Raya has been good

Yup.

Although on the first day of raya - we celebrated raya on Tuesday - Mr S had to go to work as it was his last day in the office.

That's right. Mr S has moved to another company - into the industry, so to speak. But already he's complaining about his new job - boring, he said.

Men.

I myself would never complain if my work was repetitive or unexciting, IF my salary and perks were good. But not Mr S. That's the reason he ended working in the UK in the first place.

Anyway, thank God some friends came for raya while Mr S was at the office and some friends invited us over too and we went beraya as soon as Mr S came back from work - with lots of stuff and cards from his office mates - so it was a 'raya' for us nonetheless, alhamdulillah.

I made 5 types of kuih raya and friends from Malaysia gave 4 other types so we had plenty of kuih raya to go around and so I thought I really should invite lots of friends around this raya.

Plus, we had a sort of house re-decorating period during Ramadhan.

Suddenly I felt so desperate to make the house feel like a home instead of just a roof above our heads. Somehow I was contented all this while simply to leave the house as it is - alah..this is not our own place and we wont be staying here for long pun.. was the attitude.

Not anymore.

I was tired of living in a 'rumah sewa' environment. I reached the point where I felt that I didn't belong anywhere - not back in Malaysia and not in my own home. So we made some changes. Bought some furniture. Put up new curtains. Bought frames and hung up some pictures and a large mirror. Some plants and fresh flowers to spruce up the place a bit. Even dug very, very deep and dragged out what little talent I had for art and painting and produced some 'artwork' to be hung on my walls...ho ho ho. Couldn't find anything that we really, really like at the shops for the price that we liked so decided to just paint my own!

I married a generous man. To him, we were fine the way we were but still he acquiesced to my demands. Of course, it was his bank account that had to bear all these expenditures. And he was the one who helped me to hang the curtains, the pictures, the mirror etc etc Thank you Mr S - again! Love you!

So since the house was looking it's best ever since we moved in and we had plenty of kuih raya - we decided to invite friends over - not just the usual suspects but almost everyone we know on this side of London. I cooked loads of food and we had guests over from the early afternoon till about 1 am in the morning. I was tired for days after but it was worth it.

Just some pics for the people back at home...

Pagi raya

Budak-budak datang main Wii on hari raya

Just to show the pics we hung on the wall

And here's the result of 3 nights with paints and brushes - not great but I'm happy about them!

The kuih table during our 'open house' - the main dishes were served in the kitchen as usual!

Some of our guests...