I think I hear a collective groan from my girlfriends who find this idea a little scary: I call it “Make me a Mural”.  I cover the basement walls in large rolls of white paper.  Before I had access to free paper! (thank you to my husband’s office and their rolls of draft engineering plans), I used brown shipping paper.  I tape it everywhere, covering the baseboard (lesson learned).  The key is to get it higher than the kids can reach.  Then I hand out buckets of pencils, markers, and crayons.  The rules?  Make me a Mural.  A BIG ONE.  I’ve never had any problems getting washable marker off of anything.  My walls are cream and my woodwork is white!  But hey, you only live once!