DIY: Wedding

Planning a wedding for a girl must be an exciting thing to do, especially when we could decide whatever we want to make the whole wedding reflects our personality. I was talking to my friend, Joy, the American girl from my Danish lesson class, about her plans for her wedding next year. As I just found out from the baby shower party, that she's so crafty, I believed she must want to have a DIY (Do It Yourself) wedding, at least for the decoration and accessories. Apparently it is true, she said that she already planned to make her flower bouquet and table centre piece on her own. Even just hearing her plan makes me feel so excited and I really want to help her, if she allows me, of course :-D

I could recall during my preparation for wedding, I browsed a lot to American and Australian's wedding websites where they feature the real American and Australian wedding and most of them have the DIY wedding. It's so lovely to see the handmade decorations or wedding stationeries, and I believe the satisfaction is beyond ordinary when you could make something for your own wedding. Unfortunately, it is impossible to have DIY wedding for my wedding, since the guests that were invited was nearly reached 2000 people, so it's kinda impossible to make so many wedding stationeries or decorate such a big place on my own.

However, I managed to make something for my wedding and I'm so happy about them. At least there are some small parts of my wedding that I made it by myself. The first one is the flower balls to be carried by my bridesmaids and flower girl. I learned how to make flower ball from my aunt who has a florist business. At first, it's kind of hard to make a ball from blocks floral foam (I didn't buy floral foam balls as they are more expensive), but I was getting better after the forth floral foam :-D The hardest part is inserting the ribbon through the ball since there's a chance of breaking the ball when I inserted the ribbon with a thick wire. After that I just sticked the artificial flowers to the foam ball with a glue. Here is the result of my flower ball for my wedding:

Photo courtesy of Indigosix Photoworks

Another thing I made is the "Just Married" banner for golf car decorations. We planned to end the wedding party by leaving the party with the golf cart since we had the wedding party in a golf club. However since the idea is unusual from the tradition in Indonesia wedding party (the bride and groom should stay at the stage until all the guests are finished shaking hands and congratulate us), we couldn't do it. But we still did it anyway after all the guests are leaving the party for photo documentation purposes only, and thankfully it was still fun :) So here is the banner that I made, I designed the banner using Adobe Photoshop and had it printed on a art carton in a local printing service. Then I just cut the banner following the shapes and had them hang with a string.

Photo courtesy of Indigosix Photoworks

So, what crafty stuffs did or will you make for your wedding? Don't forget to tell me what you think about my DIY wedding accessories! :)

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

PS: I forgot to bring the complete photo CD to Copenhagen when I moved, so I couldn't post the picture of flower ball and the banner on its own. I just took the above photos from Indigosix Photoworks facebook page, instead.

Capturing the Innocence

I always love kids, somehow there's something about their innocence and cuteness that attracts me to play around with them. Before I was moving to Denmark, I planned to make a kids photography career and eventually I had two customers for a start. 

It's not that easy though photographing kids because they tend to move around a lot and you cannot dictate them to pose. Well, I don't like to ask them to pose either during photo shoot, since the expression won't be natural if they are posing. However, it needs extra effort to have good candid photos because you need to keep up with their energy and also their happy and joyful moments tend not to last longer so you need to quickly capture the good moments.

Here are several tips for photographing kids:

1. Be friend with them first. It is important that they feel secure with having you around before you point the camera in front of them, unless they would just keep turning their face away from you.
2. Give them something to play with or engage them in any kind of activities so they would have the good time with themselves and show their natural expressions.
3. It's better to have their moms and/or dads hanging around both of you because the kids would feel more comfortable when knowing that their beloved ones are around. Parents can also help in entertaining and watching the kids while you're busy taking their pictures.
4. Since they will move around a lot, you should master the technique of managing the light or you could use the AV program for practical reason. Therefore you could concentrate on having the right angle, the right moment and the right composition without worrying to much with the quality of light.
5. Kids love to touch your camera, so allow them to see their pictures in the camera display, they are more excited to make cute poses afterwards. However don't let them hold it by themselves since there's big chances that they will drop it :-D

I haven't done much kids photography recently, hopefully after my delivery I could spend more time taking photos of my son and other kids. Would be happy if any of you would like to be my next customer in Denmark :-D

These are several of my kids photography portfolio. 

Hope you like it!

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Indonesian Snack: Tempe Mendoan

Sometimes I miss living in Indonesia because you'll easily find delicious hawker foods in such a cheap price. I remembered I went a couple of times to go jogging in Gelora Bung Karno, a huge sport centre in central Jakarta, and we always finished the jogging by buying the Tempe Mendoan in a hawker stall nearby. 

Since there is no one selling snacks like that in here, I tried to make them by myself for today's snack. They were tasted as I expected, even though I still couldn't manage to cut the Tempe in very thin slices like the one the hawker's sold. For you who haven't tried Tempe Mendoan, the taste is salty and savory; and you can dip them with sweet soya sauce and bird chili cut or peanut sauce. The one I made today is using chili peanut sauce as dipping. 

Here's is my version of Tempe Mendoan:

The recipe is as follow:

Tempe Mendoan (for about 10 pcs)

Ingredients:

100 gr tempe, sliced into thin wide pieces

1/2 stems of scallion, cut into small pieces

50 gr rice flour

1/2 tablespoon flour

50 ml water

oil

1 garlic cloves

1/2 pc of shallot or a little bit of red onion

1/2 teaspoon coriander

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/2 tablespoon salt

Method:

1. Crush and mix the garlic cloves, shallot, coriander, pepper and salt in a mortar until all the ingredients are smooth.
2. Add the rice flour and regular flour to the mortar
3. Add half of the water, mix until well combined, if the batter is too thick, add more water. I prefer the batter a little bit thick to create more texture to the tempe.
4. Add scallion to the batter and mix them well.
5. Dip tempe into the batter until the batter cover all of its surface
6. Deep fried the tempe, but remove them from pan before they are turn crunchy.

