Leavenworth is a German-themed town in the Cascade mountains of Washington! They kind of go all-out during Christmastime with decorations and such, which is something a lot of the "German villages" in the U.S. have in common. Good for tourism and plays into the quaint aspect of European architecture that they're trying to reflect, I suppose.
My boyfriend Juno and I went there for our 7 year anniversary (Dec 10th)! We rented a car and drove up the mountains, which was both dazzling and a little frightening. Thankfully we had just missed the Big Snow, so we survived despite not having chains or like...any experience driving up in the mountains. It was more intense than we expected for sure tho orz.
The trip itself was so fun! We stayed at a local inn and were able to walk straight into the village. It's mostly shopping and looking around; I definitely recommend the Nutcracker Museum; they had a ton of cool nutcrackers spanning back centuries, it was incredible! A very hot building, though.
I have to admit that, unfortunately, the Christmasey vibe was the highlight of the trip. I know that Leavenworth tries very hard to get tourism to happen outside of the winter months, and I do think they've been pretty successful at that, but I can't imagine any experience beating the town all decorated with lights and snow, a Hallmark-card picture perfect reflection of everything magical about the season. I really enjoyed it for that.
Didn't buy a lot of souvenirs because most of the goods were Christmas-themed and we didn't really need more of that, but I went to the local bookstore (A Book for All Seasons--see previous paragraph, lol) and picked up the first volume of a mystery series set in Leavenworth: Death on Tap!

It's set in the summertime. It's decent! And as a souvenir, it's one of the better ones I've ever gotten. For some reason the idea of taking home a small fiction book set in the place you've been really charms me.
Last thing to note: seeing the real-life high school students who all had jobs at the shops and restaurants was really funny. I'm sure they would hate me for saying it, but it strikes me as humorous to think of anyone going to normal school in such a quaint and vaguely schticky place like Leavenworth. What do you mean everyone here isn't just a shopkeeper or worker?! But no, they're just normal people. Obviously. So normal that they annoyed me in the same way midwestern high schoolers do. I guess they have that right.