Spring is Here!

As the spring season is finally started, the flowers start blooming and the weather is getting warmer. Last weekend, we went to Copenhagen Sakura Festival, held in Langelinie Park. The festival was supported by Japanese Embassy in Denmark to celebrate the cherry blossom bloom. The cherry blossom was donated by one of Japanese man, Mr. Seiichi Takaki and they were planted in that park.

Unfortunately, the weather was not nice when we went there, it was cloudy and a little bit rainy. However, we still enjoyed the friendliness environment, met a lot of Indonesian people, even the Indonesian Ambassador. Most of all, the Japanese food we bought from the stalls are delicious! We bought the yakiniku rice (the beef is soooo tender) and japanese curry rice (it smells and taste so good). Too bad we couldn't find the takoyaki that is famous for its taste.

Here's some of the pictures I've taken at the festival. Enjoy!

Japanese Wind Chime - Zen Garden Bell

Costume Play

People meet under Sakura trees

If you happen to notice that the color of Sakura on the first picture is pink while on the others are white, it is because the first picture was taken a week before. I found the beautiful cherry blossom tree near the Amalienborg castle. Apparently the cherry blossom turns color, at the beginning of spring it has pink color, then it changes into white and later on into green. I like the pink color better, though :-D

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Menu Planning

The never ending question is "What's for Dinner?" I've never realized how confusing it is to determine menu for everyday meals, especially when you have to cook for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the whole week. Having someone else cooked for me back at home, I have never had to think about what I am going to eat. And yet, I am quite cranky if I have to eat the same dish over and over again.

So here I am, living on my own now and have to think what do I have to cook and groceries I have to buy at the beginning of the week for supplies. I noticed that without planning first, I often ran out of supplies hence limiting my cooking option. Moreover, it is frustrating not knowing what to cook while your stomach already growling, asking to be fed.

I used to jot down a weekly menu plan on a paper, but I realized, sometimes I forgot where to put the paper and then I didn't stick to the schedule. Yet, after a week passed by, the notes turned into rubbish. Today I'm making the note with Adobe Photoshop to make it prettier and I put it down in my desktop so I could easily read it when needed. In order to make the shopping easier, I have jotted down the supplies I will need to buy for the week. So, basically it is an integrated menu planning and shopping list. Pretty efficient, right?

Let me share with you the menu planner I created. Hopefully it will give you inspirations to create a similar one :)

Ow, and don't forget to check this blog:
http://thehomesihavemade.blogspot.com/2012/02/magnetic-menu-board-part-1.html.
She's done an amazing job by creating this magnetic menu planning. Totally inspiring!

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

His Plan is Better than Yours

My today's post is gonna be a little bit religious since I got inspiration from the priest's homily. Yes, I grew up in Catholic family, which is quite active at church and we go to church every week. I could say I was raised into a good Catholic girl and has good relationship with God. However I must say there were times that I feel very distant from God. The worst was like 5 years ago, I was having a very breakdown period in my life, where everything I wanted just fell into pieces. I got used to achieve anything that I want easily as I planned and at that moment, it frustrated me as I couldn't make life ran as I wanted it to be. I was very unhappy and felt lonely almost all the time.

Nevertheless, God always find a way to pull me back to His way. I began to start wondering, what God wanted from me, what He thought is the best for me because all I wanted is just be happy again and embrace my life. At first I struggled in listening to Him. I even wondered how do you know whether it is God's voice or it is my mind saying things I wanted to hear. Then my best friend once reminded me when I told her about my confusion in understanding God's will, she said, maybe it's not because God didn't show you what you should do, He had lead the way, it's you who didn't want to hear and accept it because His way is different than what you expected. Her words stroked me quite hard.

From that moment on, I realized that God spoke to me in many ways, one of them is through closest friends' advices. However it is me who chose to blind my eyes and cover my ears as His way is different than my will. Then I changed my prayer from begging things to work out as I wanted, into praying so that I could listen to His word and follow His will. Afterwards, my life got a whole lot better and it turned out His plan is always way so much better than ours. I received a lot more blessing and happiness I couldn't even imagine I would get if I didn't follow His plan. Couldn't feel more grateful having God lead my life this far. He is truly my shepherd and now I surrender my life to His plan, to His calling, wherever He may lead, I will follow, because now I know, His plan is always beautiful and He will guide me through difficult times as long as I follow His path.

