A New Year and a New Life (so to speak)

It's been a while since I've had the chance to blog here, and it's for a very good reason. It's because we welcomed our first baby to our lives on December 7. Yes friends- we welcomed our sweet Evangeline Ruth and life is indeed sweet.

~Eva at 11 days old~

Life certainly has changed drastically here in the Deng household but truly, it is a blessed change. I admit for the first 6 weeks of her life, it seemed as if life came to a screeching halt that basically just included nursing, crying, nursing, nursing, dirty diapers, nursing, and more nursing. O yah, and pumping. (sorry if that's t.m.i.- too much information)

However, now that she is 3 months old- oh man it is just amazing. Eva is quite the little person now- able to coo and squeal, and almost laugh, smile, and kick her little legs in excitement. It's precious.

As if that weren't a gift enough, since she is sleeping better at night (for the most part) I have been able to resume little projects here and there around the house. Which is fabulous, because it just adds a sense of normalcy and as you know- I love projects.

One project in particular that I wanted to get done was the foyer. First I wanted to put privacy lining up- so that when I nurse Eva in the living room I can do so without worrying someone walking by (especially at night) could see in. And the second was painting the foyer!

The privacy lining was so worth it and definitely a great decision. It still allows light to come in but offers an eye appealing solution for some privacy. A win-win if you ask me.

So without going into too much detail- I'll just simply show you the difference.

Before:

After:

When we got home from the hospital- I realized quickly that the open windows just weren't going to cut it. So I came up with a quick-fix of hanging up some curtains on hangers over the windows.

See Exhibit A:

Oh man- that was rough looking, but it worked. Not eye-appealing at all, but it did work... (Shwew I'm so glad those are gone).

Muuuuuuuch better.

On to painting.

I knew I wanted it to be a similar shade of the gray that we did in the living/dining room but I knew I wanted to take a risk (for me) and go darker. We have lots of natural light that flows into the foyer and with the huge white bookshelf that constitutes 2/3 of the banister, I knew we could go for it. 

So we did!

We tested 3 different shades of gray:

(however in this picture it looks like 4, but that's just because I painted the same color twice- the top and bottom one are the same.)

Can you guess which one we went with? 

Numero dos! We felt it was the right amount of contrast (aka it was dark enough) and it held a similar tone to the living/dining room color. And we were definitely not disappointed.

Josh snagged a few of me, err I mean the foyer, in progress. 

And here my friends is the final product:

Yup! Totally what we wanted~