I'd say the nook will make a great guest bed and the play loft a wonderful study area. I think if you replace the bed as she gets older (or take off the top) the room will grow nicely with your daughter. Beautiful window seat and I really like your inspiration pictures. For your toddler son, how about a jungle and maps, kind of an Indiana Jones theme? You could play up the jungle aspect, but maybe use the maps with the gold (rather than blue) background...they look more vintage and play up the 'Indy' theme. Have fun! April-Lorraine, Great ideas...thanks for sharing! Ncamy- Your daughter must have loved that room...it sounds charming :)

I wanted to second emagineer about painting a metal sheet vs. magnetic paint/chalkboard paint. We did multiple coats of magnetic paint underneath our chalkboard paint on the side of our built-in fridge and it really isn't as strong as we would like. We followed the directions exactly but it seemed to take so many coats! HTH

Wow. Go away for the weekend and loads of messages waiting upon my return. Thanks for your advice everyone. I'm really an authentic art person and have just ordered a print from esty and have several others hiding in my closet I can have framed. I just really liked the size of the boards and when I put the new cabinet in the kitchen I had to move them somewhere. We do actually use them. The kids will often write occasion appropriate messages (happy birthday daddy!) or we used it to count down the days to our last vacation. In the kitchen I did our weekly menu plan on it so everyone knew what was coming (whether they liked it or not). I'm including a more recent shot at a different angle so that the glare isn't so awful and you can see it with the slipcovered couch (okay, I'm still hoping SOMEONE will like them - just one little voice).

I love some of these ideas--everyone is so creative here! I like both maddiemom6 idea of the hallway art rail and sujrfr's link to the art frame boxes. I think I might do something like maddiemom6's suggestion in our hallway for our youngest. Something I've done with my kids is to get them each a plastic filing tub at Office Depot and then I create a pendaflex art file folder for each year. All of the kids' school projects are put in a drawer in their room (the ones that are not on display in the house) and then at the end of the year we sift through the drawer and choose some of the favorite works of art or other projects and put them in the file folder in their filing tub. Other special momentos--awards, sports teams, girl scouts, certificates, etc. also get their own folder. Then when they are grown, I will give them the filing tub so they have their own memories. I love the idea of scanning everything, but just know I would never get around to organizing it all--plus this way they have some of the actual art work, poems, etc. which they created. Now oldest DS took a pottery class last year and came home with several pieces--he gave several out all out to his uncles/aunts this year who were thrilled to get a personalized piece of art from him.