At the end of the homily, the priest sang this song, which is beautifully expressing how I feel:

Shepherd of my soul I give you full control,

Wherever You may lead I will follow.

I have made the choice to listen for Your voice,

Wherever You may lead I will go.

Be it in a quiet pasture or by a gentle stream,

The Shepherd of my soul is by my side.

Should I face a mighty mountain or a valley dark and deep,

The Shepherd of my soul will be my guide.

Shepherd of my soul 

Oh You have made me whole,

Where ever I hear You call how my tears flow.

How I feel your love how I want to serve gladly give my heart to You O Lord.

Be it in the flowing river or in the quiet night,

The Shepherd of my soul is by my side.

Should I face the stormy weather or the dangers of this world.

The Shepherd of my soul will be my guide.

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Organizing Your Kitchen

It's been such a busy day for me. The container which carried my stuff from Indonesia, just came yesterday and we truly brought so many stuff from home! You could imagine how such a mess our apartment is at the moment.
I dedicated all of my time today to organize my kitchen, since there are so many kitchen appliances and utensils I brought from home, to minimize the cost. Since, almost every thing in here is way so expensive. Fortunately my brand new kitchen is super awesome. It has so many shelves so I could put all the stuff in.
Despite all the mess, I am quite enjoying it. I want to make my kitchen so organized and neat so it will look tidy and I'm pretty sure that an organized kitchen helps you to get things more quickly during cooking process.
Since I'm not finished organizing it, I will post the result later on. However, I stumbled on few blogs showing how the bloggers organized their kitchen cabinet and I got few inspirations from them. Let me share with you some of the blogs. But I warn you, these blogs made me want to run to IKEA or supermarket to buy some organizer stuff, so just be careful with your pockets :-D

1. http://abowlfulloflemons.blogspot.com/2011/02/week-4-challenge-kitchen-organization.html
I love how the wire shelving is hanged inside the cabinet door, it creates more space in the cabinet and specified items can be found easily without having to take out other items first.

2. http://www.kevinandamanda.com/whatsnew/house-and-home/kitchen-cabinet-organization.html
This blogger use slotted organizer racks from Walmart to organize its baking dish, a smarter way then stacking your baking dishes. Hence, when you need one baking dish, you don't need to take everything out.

3. http://ariannabelle.com/blog/2012/01/beautifully-labeled-pantry.html
This blogger featured few bloggers who organized their kitchens beautifully. I love how they use matching jars and custom designed label to store basic spices.

4. http://orgjunkie.com/2012/03/spring-into-organization-my-organized-kitchen.html
Basically this is the best one from all of the above. She used wire shelves, organizer racks, boxes and shelf insert to make everything look so neat and organized.

I have searched the IKEA website to look for some organizer stuff, I could find the boxes and shelf insert, however I couldn't find any of organizer racks. Do you know any shop similar to Container Store in Copenhagen? Can't wait to do the shopping for my lovely kitchen :)

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Those Tiny Little Feet

This is my 26 weeks of pregnancy and the baby starts kicking a little bit harder than before, sometimes I could even feel his feet underneath my stomach. The question I often heard during my pregnancy is how do you feel being pregnant?