For the peanut sauce, I used this recipe:

Chili Peanut Sauce

Ingredients:

1 tbsp of peanut butter (I used the crunchy type)

1 red chili

1 bird chili

1 garlic clove

1 shallot

salt

brown sugar

lime leaves

oil

water

sweet soya sauce

lemon

Method:

1. Crush and mix the red chili, garlic clove, shallot, brown sugar and salt in a mortar.
2. Add the peanut butter and mix them well
3. Stir fry them in a sauce pan with a little bit of oil
4. Add the lime leaves
5. Add water as necessary (to get the appropriate thickness)
6. Remove from sauce pan and add sweet soya sauce and lemon until you get the taste as expected. If the peanut sauce is too thick, you can always add hot water to lighten it.

Good luck trying!

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

My First Ever Baby Shower

I've been skipping writing blog these couple of days and it's because the Danish lesson was approaching its end and we had some test last Monday that I got too busy and too tired to write for the past few days. Now that I've already past the test (yeay!) and the lesson would be over soon this week, I could write regularly as usual.

Yesterday was such a perfect day, that I could done the test quite successfully in the morning while in the afternoon, one of my American friend from the Danish lesson was arranging a baby shower for me (yeah, that's very sweet of her!). So when I arrived at her house with two other friends, I was so surprise as she decorated the house and prepared everything so perfectly. I only saw baby shower party on TV as we don't have such thing in Indonesia, so that was quite amazing to me, she and her fiancee even baked a cake for this party. Awesome, isn't it?

Here are some examples of the decoration.

The funny part is that she told us that her fiancee is a very neat person and he loves to have designer furnitures but then all the lamps and rooms were full with swirling ribbons all over them :-D I imagined how shocked he would be when he got home and saw all the massive decorations attached to his furnitures.

Well basically we just hanged around, had chit-chats and ate finger foods the whole afternoon, but it was fun indeed! Since we are all girls and we're around the same age so we had so much stuff to talk about. Apparently they brought me some presents for the baby and I always excited receiving gifts! They asked me to open the gifts and look what I've got! I looooove all of the gifts! They are all so cute and thoughtful. So I was coming home with a bigger smile on my face and a bigger bag of course :-D

And these are all the sweet girls that came to celebrate my baby shower.

From left to right: Joy (the girl who arranged the baby shower!), Irene, Me, Sarita, Sidra, Fransiska and Astrid. Joy and Irene are from America, Sarita is from India, Sidra and Fransiska are from Germany and Astrid is from France. Yeah, we are from all around the world! :)

And these are all the presents that I received!

The painting is from Sarita, she loves to paint and she painted the baby boy's name. My husband and I love it! We planned to put it in the baby's room once we managed to have one. The brown knitted sweater is from Joy and she made it herself. I am still amazed how she is so crafty and talented because the knitted sweater is looked like the one sold in a store instead of handmade. The knitted shoes is from Astrid. The great part about the gift is I just saw these shoes in a store, right before we came to Joy's house and I was willing to buy so badly since they are so cute and I haven't bought any baby shoes but then I was still thinking about it since we have spent too much this month, so when I opened the present and found this in one of them I am so happy. The hippo baby clothes is from Sidra, these are too cute, especially the hat with the ears. Definitely gonna put this for Baby Rafa to wear when he's out from the hospital :-)

Very happy and thankful that I have such a caring new friends! Surely will miss them all once the Danish class is over :)

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Do What You Love

One of the still life object I took from the lesson and got compliment from Mr. Darwis :-D

My love for photography was started when I was in university. I joined a photography club and started to learn how to operate camera and the photography techniques since then. For me, photography is a channel to express creativity. I have always wanted to contribute something to the creative industries and admired those who can inspired others with their creativity, however haven't found a channel that suits me best to express my ideas. I've learned how to draw, how to play musical instruments, how to design stuff with multimedia software; but still I feel like I'm not good at all of them. While through photography, I could express my creativity while still putting my thew in the pictures.

In my early years learning photography, I loved taking pictures of landscape. I guess most of newbie in photography must have gone through this stage. If I could recall, perhaps its because when you found a good scenery, you don't need anything else to make a stunning picture. Therefore it is easier for you to get compliment from others and when you received the compliments, you'll feel better about your skill and somehow it motivates you to keep taking pictures of another amazing scenery.

But then when I know more about the importance of having a concept before taking pictures, landscape photography is not that exciting anymore. In landscape photography, all you need is a good weather, a good timing, a good composition and good technical skill in managing the light in your camera. Perhaps if I travelled alone and have unlimited time, taking photos of landscape could be exciting, since I could have time to plan the photo concept and wait for the right moment. However since most of my traveling time are with families or friends, it's kind of impossible to actualize the idea.

Then I stepped into a higher new stage when I had the chance to learn photography through a formal photography course, in Darwis Triadi School of Photography. They taught us from the very basic techniques and provide us with several genres of photography, such as: still life, architecture, model, landscape etc. From the lesson I realized that I have greater interest in still life photography compared to other genres. The 'love' for still life photography is reflected in my portfolio and even my course friends and Darwis himself agreed that the creativity is shown when I photographing still life objects, while for the other type of objects I couldn't get the best of them. For example when I have to photograph a model and architectural objects, I couldn't feel the same excitement like when I photograph still life objects, and my brain was suddenly kind of stuck that I couldn't think of any concept to make the pictures more alive and interesting. Based on the experience, I realized that the 'love' factor is surely impacted the end result.

I know that we can't be good in everything we do, but my point is when we're doing something we love, a greater and better result would more likely to achieve than when we're doing something we don't love. I know that I'm also not that good in photography, I am far away from being a professional photographer, but the satisfaction when I could take a photo that express my creativity and the appreciation received from others, that is something that motivates me to keep photographing and pursuing the dream to become a pro.

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Pregnancy Journal

It's amazing to see how time goes by so fast. Within just a month, our baby will soon come to this world and I'm pretty sure from that moment on, my life would change completely. That's why I was thinking to keep writing about my pregnancy journey as it would be such a lovely memory for me and perhaps for my son to read when he's older.

