I was excited to host because it seems a while since I had people over to the house for a meal. What’s the point of having a dining table if you don’t plan on using it kan? Perhaps later I can invite some people over for lunch on a Friday when I am on leave or something.

Setting the house

Cleaning a home is not something I can do in just one weekend. It takes at least a few weekends to get it into order as I don’t have any helper at home nor do I enlist the services of professional cleaners. I feel that when it comes to Malaysians, privacy is easily invaded as the people like to ask personal questions and I’d have to evade it like a bullet. They’d be asking what you do as a living, the this and the that.. so unless I feel like sharing about it one day, we’d just do it ourselves.

One of the major cleanups I did was the gym and storage area. Previously it was full of bags of plastic bags filled with old curtains, clothes and recyclables that I wanted to get rid of. Now that I know where to bring this stuff for donations, it makes decluttering easier. There is a Kloth care bin at Peringgit but it looks uncared for and messy. I chose to send mine to the Lotus donation bin instead. It also helps that the disposable trucks from SWM come here every Monday to collect our recyclable items which makes these environmentally friendly efforts easier.

I charged and put up my solar lights for an aesthetic night setup. It felt like a cafe outside. I bought a lot of lights from a seller on Shopee as I plan to paint the walls and drill more of them later – after my exams in August.

Menu List

The menu I wanted to prepare started the day before Eid, which was on Wednesday as my dad has already reached my home. I decided to make Lamb Briyani using Adabi’s instant lamb curry. I ordered Sate. Boiled some instant lemang and chopped up my chickens for the Ayam Masak Merah dish.

I went to Mydin for my shopping trip as the items are cheap and there’s a lot of variety to choose from. I spent nearly RM400 on everything as I also needed to get some items for Matin’s goodie bags, a BBQ stand, charcoal and other miscellaneous things. I bought my marinated drummers and ikan tenggiri papan from here as well for our BBQ and umai.

Our BBQ was on a Saturday morning because my sister needed to leave by lunch. We did not have one the night before because there were mosquitoes in the yard. I don’t want anyone to get dengue fever. So I prepared a normal home-cooked meal for her which consisted of ikan bawal, stir-fried vegetables, my umai and telur dadar.

I also bought some rolled cakes from an online Shopee vendor. The visuals were great but the taste was mediocre. I am thinking of sharing some of these cakes with my daughters’ friends at kindergarten. Our Eid mornings were in fact very simple and cosy.

Parcel kasih sayang

I just realized that I have no photos of my PKS. These are bags filled with food and gifts for my dad and my siblings. This time I gave them a packet of Instant Coffee from Arifcafe, Cadbury’s Chocolate Drink, Indomie, cookies, chocolates and snacks for my nephew and nieces. I also gave 3 bags of daging korban to my siblings as sedekah.

There will be more celebrations to come towards the end of the year. There will be loads of birthdays and parties to go to. I look forward to more mini-staycation as well.