When my husband suggested we take a few days over Christmas to head back to the mountains together, I jumped at the opportunity to spend a little time in the land of fur trees and blue peaks. There’s something exciting about packing up the car, bringing the pups along and heading up to a mountain cabin. It’s little adventures like these that I hope will be fun to look back on when life is hectic, or when we’re both turning old and gray.

After enjoying the cabin life for a few days, we made a trip into town to explore downtown Boone a bit on Christmas Eve. It was magical to be in a mountain town filled with decorations and Christmas music, families bustling about getting last minute gifts, laughter from cafe’s spilling into the street with the smells of fresh bread and warm soups – such a pretty little slice of life.

Oh, and I met this puppy. Yes, She is as tiny and adorable as she looks. EEEP!

Later on we headed up the mountain and then… on Christmas Eve, we saw SNOWWWWWWW! (look, this is exciting for a girl raised in the piedmont of North Carolina, okay?)

After fully exhausting ourselves on the mountain, we came back to the cabin to enjoy the evening in the backyard. Earlier in the week I had found this adorable little fur tree that was just begging to be decorated, so I picked up some lights and ornaments (plus a million feet of extension cord) to make it happen.

Shawn built a fire and we made s’mores as we enjoyed the mountain view and our sweet little newly-decorated Christmas tree. We put on Christmas music on my iPhone and danced together until the battery died, at which point we just sang as many Christmas carols (badly) as we could come up with. It was an experience to remember and one of my very favorite  holidays to date.

All photos on Kodak Film, Contax 645 and Canon 1v