I'm in a similar predicament, so I can relate. In a kids' bath I don't think I'd do cararra for the countertop because of etching and staining. I'd do either silestone, soapstone or maybe the cardosa. Instead of white grout, consider doing a gray grout. It doesn't stain and the gray lines give a nice vintage feel, and provide a graphic punch so you might not need to add additional color in the tile. If you search for white subway tile gray grout here I am sure many pics will come up.

I have Carrera in my upstairs bath. It is breathtakingly beautiful and so soft looking. It makes me sigh when I look at it as it just surprises me how beautiful it is. However, I must say that I do worry about it. I am not one of the easy going types who could live with etching. The reason is because it is just so beautiful it would be like the young Brad Pitt with acne. It would be a shame, a tragedy!!! I know I could never live with that in the kitchen. As much as I drool over it I would have a cow if it didn't always look as it did on day one. Call me shallow, superficial, I don't care! It's too expensive to think of it not holding up to the look it had on the first day. I have been looking at some of the white granites and find they vary so much. I love some of the Bianco Romano slabs but others are just plain and unexciting and so nothing for me. If you could find the right slabs it would be a contender. I don't mind the yellow in them, it's the ones that don't have any veins or character and are just speckles that I don't like. I am having to replace my kitchen granite since we had a sink failure and also the granite I have is all pitted and chunks of quartz or mica whatever are falling out. The guy who sold it to me is out of business and the fabricator who agrees it has "issues" and probably was not resined and has too many cracks and pits has offered to give me a great deal on replacement which turns out not to be so great, it's still in the $4K range, but it would be closer to 6K if full price. I'm sick about it. But that is why I am still in the market for granite. For some reason I have had such bad luck with everything we have done in our reno. I am not happy with any of it. I should have used a KD and not tried to do this on my own. But back to slabs, it's hard to not love the quartzite and marble but I just know I couldn't live with it and not obsess. I admire those of you who can!

I have white Caesarstone perimeters and honed Danby marble on my island. I'm obviously biased, but I think it looks great! I'm also very happy with the functionality of both the quartz and the marble surfaces. My BS is polished calacatta mosaic tiles. Both marbles in my kitchen have the same warmish white undertone as the Caesastone "Blizzard" color that I chose. The other CS whites ("pure white" and "organic white") I thought clashed a little with my specific marble slab, if I recall. There is some etching on the marble counter, as expected, but there is enough veining that it's difficult to find and I don't mind it at all. my GW post is here, but the other link below has some better pictures of teh CS and marble together: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/kitchbath/msg0300101117213.html?30 Here is a link that might be useful: my kitchen-scroll down to

I have dark cherry cabinets and Caesarstone Blizzard counters on the perimeter and table surface of my island. We used BM Edgecomb Gray, which is a fairly warm gray/graige. You can see it best in the 5th and 8th pictures in the linked thread. (The adjoining rooms were painted a different color at the time.) Here is a link that might be useful: Edgecomb grey