I agree with Michigranrachel...when you have small children, you may want their bedrooms closer to you so you can get to them in the middle of the night if you need to. Also, when they get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom (and not old enough to do it completely on their own and still yell out for you in the middle of the night!!!!) you don't want to have to walk all around the house to get to them, or there maybe some accidents. I think the best situation would be to have the bedrooms closer to you, but maybe not right next to each other (when one gets up in the middle of the night and is yelling, it wouldn't automatically wake the other one up). Just some suggestions from someone who has two small children (4 and 6) who often wake up in the middle of the night, but that is a whole different category - can GW help me with that one LOL!!!!!

Thank you to all of you who replied! Such great ideas! I am leaning more toward art than shelving now, just thinking long-term. We have a little nephew who will be over quite a bit and is 6 mo. old but soon will be running back and forth through that kitchen, and hope to get a dog in the spring and then start a family, so there will be so much traffic along that wall I don't want to chance it. I'd like to pick something that really speaks to me as far as art goes, so I'm willing to hold off on a permanent piece (or several) until I find something I love - so for now, temporarily, I'm going to create my own! I found instructions on putting quotes on canvas that I liked so I'm going to do that with lyrics from our first dance song (Honey Bee, by Blake Shelton). I'll be sure to post pics, I'm tackling that tonight! Oh, and about the wallpaper - there was wallpaper on that wall before, and luckily it was very easy to remove. However, I don't want to repeat that experience after just having removed it - but it's a great idea if you love wallpaper! (see pic for reference of the "before"! Thanks again for all the suggestions, I'm new to these forums and everyone has such amazing ideas! I'm sure I'll be posting a lot more in the months to come as we go from moving in and unpacking to decorating!

Like the cabinet door style. Not fond of having more than one appliance garage cabinet (or one matching pair depending upon location/symmetry achieved) actually sitting atop the countertop taking up countertop space. Your joy in the beauty of that hood while it's new may well fade as you're forced to really work at keeping it looking new.

You have tons of options, but one is to do a shallow plate rack to display some of your larger platters or boards like the one below. You could do a collage of prints and pictures (maybe some framed family recipes) or just even a large single print. You also have plenty of room for a display cabinet if you have items you'd like to display and don't mind moving the buffet you now have on the wall.