trees are made from

real palm trunks, either secured in a pot or cemented in place, and topped

with silk palm leaves. They range in size from 24 inches to 15 feet or

more, and cost from $55 to upwards of $1,200. He also rents the trees,

for times when your tropical tastes are temporary. Beringer recommends

putting them indoors, although some customers have had them installed

around swimming pools.

Beringer's bamboo-and-palm-thatch

tiki huts can be as simple as a thatch roof over supports or as elaborate

as a full-service bar, at prices starting at $2,200. His most popular

hut, a 7-by-7-foot model, seats eight to 10 people and has a ceiling fan,

lights, an electrical outlet and shelves.

Mostly the tiki huts have been

used outside, but Beringer said he knows of three people who are building

tiki bars in their basements. In general, he's seeing increased interest

in the kinds of tropical-theme items he sells.

"I think everyone likes

the feeling of being on vacation," he said. That's why he started

the business, he said. "That was my goal, to bring a little bit of

the tropics here."

Even if you don't have

the money for a $4,000 tiki bar, you can still create a tropical feel

on the cheap, said interior designer Carolyn Leibowitz of Genesis Interiors

in Bath Township, Ohio. "It's just a matter of creativity and

found things," she said.

Desperation for a break from

the winter bleakness doesn't hurt, either, of course.

Leibowitz came up with a slew

of inexpensive ideas for giving a home a taste of the tropics, namely:

- Staple grass skirts

to a wall, overlapping them like shingles to re-create the look of thatch.

Leibowitz once covered a gazebo roof that way.

- Use the same grass skirts

to encircle an inexpensive round side table. Top it with a square table

topper and hang shells or other tropical items from the topper's

four points.

- Cut hollow bamboo stalks

from the craft store into different lengths, and tie them in an upright

bundle with raffia. Insert individual flowers, palm fronds or weeds into

the bamboo tubes.

- Set the top of a ping-pong

table on concrete blocks, cover it with a cloth and surround it with floor

cushions for a luau table. Decorate it by laying pieces of bamboo lengthwise

of the table, drilling holes in the bamboo and inserting orchids.

- Get a bunch of potted

palms of various sizes from a warehouse club or wholesale florist and

set them around the room, not just in the corners. Group the palms in

odd numbers for a lush appearance.

- Swap the blades of a

ceiling fan with blades that look like palm fronds, or paint the blades

tropical colors.

- Buy old wicker furniture

from a thrift store, spray-paint it crazy colors and make new seat cushions.

- Hang old guitars or

ukuleles - more thrift-store finds - on the wall.

- Cover an old lampshade

with grass skirting or silk tropical flowers, glued in place.

- Make a floor cloth from

colorful fabric, backed with iron-on interfacing to stiffen it. Use a

non-slip rug pad underneath.

Then pour yourself a pina colada,

stretch out on your beach chair and imagine the sun's warmth on your

shoulders.

So what if it's only a

100-watt light bulb? It beats a 17-below windchill.

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