I've wrote about the rough first trimester in my last post about pregnancy and now I am about to share the second trimester up to my current term, which is 34 weeks of pregnancy. Most of my second trimester was spent in Copenhagen. Perhaps it is the clearer air or healthier food I was eating that makes me feel healthier compared to while I was back home. The major difference occurred compared to the first trimester is that my appetite for eating is getting bigger and bigger each day and I started to gain more weight, however I still couldn't notice a bump in my belly until the last period of second trimester.

I started wearing pregnancy clothes as they were more comfortable, especially for my stomach. There were some discomfort when you changed physically, especially when the bump started to appear. The body changing also affects your activities, since you urinate often and you can't walk too fast without having a tense in the stomach. Somehow it limits your activities because you need to keep yourself away from carrying too heavy stuffs, from heavy exercises, etc. However for me, by having the baby bump makes me more aware about the existence of the baby inside me and just thinking of it could really makes me smile. I started to feel more connected to the baby.

I was doing baby stuff shopping in my early second trimester, since I planned to bring the baby stuff from Indonesia as they are much cheaper. Normally, there are superstitious belief that you couldn't do baby shopping until your pregnancy reached 7 months, however I don't believe in such things. The baby shopping is not as fun as I thought, though. Apparently there are so much things to buy and it stressed me out since I have no idea what I really need and the shopkeeper was so pushy offering all kinds of baby stuff. I regret for not having an adequate research first before going to the shop. Therefore I recommend for all mother to be, to make a checklist of required items for newborn before going shopping. I would update later on in my blog about the baby stuffs that are necessary to buy before the baby delivered and what stuffs that can be bought later on.

I read that in the second trimester, the baby is able to hear sounds and reacts to sounds, so I was listening to classical musics and even sing for the baby. My husband and I chose one lovely song that we sang it often to the baby because I was told that if later on the baby was cranky, he would calm down if he hears something he's familiar with while he is in the tomb. We also starts talking to the baby everyday so he is familiar with the voice of his parents. I think that is a very good way to start bonding with your little ones.

Entering the third semester, my belly started growing bigger than ever, even my new friends whom I've just met about a month ago could tell that my belly is getting so much bigger than when we first met. Carrying this baby along is tiring sometimes, I found myself easily getting sleepy during the day and I need to take a quick nap to recharge energy. Getting sleep at night is also kinda difficult because the baby starts kicking and moving a lot when I am about to sleep, so I need to change position and go to the toilet often. Fortunately, I have the time to take a nap during the day, so it's not really a problem for me.

Ow, and we also have decided a name for the baby, as you could see in this picture:

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Indonesian Culinary Richness

One thing that I miss the most from Indonesia is the food. Even though I can cook now, but I rarely made an authentic Indonesian food, since it requires lots of spices, which mostly I haven't found in here. That's why it's such a relieve when we went to the Indonesian bazaar held by the Indonesian Embassy in Copenhagen last weekend.

We ate Nasi Padang with the delicious Rendang and cabe ijo and we even bought the Rendang for takeaway. There are lots of traditional Indonesian foods sold in the bazaar, such as siomay, batagor, nasi uduk, rujak, martabak, etc. For me, it's like a culinary heaven after not being able to eat such foods for quite a while.

I'm amazed with this people who are able to make such authentic foods in a foreign country, since the ingredients are harder to be found and most of Indonesian sweet foods are also harder to make. Yesterday I was trying to make a Martabak Manis, it's an Indonesian version of pancake. I was pretty sure I followed the recipe and instruction correctly, however it turned out as a disaster, the mixture won't expand, it turned out more like American pancake, that I have to throw the dough away, after all. Based on discussion with my Indonesian friends who also live here, we agreed that there are high tendency to fail in making Indonesian dessert.

Next week, I will have a party with my friends from the Danish lesson and we decided that each person should bring a traditional food from our own country, since we come from various different countries, it would be exciting to taste other country's authentic foods. I haven't decided what I'm going to make but there are some options that I have in mind, such as tempe penyet, mendoan, tahu gejrot, siomay or something for dessert such as cendol, rujak or es kacang merah. What I have tried to make is only tempe penyet, however I am considering that we should eat the food with rice, otherwise it would taste weird, right?

Well, since I haven't decided yet, perhaps you could recommend which food is representing Indonesia's culinary best and even better if it is proved to be failure-free recipe :-D

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Celebration Dinner Date

Unpredictable things can always happen in life and what you have at the moment can be taken away in an instance. This past few days, we've been waiting for the news about my husband's job certainty since the company has major changes in the organization structure. Luckily, we received good news today, so to celebrate it, I was making pork satay for dinner and bake a chocolate cake for dessert :)

My husband always says that I have the beginner's luck in cooking, because almost every food I made for the first trial are always a huge success, even better than the second and the next trial. Apparently his word is sort of true :-D The pork satay tasted super! It's tasty, tender and juicy. I got the recipe from this blog but I've made some modification to the measurement since I only made for 2 people. Here's the recipe:

Pork Satay (approximately 10 skewers)

Ingredients:
3 slices of pork steak meat, that contains fat (about 300 gr)
1 piece of candle nut (kemiri)
1/2 tablespoon of corriander, heated in a pan
1 cm of galangal, grated
4 shallot
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoon of lemon juice
1 teaspoon of tamarind water
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of sugar
4 teaspoons of sweet soya sauce
white pepper, as needed.

Method:

1. Clean the pork meat in running water, cut into cubes
2. Mash all the other spices, except lemon juice, tamarind water and sweet soya sauce in a mortar.
3. Put the spices in a bowl, add the lemon juice, tamarind water and sweet soya sauce and mix them well.
4. Add the meat into the bowl, mix them well and leave it for at least 1 hour. Cover the bowl with its lid.
5. After one hour, put the meat into the skewers and grill them in the pan until cooked.