For guys or those who has never been pregnant perhaps wondering, how would it feel to have another living soul inside your body. Well, I used to stumble for a while for answering such question. Not that I don't feel anything, but it's a little bit hard to put your feelings into words. Nevertheless, I try to share it with you on this special post :)

Firstly, it is my husband who suspicious that I am pregnant. At that time I often asked him to eat some specific foods, which is quite rare. I used to let him pick the restaurants or foods to eat. However, we were waiting for the news of job application in Copenhagen, which my husband applied to. I said, "Let's do the pregnancy test when we have received the news from Denmark's office, hence, whatever the result of job interview is, we would have good news :)"

A couple of days later, I went to the gym and when I did the cardio, I felt a little bit ache around my stomach. I decided to stop the cardio, because I thought if I really was pregnant, I didn't want to harm the baby. On the next day, he is notified that he got the job. As promise before, I took the pregnancy test that night and the result is positive. I couldn't forget the look of my husband, he lost his word and looked surprise, because the month before, we did the test since my period was late for two weeks, but it was negative. However, we really excited to welcome the little baby, we hugged for a moment and told our family the two good news.

The first trimester, I wasn't feel very healthy, I got nausea a lot and sometimes vomit, I couldn't eat or smell certain foods, such as garlic, rice and other food with strong taste. I was having a hard time to sleep at night and often felt dizzy and sleepy. I remembered I rejected every activities and chose to stay at home all day. However, I didn't have much to do at home since staring at computer or watching TV more than 30 minutes caused me nausea and dizzy. I experienced mood swings during the that time as I felt helpless not knowing how to handle my own body.

After I got to the second trimester, I got over with the nausea and dizziness. I got back to my activities and had my daily schedule full with the moving preparation. Physically, I started to gain weight, had bigger tummy and slowly changed my type of clothes into the loosen one. While mentally, I began to be more mature by controlling emotion and being responsible.

Recently I found the article regarding hypnobirthing, a relaxation technique that helps you to experience the birth labor with calmer mind and attitude, which in consequence helps to reduce the pain and stress during labor. I bought the book and started to listen to the CD attached to practice the hypnobirthing at home. Having more knowledge about the importance of relaxation in facing the life changes and accepting the natural process of birth labor, influenced me in someway by having more positive attitudes towards life and the pregnancy.

As a result, I don't stress out even though I live on my own now, apart from close family and no one to help cleaning the house, doing laundry or cooking. In contrary, I am enjoying the changes and embracing the experiences. I also engage more with the baby, talking to him everyday, playing classical music for him and practicing the hypnobirthing relaxation once or twice a day. I feel more closer to the baby and I believe he starts to understand my words as he kicked me with those tiny little feet when I asked him to.

Now, I just couldn't wait to welcome him to the world, showering him with love and tenderness and getting ready to be a good mother for him.

I love you my baby, see you soon in 3 months :)

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Making New Friends

A stranger is just a friend waiting to happen

- Corrie B-

New environment means meeting new people and creating new circle of friends. Despite of the excitement of getting to know new people, I always feel a little bit of anxiety entering a new group of friends. The thought of will I suit well to the group or will I be accepted by them is haunted me every time  I stepped in to a new society.

I remembered before high school I was very introvert and shy around new people. The attitude sometimes acknowledged by arrogant for others, while the truth is I didn't know how to communicate with strangers. I was not good at breaking the ice or making an interesting conversation with people I just met. However, since I joined one youth community at church, I learned how to speak in public, met a lot of new people and new member every year. It helped me gain more confidence and somehow made me easier to start conversation with new people. As a result, I am getting easier to have new circle of friends in every stage of my life.

I realized that the progress was even faster when I entered university. I used to have only small group of close friends, mostly just 2 or 3 friends, because I couldn't feel comfortable being in a big group, with too many people. However in university I managed to have a big group of close friends, the number even more than 10 persons and I could feel comfortable being around all of them. We even still manage to meet at least twice a year just to keep updated with each other news. Until now, they are still the most precious group of friends I've ever had :)

And now, moving to this entirely new city, I have the urge to make another group of friends. I couldn't imagine how stressful life would be without having a social life. Being unemployed and full time house wife makes it seems more complicated. Having no activities but staying at home, is absolutely keeping me off radar from having new friends. Nonetheless, God is good, He hears my prayer. Before the searching of new friends is getting more stressful, one of my husband's friend's wife texted me two days ago, asking me to contact her if I need a friend to talk or just to hang out. She even asked me to join her meeting another housewives on this Wednesday at a coffee shop on city centre.

