o' christmas tree, o' christmas tree...

this weekend actually marked the start of my holiday season (yes, i am a procrastinator.) :). after tagging along with chris and his mother to buy their tree, i was inspired to buy my very own tree, a two-foot tall "living" christmas tree, a mondell pine originating from pinery tree farms in the winter wonderland that is escondido. ..yes, the very same escondido of distillery (or distillery's east?)- nightclub-for-the-eighteen-&-up fame (for all the san diegans out there). so much for the romantic allure of a whimsical white christmas. its california. at any rate, i have a live tree that i can plant after all the garland and plastic wreaths are packed away. the only christmas tree i had previously is a faux miniature tree, about a foot high, decorated with homemade crafts made with a bit of love, a touch of humor and a load of cyncisim by my good friend johanna. many memories symbolized in that tree, born the winter of our freshman year at berkeley. ahh the good ol' days of silly sarcastic sardonic humor shared between the GRAMS girls. :) unfortunately i am unable to locate it. i have a ton of crap, so hopefully its in some dark long-neglected corner of my room and not forever lost.
actually chris' mother bought the tree for me (so very nice of her!) and today i purchased five sets of ornaments to hang on my tree, in addition to the three ornaments i collected over the years (two pillsbury doughboy & a 2003 hershey's chocolate bar with four sitting bears) . i borrowed some lights from the torres family. the ornaments cost twice as much as the actual tree, but they're really cute. since my tree is small, they had to be miniature too. I bought a set of the dog ornaments. true to its trademark bloated-up head, there were five little pups (among them a golden retriever, pug, scottish terrier) accented with little christmas accessories. another set was the characters from the old-school claymation tv movie rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. the remaining two were both hello kitty in various winter outfits. i am so very excited that i took the time out to decorate a little bit for the holidays. usually i don't even bother. i even helped chris and his mom decorate their tree and put lights in their front yard.
the other aspect of the holidays are the frequent trips to the shopping mall. problem is that both chris and i have not gotten any gifts for anyone on our lists! the sales have not been good enough, and the only fairly good deals we've found have been for items for ourselves. we went to bloomingdales and he bought a wool coat and some ties that were all on sale. the cool thing was he found some ted baker ties that were really cool looking and fairly inexpensive. normally we wouldn't even bother with ted baker (too expensive!)-i only heard of him because he's one of aubrey's favorite designers. we later ventured to macys since it was open til midnight and i found myself in the designer section for some reason (its located by women's athletics and i had been rummaging the sale racks for some workout gear). i found this cute orange crochet-like tank top by marc jacobs for about $30 - original price was $188! so i figured it was worth a splurge. i also bought some tag jeans (another splurge) that had a double waist design (i saw it somewhere else, so i guess that's the in thing. more of a fashion statement than actually serving a purpose) and an adidas windbreaker.
switching gears...chris discovered a l&l hawaiian barbecue in palo alto, down along el camino close to his house. apparently in recent years hawaiian bbq restaurants have been mysteriously popping up along the south bay and peninsula faster than a starbucks (well, not quite as fast). there is another restaurant, hukilau(sp?) in downtown pa, another one in mountain view with another one coming soon on castro st, and one in menlo park (i think its a j&js).