What I love about this recipe is it combines the sour and sweet taste perfectly and it also smells delicious :) Here's the result of my pork satay:

And this is our dessert for the day, chocolate cake with melted chocolate and raspberries on top :)

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

DIY: Jar Label Project

Finally I had the time to accomplish my jar label project this morning. I have promised that I will post the final result of my spices jar after they were labeled, so here are they:

I'm having so much fun taking photos of these sweet jars :-) I especially love the pastel colors that match with the white jar lids. Too bad I only have 3 empty jars at the moment. Looking forward to make more spices jars with these label design. This is a very cheap and easy DIY kitchen project that costs nearly 0 kroner for me.

Materials:
1. Used jars
2. Paper
3. Scissor
4. Double Tape

How to make:
1. Design the label using Adobe Photoshop, or you can download the jar label design online.
2. Name the label with the spices name
3. Print it in a thick paper
4. Cut the labels according to the shapes
5. Wash the used jar and remove the old labels attached to the jar
6. When the jars are dried, stick the labels to the jar lid and jar glass using double tape.

Good luck trying! Don't forget to send me pictures of your spice jar label when you're done!

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Concert in a Park

One good thing of living in Copenhagen, you'll easily find various kind of entertainment to be enjoyed for free, without worrying that there would be too many crowds in the events. While in Jakarta, when there is free entertainment or big discounts of something, it can be assured that the event would end up in a chaos.

Last weekend, we went to Michael Learns to Rock concert with some friends. This is a pop boy band from Denmark which was quite famous in Indonesia back then. They are currently launching a new album, so they held a free concert in several places in Denmark. Apart that they are quite famous in Asia, not so many Danish people like this boy band, that perhaps explain why there are not too much crowd in the event. I am not a big fan of them either, but I must admit that they have some good catchy songs.

The concert was held in a small park in Ishøj and we were arrived in time so that we managed to find a good spot. Ow and what I like is that people here are enjoying a concert while sitting on the grass. They didn't stand up or dance like the American's way, i think they tend to be less aggressive :-D For me it is an advantage, since I'm having a big belly now, so it was nice to be able to enjoy the concert sitting. So, here are some pictures from the concert. Enjoy!

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Finding Happiness Through Giving Back

I always believe that happiness is something beyond what money can buy. Sometimes people easily fall into the perspective of happiness is created when we receive something from others, for example love, care, gift or surprises. However there is different level of happiness which aroused when you give something meaningful to others. 

For instance, I've just met a friend in Danish class who loves giving 'meaningful' gifts to others and the gifts are not necessarily have to be expensive, but it should be personal for the ones receiving it. It reminded me that once in the early days, my and some of friends were excited creating a special gifts for our closest friends who were having a birthday or a farewell party. We created scrapbooks with picture and messages from all of us, support messages cubes that placed in a jar and even an happy birthday message board written in an underwear :-D All the efforts are only to witness the others' happiness when they received the surprise gifts. 

Recently I feel so blessed that I have received so much things in life; a loving husband, a healthy unborn baby, a nice home, caring new friends and a good environment to live. All of those things makes me very happy and complete, that helps me to adapt easily in this new country. And one night this question stumbled in my mind, I have received so many good things, but have I given back enough? 

Then I remembered that I had helped a friend who owned a photography company and needed help with his accounting system. Before I was leaving to Denmark, I have helped him creating the system but he hadn't implemented them since he was busy with the renovation of his new studio. And suddenly few days ago, he emailed me to inform that he already used my system to input the accounting transactions and he found it very useful but he still needed help with some issues. So I helped him checking the input to ensure everything is correctly inputted and I gave some recommendation to improve the system and solve the issues. I didn't get paid for it but somehow I feel a huge satisfaction knowing that I helped him with my knowledge and background to create a better accounting system for his company. Somehow I think, perhaps the happiness wouldn't be as great as it is if I helped him just because he paid me for it. That's the power of giving back, isn't it?

So take some time to consider, have you start giving back to others in need? If you feel unhappy with your life, perhaps you could try to give back and experience the amazing feeling afterwards :)

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Never Have Enough Time

While I was working as an auditor back then, I used to feel that I didn't have enough time to do other stuff apart from work since the workload is quite high and there is always another deadline ahead of me, no matter how fast I finished the project. Back then I thought how lucky the women who are a full time housewives, they have all the time in the world to do everything they are passionate about and I used to joke with my friend at the office that our next dream job definitely would be a housewife.

Apparently the joke came true for me as I know become one of the them :-D However, I just realized that being a full time housewife doesn't necessarily make you have the 'unlimited' spare time. Recently I often feel that I so much things to do, yet not enough time, especially after I took the Danish lesson and the pregnancy is getting bigger. People might amaze if I said that because then they'll wonder what did I do the whole day.

Well, in the morning from Monday to Friday, except on Wednesday, I go to the Danish lesson. I walk from home at 8.30 AM and then back at home around 1.30 PM from school and have lunch until 2.30 PM, or sometimes even late if I have lunch date with the friends from the school. Then I usually need to take a one hour nap to recharge my energy so I usually could start other activities around 4 PM. That is when I could start to do things I would love to do, such as blogging, browsing, learning about trading, baking cakes or taking pictures. However, I only have 2 hours at maximum to do such things as I have to prepare dinner afterwards as my husband would be back at 5.30 PM. Then somewhere after dinner and before sleeping, I make my homework for Danish class or study the previous lessons, cleaning up the table, ironing clothes, taking a bath and then suddenly it's already bedtime.

I have so many projects that I should do before the baby is born as I would be less likely have time for all of these once I am delivered, there are:

1. Washing the new baby clothes
2. Preparing and arranging the baby stuffs
3. Finishing the jar label project
4. Pregnancy photo shoot
5. Learning and practicing the stock technical analysis

I really think that I should make a schedule to accomplish all of the above projects within the following month so I wouldn't keep delaying them.

I don't know if it was just me or you also feel the same that lately time goes by so quickly, it is as if time goes in a blink of an eye. It's just suddenly another week passed by and then another month and soon another year. Hopefully I have lived my life to the fullest so I won't regret anything when the year passed by.

