Creating an Altar in your home

In our last home an altar or prayer space didn't really make sense.  It seemed like every space in our old house was serving a functional purpose and any space that we would have used as an altar or holy space would have been likely to get junk tossed on it or played with as any other space.  In this home though we have a bit more space, and in a negative sense, our religious stuff is a bit more scattered about.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago we put together our family altar.  Without going into details, our blessing of it burned a child's face (and we henceforth eliminated ACTUAL flames) and a fair amount of screaming.

But alas, we have had several family prayer moments at our new family altar.

Here are our criteria for our altar (or family prayer space).

1. It is at our kids' height.

We are using a trunk that is probably only 18" high to place some things of special religious significance on.  We placed some of our special crosses and religious symbols on the wall.  I suppose at our kids get older/taller we will upgrade.

2. The kids helped set it up.
Our toddler nailed in the nails, and he has since reorganized the the order of the crosses many times. They choose what goes on it during given times and seasons.    When something is going on for them or someone they care about, they turn on a candle and say a quick prayer.

3. It is not in a public place in our house.

As the altar is upstairs in our house it is OUR altar.  It is is the prayer space for our family and is thus intimate.  We want to be able to have non-Christians in our home without them feeling discomforted by our religiosity (or by their religious baggage that our religious symbols point them toward).  We want our Jewish friends to visit without having 2000 years of anti-semitic Christian history staring them down.  We figured by the time someone who visits us in going upstairs to our bedroom they probably know enough about our religious expression to have self selected into friendship.

4. Its not too pretentious or "untouchable"

The whole point of this altar is that it is a place in our home where we remember God, we gather as family for prayer, we sometimes pray privately and is part of our ordinary.  That means that sometimes the kids put socks there or I place my phone on it to remember to take it downstairs.  Thomas dumped a whole bottle of holy water all over everything the other day---that's okay. God's wrapped up in our mess and in our ordinary....

If you were going to have an altar in your home, or already do, what are the important elements for you??