Then, this morning, we met at this coffee shop, me, her and another housewife. There are supposed to be another two moms joined us, however since their kids refused to go to daycare, they should take care of them at home. We talked and shared stories, mostly regarding pregnancy, raising a child and relationship with family, since we have quite few similarities, new moms (or mom to be) and full time housewives with a lot of spare time. After a while being out of social life, I could say I had a pretty good time and looking forward for our next meeting.

Hopefully, this could be my new circle of friends in Copenhagen :)

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Culture Shock

A month has gone since I moved to Copenhagen, Denmark and it is common for immigrant to experience culture shock when moving to another country, especially a country with completely different culture.

First thing I noticed which aroused my anxiety is the language. Even though most Danes could speak English, all the written notification, product packaging and letters are written in Danish. I had quite a hard time going to a supermarket for the first time, because I don't  know what Danish word for sugar, flour, chicken, beef, etc. It makes shopping for groceries takes longer time than it has to be, because we have to ask the staff in order to be sure, we buy the correct products. I'm a little bit frustrated for a while, because we didn't have internet connection at the first 3 weeks nor any Danish-English dictionary. Hence, what I did is taking a note from supermarket brochure, the Danish word for groceries product they published, because they put pictures on it. Another time, I went to a restaurant which has bilingual menu and I put a note of the Danish word for the food. It helps me understand the name of products better when going to supermarket.

Another thing different from home is the ignorance of the people in here. I was being told that when you are in a bus or train, don't expect people give you a seat because you are pregnant because the people here don't have that kind of attitude. Yet, it is true, they even don't prioritize the elderly to seat when in a bus or train. The ignorance may cause by the high rate of individuality of the people, because in Denmark, everyone lives on their own since they are teenager. It also appears in the neighborhood, while back in Jakarta, we mostly know who our neighbors are, in here people don't get use to know their neighbors. I found it a little bit awkward, because what if something bad happen and you are alone in the apartment. The closest person that can help you is your neighbor, right? It makes me think, no wonder people often said that Indonesian people are the friendliest people, because compared to European, yes we definitely more caring to one another.

There are still many things way much different than the culture I grew up with, but perhaps the above two are the most influenced factors. Luckily I didn't feel sorrow of missing home, family and friends too deeply or having any depression, like many people do when experiencing culture shock. Well, I guess we all just need some adjustment time in a new society, so I just take the positive side and learn how to live like locals do if it is a good thing and still maintain the good culture from back home. I am going to study Danish, if I get a seat in next month class, hopefully it will make the anxiety slowly diminished. While for the ignorance thing, I just accept it as the way they live and there's nothing we can do to change it, but I wish I don't change into one of them and of course I will teach my kid to have friendly attitude and emphatic.

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

A Love Note

I am a believer of "Love at the First Sight", but you are the exception. You didn't wow me the first time we met and not even long after we knew each other. We were in the same circle of friends but we couldn't even be considered close friend.

It is true that God's plan sometimes beyond our expectation. In such way, He brought us together, He brings you into my life and He leads me into yours. I still remembered how you slowly amazed me in many ways. Your way of thinking, the gentleness of yours and how comfortable it is talking to you because you listen to me like no one does. I used to think I couldn't fall for someone who didn't impress me at the first sight, but then again, you are the exception. 

Years gone by and I love you even more for many other reasons. People said, love conquers all. Well I guess it's true, it conquers all our discrepancies that blocked our way in the beginning of our relationship. And now all I can feel is grateful, having you as mine, couldn't think of anyone better than you as my life partner. You make me proud, you make me feel loved and most of all you complete my happiness.

This is once in a lifetime love and your heart will always be my home.

Love you,

Indispensable Lady

Failure in Life

Recently I am crazy about making quotes with my own photo portfolio. It is fun, actually, playing with words and photo at the same time. Hopefully you'll like the above quote :)

The most influenced person in my life once told me, "Do not be afraid to fail." I think it is a powerful advice, indeed. I know I'm not a risk taker type and sometimes the fear of failing is keeping me away from good opportunities. That's is the reason why I wrote this quote to remind myself that a failure is best teacher to help you grow.

