Sterling Suite: First Christmas (with a Lesson in Baking: Apple Pie)

Before I get to Christmas, I have the joy to talk about how AJ and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary this past week. I love our Christmastime anniversary, everything is always so sparkling and light and fun. AJ had Sophie deliver my bouquet of white lilies and now whenever she sees them, she likes to point out how those were flowers that daddy got for mommy. AJ made us reservations at Bungalow in Corona del Mar and we had so much fun! Honestly I can't remember the last time that we got out just the two of us, so we really enjoy it and watched Saturday Night Live episodes when we got back since we're still trying to catch up. Next year we get to open up the 5 Year Jar!

It sure is weird doing Shaffer Christmas not on Christmas, but I guess I couldn't expect the Leisure World days to last forever. I also have the added bonus of navigating it with a toddler (who, as luck would have it, is in the middle of either a very bad sleep regression or getting in those two-year molars, and either way having horrible sleeping patterns lately) so it was a shame that we couldn't stay longer, but what are you going to do?

Sophie actually doesn't get to hang out with her cousins that much, so it's always nice getting her together with Luca and Enzo, even though Luca is a little too old to care about her, and her and Enzo are still in parallel play mode and don't interact too much (although she does recognize them and can point them out).

Talk about awkward family photo!

We had such a nice time seeing everyone, and it was so many people's first time meeting Sophie (which is crazy to me, but I guess Covid time is different) and I really loved looking through the old photo album, it was a trip.

AJ had to go out to LA so after Sophie's nap, we walked to the store and then made a point to walk by the best Christmas lights in our neighborhood, especially this classic that is up every year, it's really pretty and makes for a beautiful walk.

Now for the apple pie - I'm kind of glad someone suggested an apple pie because I probably wouldn't have chose it myself otherwise. I'm not a huge fan of it, I prefer blueberry or banana cream or who knows what else. I've done enough pie crusts that I was fairly confident in that, so I made the crust in advance that week since they keep well in the freezer.

Just one of the two

It really must be healthy on some level if you get straight up real apples to slice and include. The finished product always tastes way too healthy to believe you're getting any nutritional benefits out of it.

Here's where I still really need to work: getting the pie crust spread far enough, and evenly enough, to drape over the dish sides enough. It kept sticking to the mat when I rolled it out so it was really hard to do that and then transport to the dish, and hard to make it go far enough over the dish edge.

I did some makeshift work to get it there but it was still a little too short and after baking you could see it crept up and exposed a lot and more than a few pieces broke off in transit and preparation. Oh well.

Prepping the apples

This was my favorite part! I was really nervous about it because I had only seen it in a picture before, and didn't have any real instruction as to how this worked and I was worried about the cut outs having too many layers and not cooking the dough enough, and maybe not covering enough of the pie and/or keeping the filling in, etc. But it was a fun process regardless.