I have three suggestions for inexpensive wall hangings.

One is to frame pieces of Japanese paper. Specialty art stores often carry it and sometimes you can buy half-sheets if a full sheet is too big for your space. I like the Japanese Paper Place in Toronto. They have a huge selection organized by color.

Another idea is to see if any of your local colleges have a student gallery. A lot of it might be crap, but if you’re lucky you’ll find something good. And every year there are new artists to check out.

And finally, we’ve taken photographs of the tv while it was playing our son’s favorite movies and framed large prints of that for his room. (I’m sure Pixar wouldn’t be too happy about this.)

Good luck. I’m sure whatever you do will look great.

Oh, and absolutely, we have. That sucker is drilled in there nice and secure. In fact, it’s slightly irritating to me that it’s just a few inches off center from the chandelier, but it had to be that way to get it into the studs.

I don’t want to be insulting, but please tell me you’ve buckled that shelving unit to the wall.

I agree, Lisa. I hope I’ve found that balance. I will say the rest of our house doesn’t look quite so daycare-ish. Mainly, I really try to keep the number of toys we have laying around at a minimum by packing them away and putting them in the attic when they go out of favor.

That’s a great way of looking at it, though.

I just think there is room between no evidence of children and looking like a daycare. I’ve slowly added more primary colors to our living room, but I really work on keeping it under control. Our baby is 1/3 of the occupants here, so I try to think of it like that, so it gives me a “line” or a place to stop.