Let us learn to embrace the failure in life, be grateful that you can experience it, and leave it behind you and move forward after take the learning with you.


Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Big Spender vs Big Saver

As paycheck day nearly come, I guess it is good timing to write something related with organizing money. Do you have financial plan? If not, well you better get started. And the very least you can do to start making financial plan is organizing your cash flow.


I used to neglect this financial plan thingy as I didn't see the importance of it. Before married, I lived with my parents and they supported me almost in every expenses, such as accommodation, meals, transports and house maintenance. So I barely paid my daily expenses. Hence, the money I earned from working is fully used to pay my lifestyle or shopping expenses.


It was until my husband and I plan to get married, I started to think more about why we need financial plan. As you know, wedding expenses, honeymoon expenses and expenses after marriage are required large amount of money. And even though I had big savings, the number would be decreasing fast if we didn't control the cash flow and started to make a good financial plan.


Therefore I took a seminar and a workshop related to financial plan, organized by one of the famous independent financial planner in Jakarta, QM Financial Plan. I learned about the importance of having financial plan, how to make one and also the various investment options to achieve the financial plan.
Here I am, sharing to you readers the knowledge I got, for free :))


Since the whole cycle of creating financial plan is complicated, I will start it with the very simple and important steps, which is managing your cash flow. Start this with answering this questions, when you receive your salary, what is the first thing you do with them? Spending it? Pay your credit card bills? Most friends that I know, already have plan what they are going to buy after receiving their salary. Some of them want to buy fashion items, another want to spend it for holiday and others just spend it for clubbing or dine out on weekends. But do you realize, after all the big spending, how much money left in your bank account for the rest of the month? Some people could run out of money just in the middle of the month and they struggle to live in the rest of the month. Don't laugh, it is true story. And the big question is how could you finance your future if you even cannot save your money until the end of month?


That is why it is important to manage your cash flow properly. First thing you need to do is making a monthly budget. How do you make a budget? This is what my husband and I do for our monthly budget in Copenhagen:

1. Listing down all the monthly fixed payment, such as: apartment rental fee, water and heater charges, train monthly pass, fixed phone bill, internet fee and church collection.
2. Listing down the possibility of payment that amount is still uncertain due to depending on consumption, such as: electricity, groceries and household expenses.  
3. After the two important expenses, let's see do you still have any leftover money? If yes, determine how much you are willing to save. You should save at least 10 to 30% of your total monthly income.
4. The money left, you could budget it for lifestyle or hobbies.

You should note that making a budget is easy but implementing one is different case. My husband and I used to have this kind of budget when we were in Jakarta. However we don't really stick to the plan and sometimes we were kind of cheating with our emergency fund :-D It might be because there is no urgency on it, we have this huge emergency fund and we still live with my parents in law who supports meals and house maintenance expenses.

When we moved to Copenhagen, it is completely different story, we stand on our own feet now, have to pay the rental, groceries and house maintenance on our own. With only single income, living in an expensive country like Denmark, is truly not easy. That is why we really should committed to the budget we created.

Since this is just our first month here, we decided to keep track of the uncertain expenses (see list no. 2), by taking notes of our spending every day for each category of expenses. This is absolutely an extra job, but it helps us to check whether our budget is achievable and making sense. Hence, we can decided whether we have to revise the budget or not.

Having this budget, it really helps both of us to stay away from being a big spender. Now every time we go to supermarket for weekly grocery shopping, we carefully choose the one we need instead of the one we want. It also keeps us from living the lifestyle we don't deserve, like dining out in expensive restaurant or buying gadgets we don't really need. Well, shortly, having the budget makes us want to be a big saver :)

So, the decision now is in your hands, do you want to be a big spender or big saver? Just remember, 

saving your money now, helps you to save your future!

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

PS: Just simple tips from me, be as detail as you can when determining type of expenses in your budget. It helps you to monitor your cash flow.