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

My Baby's Stroller

As posted in the post titled Stroller Hunting, we finally ordered the stroller online from eBay. Honestly, this was the first time I ordered something online from eBay so I was a little bit worried since we were quite struggling with the few issues that aroused while placing the order.

The first problem is my husband's eBay account was created with Indonesian address and telephone number so we have to change the registration address into our address in Denmark. However somehow changing the registration country on eBay required much effort, it is said that we need to provide certain documents to proof that we reside in Denmark. The customer service notified that the procedure may require some time and most likely will delay our order, so she suggested that we just change the delivery address instead. So this problem was solved.

Another problem occurred once we have placed the order for the stroller as we would like to order the diaper bag and rain cover along with the stroller, since delivery is free for additional items. That is when we want to place order for the diaper bag and the rain cover, the eBay need to contact us by phone as security protection procedures. Meanwhile, the telephone number that registered on eBay is still Indonesian phone number since we are not able to change the registration data. Fortunately the seller could help us by adding the price of diaper bag and rain cover to the stroller price so we could still buy the items without placing order on eBay. Finally this was also solved, so all we should do is paying for the items we ordered.

The seller only receives payment with Paypal or bank transfer. We decided to use bank transfer to settle the bill. However there are some regulation regarding who will pay for the bank charges, as I read the bank's guideline for administration cost, it is said that if both parties will share the cost, it would only cost 40 kroner, however if we the payer who will bear all the cost, minimum charge would be 200 kroner. I don't know how it works for transferring money between EU countries, but paying 200 kroner just for bank charges is not make sense for me. You could buy another stroller accessories with such amount. So I decided to choose the option of sharing the cost, even though I don't know whether it is acceptable by the seller. Luckily, it doesn't matter for the seller so few days ago I received a notification email, stating that the items we ordered have been delivered.

Yesterday the package was finally arrived at our door and I was so excited to open it but my husband came home late in the evening and I already slept when he came home. However last night he already carried the package upstairs so he said that I could open it today. He knows that I cannot wait to open the package soon. LOL. He is totally right, so after coming home from Danish lesson this noon I opened the package and assemble the stroller myself. I am not good with assembling things and usually I ended up breaking them instead. However I am too curious to see how the push chair would turn into, so I tried my best and I succeeded! And I'm so proud of myself for that :-D

So here is how the push chair look like:

We could change the pram into seat unit once the baby is being able to sit, however I couldn't figure out how to pull out the pram and change it with the seat unit. So I'll just post the picture of the seat unit without the frame. I'll ask my husband to figure it out when he came home this evening as he's so much better than me in reading instructions and assembling things :-D

And here is the picture of the matching diaper bag and the rain cover. I love the diaper bag as it is stylish, yet spacious and complete with a changing mat that is stored at the bottom of the bag. However it doesn't have special cases to put bottles, so I'm thinking of buying a diaper bag organizer in order to be able to bring water or milk bottles without the risk of spilling the liquid. The rain cover is actually a universal four season cover, so it could also be used to prevent the baby from snow and wind, which is practical considering the unpredictable weather of Copenhagen.

A few tips when you decided to buy stuffs online:

1. If you buy a product of which comfort and practical play an important role in buying decision, try to test the product first at physical store nearby before you order it online. Doing so, you won't find any unpredictable facts once you received the product.
2. Ensure the website and seller is trustable. Check from the other customers review. It is important especially when you need to submit credit card information to avoid crime.
3. Check the delivery cost and other charges applied to ensure that the total amount that you should pay is still cheaper compared to buying from a brick and mortar store. Since there is bigger risk of undelivered items when buying online, you need to be sure that the reward (price difference) is worth more than the risk.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the products and the quick delivery and responses from the seller. One thing that I am not so pleased is at first I thought the stroller is a product of Germany, since the company who owns the brand is a German company and it is stated that the product is German design, but apparently it is made in China, as written on the packaging. I don't mean to be judging but we all know that the quality of Chinese products are not the very best. But I guess, everything are produced in China for cost efficiency purposes, nowadays.

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

The First Trimester

Recently I talked to a friend of mine, who just found out that she's few weeks pregnant. She knew that I had been going through a lot during my first trimester and apparently she experienced the same thing, so she seek me for advice. I still remembered how terrible the feeling of not knowing what happens in your body and how the body reactions are uncontrollable. There were also times I was so desperate of being sick all the time.

The most depressing thing is, I was so clueless about the pregnancy symptoms and I didn't even know whether they were normal or not. That is when this friend asked me about it, I realized that perhaps all new mother to be are as clueless as I was. Yes, we heard and saw on TV that when you are pregnant, possibly you'll experience nausea and morning sickness, but until we have one, we didn't know that the nausea is really that bad or apparently the morning sickness is not happen only in the morning but all day long. It got me thinking that I should write about the whole feelings and experiences that I had been through during my first trimester to provide insight for those who will have a baby soon or who might just found out that they are having a new life growing inside.

During your first trimester, most likely you would experience nausea which makes you lose your appetite, even though it is your favorite dish. The nausea could come at any time, especially when you smell something with strong, such as garlic, strong perfume and most often is the smell of spices when someone is cooking. During the first few weeks, I cannot even stand the smell of hot white rice. While the nausea caused by strong smell is last longer than just few weeks, I started to be able to smell garlic and cook after the first trimester is over. Oh and one funny thing is the nausea easily aroused when I was brushing my teeth. I was sometimes vomit after brushing my teeth. I've never heard that pregnant woman could easily get nausea while brushing teeth, but I had experience that, and apparently this friend of mine has the same issue over brushing teeth.

Since I couldn't eat certain kind of food or otherwise I would vomit after eating, I became pickier than ever in  choosing what I want to eat. Mostly I picked food which were either less tasty or had sour taste. For certain I'm avoiding food which use a lot of garlic. The best food to avoid nausea are fruits, especially fruits with sour flavor such as oranges. Eating noodles instead of rice also helped me to avoid nausea. As certain type of foods didn't cause nausea, you might start craving for unusual foods, perhaps that's why some people said that pregnant woman intend to have unique food craving. In my opinion, the food craving is only occurred since our body rejects certain types of foods.

