We really wanted the space to be fun and colorful for the kids - yet still be usable as well. So this is what we came up with. There is a little corner "room" off to the side that we thought about making into a nursery, but for right now it is just our storage area.
If you click on the photos it makes them larger and easier to see, especially the after photos.
Here is the BEFORE:
Here is the AFTER:
The walls were a little challenging in that there was a lot of painting required. It took Bob and I about 3 days to complete all of the painting. The chair rail in the middle of the wall helped to break up the top from the bottom - but basically it doubled the painting time because we had to trim out about three times as much woodwork. But I really like how the colors turned out. The black door is actually sprayed with chalkboard paint (thank you Mike) - which worked out really well - I was a little concerned about how it would clean up - but it is the same paint we used for the menus for the restaurant and it cleans up with just water and paper towels.
There are 8 photos like this one that I hung on the walls. This is actually some clipart that I downloaded and then just printed off on photo paper and framed. Just be sure that if you are going to do something like this in a kids area that you buy the frames with plastic rather than glass in them - accidents do happen and it is better that things crack rather than shatter.
We really wanted to have some type of Bible theme on the walls, but since we don't know how long God is going to keep us in this building we didn't want to paint on murals. I ended up finding these characters at IPA (teacher supply store) and they worked out really well. The colors are vibrant and the kids had fun seeing who each one was and which one was their favorite. The first half starts with the Old Testament and then wraps around on the other wall to the New Testament.
This is the teacher supply closet. We picked up some plastic shelving units from Wal-Mart and some containers and now everything has a place and is labeled so you can find where everything is at. The shelf on the left has a blue mail slot box which holds the construction paper. I picked this up at the teacher supply store as well and it worked great for sorting out the colors and keeping everything together. 
I found this cube organizer at Target and it helped to get all of the toys and books organized and out of the way. Since we have multiple ages in this room - we divided the cubes into animals, blocks, baby toys, toys . . . everything is labeled so the kids know where to put things back and cleanup is a little easier.
These three windows look down into the sanctuary - so I needed to make curtains that still allowed you to see down - I decided just to do a valance in a blue and cream strip to add a little more color to that wall and break up all the windows. The other thing was that they had to be lined in the back so when you looked up from the sanctuary you didn't see blue striped curtains - just white. They actually were easy to make and hold their shape better with the lining. 
Another issue was this large window in the middle of the wall - It looked into the small corner "room". You can see in the first photo of the before pictures that it was just covered with black paper. I took some of the clipart again added the scripture and printed it out to poster-size on my computer. Each 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper is marked where to tape the next page so all you do is follow those mark and now you have a poster-size picture. I took a piece of foam board and attached it to the wall with thumbtacks from the corner room and now we can change out the "poster" any time we like.It was a lot of fun to see this room come together and the surprise on the kids' faces. I am so thankful that we were able to do this. God truly is wonderful in allowing us to serve and bless those around us.
Have a great day everyone - Lisa
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