Hoppy Easter!

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A Year of Morning Walks

Last year on March 19th I took my first daily morning walk. It went something like this:

Sunday, March 19, 2023, 7:52 AM

It wasn't the first morning walk I had taken, but I am surprised that it wasn't the last. Every day we've walked, I've stopped at the end of the driveway to take a photo, or several, to post on Instagram & Facebook. (Originally I was posting them weekly here, but after the photo-inserter tool stopped connecting to my Google Photos, I moved to IG, cross posting from there to FB.)

Wednesday, August 9, 2023, 6:39 AM | Photo credit to Jacqueline

We didn't walk every day: if it was raining too hard, we wouldn't go. It's one thing to get cold -- we can handle the cold for the short time it takes to do our walk -- but it's entirely different thing to get cold and soaked through. That kind of cold sticks for the whole day.

Tuesday, December 19, 2023, 6:44 AM

The hardest days to go were when it was DARK and cold. Sure it got dark in the fall before Daylight Savings Time ended but it wasn't too cold yet, so not too hard, but the days in December and January, when the clouds blocked any light, when the temps were below freezing.... Those were the days I didn't want to leave my cozy bed and wander about outside. It almost seemed pointless.

Tuesday, December 26, 2023, 7:44 AM

But the dark mornings made these gloriously light & color-filled morning all the better. And the benefits to my mental & physical health are worth it. The purpose of taking the walks when first waking up is to get those photons into my eyeballs, to signal to my circadian clock that about 16 hours from now, I need to get sleepy and go to bed. And it has done that. It's also been a mood booster. I might not like getting up and going to work, but taking just these few minutes before jumping into the hustle & bustle of all that really seems to make a difference.

So I plan to continue these daily walks when I first wake up, but after Tuesday, I won't be posting them every single day anymore.

Rum Raisin Rice Pudding on Peach Halves

 When I was little and went to my grandparents' house for dinner, we always had a little dessert afterwards, ice cream, cookies, Jell-O, or a pudding, kind of like this one, rice or tapioca with a canned peach half on the bottom. I don't know how she made hers, but I looked through several recipes and picked out bits & pieces I liked to come up with something that would use only what we had on hand and would still feel like a fancy treat.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups of milk
2 tablespoons of uncooked rice
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
canned peach halves (2 halves)
1 tablespoon raisins
1 tablespoon spiced rum
cinnamon

Instructions

1. In a saucepan, bring milk to a boil.
2. Add rice and stir well.
3. Cook covered with lid cracked for 40 minutes - 1 hour over low heat, stirring every 15 minutes or so.
4. While the rice is cooking, soak your raisins in the rum.
5. When the rice has cooked for at least 40 minutes, add the raisins & rum to the rice and cook for 5-10 minutes more.
6. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar and vanilla.
7. Let sit for 10 minutes to allow sugar to dissolve and flavors to blend.
8. Put the peach halves on the bottom of a bowl or dessert dish.
9. Spoon the pudding into dishes and sprinkle with a touch of cinnamon.

The finished puddings!

I divided them into the very same leaded crystal glasses my grandmother used to use and set them in the fridge to chill. After dinner last night, I had one. SO GOOD. And so nostalgic! But with an upgrade! Tonight I beat a little heavy cream into a topping and had the second dish. (My family doesn't like the texture, so it was all mine!)

Topped with homemade whipped cream!

Let me know if you had rice pudding on peach halves growing up and if you still make it!

Fall Out Boy Fanart

Last month I started playing around with some small-sized watercolor paper that I was given in a Sketchbox the year before and made these Fall Out Boy icon images.

I realized this morning that I never posted the finished paintings anywhere!

I tried to have it uploaded to my RedBubble, but it's been taken down already. :'(

Sadly photos and prints don't do the Opera Pink or shimmery inks any kind of justice. I still love them all though.

Happy Lunar New Year!

I've just posted my latest State of the Artist post on my Patreon! The first for 2024! Come see what I've been up to!

Diana *BunnyKissd* Bukowski on Patreon