At night, you would possibly having a hard time sleeping during the first trimester. You would find yourself awakened at night, feeling hungry and nausea sometimes. I noticed that there is a tendency that you would get nausea if you get up too fast from sleeping position, so the key is slowing down the process of getting up from bed when you're awake. What I did was stacking up some pillow first so the upper body would be higher than the lower body, stay in that position for some time while eating some biscuits or drink sweet tea. Make sure to put the sweet biscuits (for me sweet stuff helps in overcoming nausea) are within your reach when you're in bed so you don't have to get up to reach it. After a while, you could get up from bed with less nausea. That strategy worked best for me.

Having the nausea and losing my appetite caused my body to weaken. At noon, I found myself easily sleepy and tired. I couldn't even staring at computer or mobile phone more than half an hour without feeling dizzy and having nausea. Even when I need to go out from house, I would easily get nausea and sometimes vomited when I was in the car. That was the part that made me feel stressed because it means I couldn't do any thing during the days. It was as if my body is beyond my control. I wanted to feel healthy so badly, but couldn't do anything about it.

I was too late to realize that your mind controls your body and being stressed out over your body reaction just make it even worse. So for those of you who are currently experience the pregnancy symptoms and feel really bad about it, my suggestion is fill your mind with positive thoughts, accept that those symptoms are totally normal and keep telling yourself that you would get through this soon and you are healthy. Just follow your body reaction, if your body tells you that you're tired, try to get enough rest, or when you have the willing to eat certain kind of foods, just have the foods you want, perhaps your body needs the nutrition from the food. My point is do not push your body to react against what it wants and needs, listen to your body and you would feel so much better.

Most important thing of all, there's a new life growing inside of you, so you should feel blessed about it.

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Which Tool Would You Choose?

Quick question that always raise every time I explained to others the importance of starting to make financial plan since early days is what types of investment should they choose. While choosing the right investment is as important as the goal itself, you could never define the most suitable investment choice without knowing first what are the goals you want to achieve.

Why? Because the investments that you will select are depend on how long do you want to receive the return, how big the return you want to receive and how big is the risk you willing to take. The period, the return rate and the risk can only be determined once you know what are the goals you want to achieve. That's why financial planner cannot determine what's the best investment options for each person if the goal itself is still unclear. You could read how to determining your financial goals in this post: What is Your Financial Goal? So, you should keep in mind that the investment product is only a tool to help you achieve your goal!

There are several investment options that you could choose, as follows:

1. Savings or Time Deposit

If your financial goal is short term goal, which you want to be achieved within 1 until 3 years, then probably you just save your money in savings or time deposit, especially if you have low risk investment profile. By keeping your money in savings or time deposit for short term, you protect your money from the risk of capital loss. One of the financial goal that is very suitable with this type of investment is Emergency Fund since you need to keep the money accessible whenever emergency condition is occurred.

2. Mutual Fund

The concept of mutual fund is collective investment, where many investors pool their money to purchase securities (debt or stocks). There are different type of mutual funds, which is classified based on the risk and type of securities invested. In consequence, each type of mutual funds will give different rate of return. Types of mutual funds can be divided into 4:

• Money market fund, it is suitable for short term investment (less than 5 years) since the risk is the lowest but the return also the smallest compared to others. The fund will be invested on money market instruments, such as savings, time deposit and obligation matured within 1 year. The average rate of return for this type of mutual fund is around 7% per annum.
• Fixed income fund, it is suitable for medium term investment within 5 to 10 years since the risk is slightly higher than money market fund, but the average rate of return is approximately 10% per annum. The fund will be invested in government and corporate bonds, which matured more than 1 year.
• Balanced fund, it is suitable for long term investment that is more than 10 years, especially for conservative investor. This fund is invested in stocks and bonds in balanced portion to minimize the risk of stock price fluctuation. The average rate of return for this type of fund is 15% per annum.
• Equity fund, it is suitable for aggressive investor who has long term financial goal, which is more than 10 years. Minimum 80% of the fund will be invested in stocks. Since the risk is the highest compared to the three funds above, this fund also provides the highest return, approximately 20-25% per annum.

3. Stocks

If we choose to invest in mutual funds, we don't need to choose which stocks that we want to purchase as the fund manager will select and diversify the stocks to be invested. However if you already understand the fundamental and technical analysis to select the best stocks, you could invest in stocks directly. Of course you need to have the time and knowledge to monitor and trade your stocks to obtain the capital gain. Nowadays you could easily trade stocks through online broker.

4. Property

Some of my friends are not comfortable investing in securities and they prefer to invest in property since return of investment in property in Indonesia is relatively high, about 20-30% per annum. I guess this type of investment is suitable for low risk profile investor. However you should also note that investing in property requires large amount of money while for mutual funds you could start investing from Rp100,000. The most important thing that should be considered in investing in property is the choosing strategic location, otherwise you would get capital loss instead of the return.

5. Gold

If you're following the news, the price of gold is decreasing recently, which means a very good timing to buy. I would prefer to use gold as long term investment or for emergency fund instead of for short term investment since the price is hardly to be predicted. 

From the above five instruments, my husband and I choose savings for emergency fund and short term financial goals, we also have fixed income fund and equity fund for the goal of kids education fund and we also have golds for long term investment. I also trade stocks using online broker, however I only use idle cash for that since I just started learning about trading stocks, so I didn't consider it as an investment.

So, have you decided which of the above investment you would choose?

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Craving for Holiday!

Discussion in the house lately is covering about holiday, which is kinda impossible since we're expecting for my labor within the next two months :-D Yet, it always brings excitement when talking about planning a holiday, since I love traveling. Even though we might not be able to have a proper holiday until next year, but we have planned to go somewhere in Europe next year then go to Bali and Lombok the year after. Yes, we do miss the beach!