Indispensable Lady

As promised yesterday, this post is dedicated to explain the history behind choosing "Indispensable Lady" as this blog name. Have you checked your dictionary yet what indispensable means?
According to http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/indispensable is this:

in·dis·pen·sa·ble

   [in-di-spen-suh-buhl] 

adjective

1.

absolutely necessary, essential, or requisite: an indispensable member of the staff.

2.

incapable of being disregarded or neglected: an indispensable obligation.


And of course, by this explanation, I am referring to the number one definition. I heard about this vocabulary firstly from my husband's book, which was given by his senior colleague at work.


I thought it is a very inspiring word. Let us think, everybody must want to be special and needed by their surroundings. Being such one, you're irreplaceable, you're the one everyone is looking for when they needed help, comfort or somebody to count on.


Then, I have always had this confusion whenever I have to answer who am I? Why? Because sometimes when such answer is asked, most people will answer them with their career (a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, etc) or their role in family (a husband, a wife, a daughter, etc). However, those answers are not satisfied me. I believe we're human being are something more than just a label of career or family role.  Therefore, it makes me thinking, if I couldn't answer that question right now, at least I could think of who I wanna be and work towards that so that one day I could answer such question with pride.


And there it goes why I choose that I want to be "Indispensable Lady". At least when I died, I want to be remembered by people I care the most how special I am to them, because what I have given them in life. It is because I am "essential" to their life or in working team.


In order to be indispensable of course there are many things to do. Firstly, you should be a loving person, of course. Who wants to be near to someone who complains all the time, full of hatred and negativity? Furthermore, you should have that extra ability to do something better than others, otherwise, how could you be irreplaceable? Well, in conclusion, you should be a better person to be indispensable, and what could be a better life resolution than that, right?


Having this purpose of life, definitely mature me in some way. I have the urge to be more positive in seeing changes in life, treat others better and be more loving to others. It also makes my learning desire grows, because I want to be good at something I love doing, by learning hopefully I could be better than others and share my learning to others needed.


So, do you want to be indispensable? Share with me your purpose of life :)


Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

A Welcoming Note

Dear readers,

Welcome to my new source of inspirations.

I remembered back then when I was a little girl, I had this dream of becoming a writer someday. However it turns out life leads me to a different direction, I became an accountant instead. I guess works and studies made me neglect the habit of writing.

Recently I have this big changes in my life: quitting the accountant job, married to this wonderful man and moving abroad to Copenhagen, Denmark to follow my husband. So here I am, from a corporate slave into full time house wife.

Having lots of spare time makes me think back about stuff I've always wanted to do, but nearly didn't have time to accomplish them. One of them is the dream to become a writer. So here I am, writing this blog, trying to get in touch with the writing habit, sharing my thoughts and ideas to you, readers.

I have this resolution to write at least one post each day at least for the first 3 months to make it as habit. I believe it isn't an easy resolution. But hey, it is worth to try, right? And stating this in the first post, hopefully will remind me and also will make you readers have the right to protest if I failed to do so.

Well, that's quite a long introduction and I don't even introduce myself, yet. My name is Yana, I am Indonesian girl, married, catholic, studied Accounting at University of Indonesia in which I obtained a Bachelor degree in Economic. I love photography, traveling and everything related to creativity. As for personality, I believe I am one of the Melancholic-Choleric type. I'm not as open as Sanguine person to strangers or new crowds, but I can be very open to people I am comfortable with. Despite that, I love meeting new people and expanding my networks. I have this huge curiosity to learn new things, and most of my concerns/ideas/thoughts are varied among photography, traveling, cooking (as I was started cooking since I moved to Copenhagen), writing stories, financial plan and perhaps in a couple of months about motherhood as well. I know it's quite a lot and diverse. But on the positive side, the readers then could relate to me in many aspects :)

I guess that's everything I think you need to know about me. Regarding the blog name, I will explore more in my next post. Or if you can't wait to figure out what the meaning of "indispensable", just look it up in dictionary :) 

Then please, come and explore my world by firstly introducing yourself too when you visited my blog.

Cheers,

Indispensable lady