There are different types of travelers, some people prefer to maximize their holiday time by visiting as many places as they can (which is very common for Indonesian) and the other would be more pleased if they could stay at one place for certain days to enjoy the surrounding without rushing. My husband and I are more into the second type, that's why we are not a big fan of joining a tour. After several experiences going on holiday with a tour, I always ended up had sore feet and unsatisfied feelings as they intended to hop on and hop off too fast at every tourism spot.

Fortunately, I love doing all the planning and research for traveling, so I usually comes up with a detailed itinerary for our trip, including booking tickets and accommodation, which places to be visited, activities that we could do, places to eat and places to buy some souvenirs. Since we have all the information we need on the internet, it is so much easier to plan the travel itinerary. There are some websites I usually use, which is quite informative and helpful, they are:

1. Trip Advisor
This website is recommended if you want to know the review from other customers regarding the accommodation or restaurants surrounding your holiday destination. I would feel more confident if I know that the hotel I plan to book has a good recommendation by others, since they give more objective reviews than the promotion on a hotel website or travel agent. I usually find recommendation for nearby eating spots from this website to have recommendation which are the must-try culinary surrounds the area. The information shown on the website is very complete, that you could have the address and telephone of each hotels and restaurants to be added to your itinerary.

2. Agoda
When booking for accommodation online, I use this website several times. Through the website you could obtain information about the prices of many hotels so you could compare several places to get the best rate. They sometimes offer price lower than the price stated on the hotel's own website, so don't forget to check their special offers. Of course you need to submit your credit card for payment, but I've booked several times from this website and there is no trouble with my credit card billing.

3. Momondo
I just found out about this website recently and I think that it is an efficient way to find the cheapest rate of airline tickets. Previously I should check from several airline websites in order to obtain the best rate whenever I want to book a ticket. But using this website, we could just input once the route and the travel date and it will show you all the available flights from the cheapest one to the most expensive. You could even find special offers easily just by choosing your current location and the month you want to travel and this website will show you what deals are offered at the moment. Even more convenience, you could access this on your smartphone.

4. Airbnb
I know this website since today my husband told me that he saw an advertisement on the office's bulletin board about a summer house in Provence that is available for rent. He sent me the link and apparently the owner put it on this website. Since staying at hotels are quite expensive when you travel, why don't you try to rent people's house instead, it is more affordable . I considered it as a good alternative to maximize your traveling budget. For sure you need to be extra careful in choosing the places rented since it might not be as nice as the picture, but you could read previous guest review to see whether the place is truly as advertised. I suggest to choose the place where the owner doesn't live in the house, so you still have the freedom just like when you're staying at hotel.

Hope the information above is useful for you to plan your holiday and traveling ;-)

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Culinary Heaven

My mother is currently on a holiday in Bali at the moment. We talked on Skype yesterday and I was so jealous with her. Bali is one of my favorite place for holiday, not only that I am a beach person but also because there's so many kind of delicious and authentic foods that you may only found in Bali. There are some places I couldn't miss whenever I went to Bali, such as:

1. Babi Guling Ibu Oka
It is located on Jalan Suweta, Tegal Sari No. 2, Ubud and it sells suckling pig with traditional Bali taste. For a complete dish, you would get a crispy skin, tender meat, sausage with mixed vegetables served over rice. You could also ask for the soup and don't forget to eat the dishes with its specialty chili sauce. I usually have a skin pig crackers to accompany the dishes. Personally I think this is the best suckling pig in Bali so this is one of the must visit places whenever I was in Bali. The price for the dish starts from Rp30,000 per portion.

2. Naughty Nuri's
This one also sells pork dishes but this one is Western cuisine. It is famous for its delicious grilled pork rib. The location is also in Ubud, at Jalan Raya Sanggingan. What I love is the meat is very tender with tasty barbecue sauce and the portion is also big, which makes the price of Rp90,000 is worthy. There have two restaurants on the same street, however I prefer to eat at the original place, which is 20 meter after the newer restaurant. They also serve other dishes which is halal, such as beef steak and chicken steak but I've never tried anything else other than the pork rib.

3. Bebek Bengil
Compared to the two places I've mentioned above, this one is pretty expensive. However I must say they have awesome taste of fried crispy duck. This place is located at Jalan Hanoman, Padang Tegal, Gianyar - Ubud. I love the crispiness of the duck's skin but the meat inside is still tender. It's best when you eat them with the chili sauce, which is quite spicy. As I said, the place is kinda pricey, for half-portion of crispy duck, they charge you about Rp100,000.

4. Warung Krisna
I've only tried eating at this Warung once and from that experience I could admit that the Nasi Ayam
(chicken rice) tastes good! The location is on Jalan Kutat Lestari No. 4, Sanur, which is quite remote from the main road however it is well known by foreigner and the local, probably because of the delicious taste and cheap price. Basically they sell Balinese chicken rice, which consist of fried chicken, sate lilit (fish satay), boiled vegetables with shredded coconut, boiled egg, peanut and raw onion chili sauce. You could ask to switch the rice into lontong or porridge. For a portion of chicken rice, it costs only Rp10,000, very cheap isn't it?

5. Menega Cafe
You must have known that Jimbaran is famous for its seafood restaurants, but perhaps once you arrived at Jimbaran, you don't really know which one is the best since there are lots of similar restaurants there. I could recommend you to go to Menega Cafe, which is located at Jalan Four Season Resort Muaya Beach, Jimbaran as the seafood are fresh, tastes good and the most important it has fair prices for the dishes. I have been to another restaurant in Jimbaran and trust me they charged a very unreasonable prices. The price per person in Menega Cafe is approximately starts from Rp50,000. I love the grilled fish, grilled shrimp and the mussels dishes in this place.

I also recommended Bali Bakery if you love cakes, since their cakes is very mouthwatering, they have several branches, one of them is located at Jalan Raya Kuta No. 65. And if you are a big fan of Japanese cuisine, there is an authentic Japanese restaurant, named Take, located at Jalan Patih Jelantik, which sell fresh sushi and other Japanese dishes.

There are lots of places to eat in Bali, I haven't tried them all, but I am going to try them on the next time I have the opportunity to go to Bali. Here are they:

1. Sup Ikan Mak Beng, located at Jalan Hang Tuah No. 45, Sanur, famous for its sour and spicy fish soup.
2. Nasi Ayam Kedewatan Bu Mangku, located at Jalan Raya Kedewatan No. 18, Ubud, famous for its Balinese chicken rice.
3. Nasi Pedas Ibu Andhika, located at Jalan Raya Tuban, famous for its pork dishes served over steamed rice and hot chili.
4. Warung Nikmat, located at Jalan Bakungsari, Gang Widuri No. 6, Kuta, famous for its East Java cuisine.
5. Pizza Club, located at Jalan Laksamana No. 60, Oberoi, Seminyak, famous for its Italian pizza.

Wow, my stomach is growling after I wrote all of them. Bali is truly more than just its beaches, it is also a culinary heaven!

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Learning Danish

The question I heard recently whenever I was talking to relatives or friends is "How's your Danish lesson?" Yeah, I know ever since the last post that I mentioned I was struggling on the first day, I haven't posted anything related to the Danish lesson. Well, so today's post I'm gonna update you with the progress so far.

After several classes, I think I am progressing well even though the teacher increases the pace quite significantly since he is going to have cancel 2 classes during this month. Up till now, I already learn how to introduce myself, tell others about my background, order or buy something in the store and even create a sentence or a question in Danish. Of course I still lack of vocabulary so the words that I could use are still very limited.

One thing I noticed to be successful in learning a language is doing a lot of exercises and keep practicing the lesson you have learned by far. Otherwise, you'll learn new things in every upcoming classes but then you forgot what you already learned in previous classes. One of my classmate is making flash cards to help her memorizing all the lessons learned. I think that is one smart way to help you master the language better as you wrote down once again, you will remember the vocabulary and grammar even more. 

I am planning to use her method as well, however I am not good in keeping too many papers so I think it would be useless if I use flashcards like her as most likely I will lose the flashcards easily. I am thinking to make a digital flashcards instead. The idea is still in my head, but I will post it here once the project is finished. Perhaps by creating a digital flashcard I could also help others who are willing to learn Danish. All they need to do is just downloading the flashcard from this blog.

Another things I should do to improve my Danish is practicing to real world. However it is not that easy as I heard that Danes don't like to speak Danish with you if your Danish isn't good. Most likely they will reply you in English, even though you talk to them with poor Danish. I also spontaneously speak in English whenever I have to talk to the Danes and afterwards I just realize that I should be able to use Danish as I already know what's word to use in that situation. Too bad it's too late, then. Hopefully I could use my Danish in practice real soon.

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

When Mommy Does Shopping

I've heard from some of my friends who already become a mother, that the moment you have children, you're no longer tempted when seeing women fashion sale but the shopping addiction is migrate into the children fashion section. They also said that they are more willing to spend more for their kids' clothes rather than spending money to buy their own clothes. And most of the time, it's harder to resist the temptation if they saw something cute or fancy for their kids, compared to when they see something nice for themselves, especially when those items are on sale.

Well, today I've experienced the feeling when my husband and I came to a warehouse sale, held by a Danish design children clothing brand, named Wheat. This was our first time coming to a warehouse sale in Copenhagen, and to be honest, it was so exciting knowing that we could buy new clothes with a very cheap price! It was held in their warehouse and some of the clothes were put outside the warehouse. It reminds me a little bit of typical stock taking location that I used to do when I was still working as an auditor.

They have classified the clothing rack based on the children age so it was easier to find the correct size, even though some of the clothes already strayed to other boxes and piled up on the floor. Luckily, it was not so crowded, perhaps because it was raining that noon. My friend said that usually there are more people coming to the warehouse sale so it's kinda hard looking for the items you need. There were various items that are sold there, including trousers, tops, winter jackets, socks, hats, towels, etc, that are suitable for children from the age of 0 until 12 years old.

I really love the brand because the design is simple yet stylish without too many graphical motives in its clothes and most of the colors are in pastel, which is my favorite :) The discount is quite big, ranging from 50 until 80% and the price started from 20 kroner into 450 kroner. We even got a winter jacket for baby for only 100 kroner (equivalent to Rp165,000), which was discounted from 500 kroner. Our total spending is 350 kroner for 7 pieces of clothes, so it is a pretty great deal.

Here are our today's purchase!

I'm in love with their tag designs so I took some photos of them. I think the design is super cool! Here they are:

Some tips to keep your budget safe when going to a shopping sale:

1. Define the budget you want to spend during the sale and stick to the budget
2. When you found the items you like, just take them first to the shopping bag. Otherwise it will be hard to find it again if you have a second thought and then feel disappointed when you couldn't find it.
3. Before paying, check again all the items you took and pick only the items you really need. Ensure that the total price is still within your budget if it was above your budget, reconsider things that you could buy later on. 
4. Don't forget to check the condition of the item, ensure that there is no flaw or damage in the items you selected.
5. Then, you're ready to pay!

Happy shopping, Mommy! :)

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Jar Labels

Do you remember about the post I wrote about organizing kitchen? Yeps, apparently it hasn't finished until now, with so much things to do I almost forgot to finalize organizing my kitchen. So today I'm starting to design the label for jar spices. I'm using empty used jars to keep all the spices, instead of using plastic storage because it will look tidier.

However I haven't printed the labels yet, I'm just started designing the label with Photoshop. I made it simple with pastel colors. Here are my result so far:

Since I only have 4 empty jars at the moment, I only made 4 designs. I'm planning to make another design for covering the jars, instead of just the jar lids since I will place the jars in a rack, so it would be easier if I could see it from above and also from the sides.

Tell me what you think about those designs :) Will update this post after I've printed them and stick them to the jars.

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady