need advice on my light setup

Ever since I moved into my new home last year I've been struggling to make the best of my situation with the limited space I have for my basement home studio.

I spent a few hours tonight moving lights around and got so-so results. I was hoping that by posting some sample shots I could get some advice on things I should consider trying.

At my disposal I have four Genesis 200 lights and a 600EX-RT. I also have a Scott Halo diffuser, a pair of umbrellas, a pair of small Nova softboxes, a 10x36 strip light, and a gel kit for the 600EX.

After many different configurations, I ended up using the 600EX-RT as a hair light because no matter what I did I couldn't nicely gel a white background with the gel kit. So I ended up using one of my monolights as the background light postioned behind the stool with a 40 degree grid on it.

The shots you see below were taken with my brown background because I gave up on the white background.

The first shot was just the key light and fill light (right now I'm going for flat lighting because I'm going to be photographing my kids and they move around a lot). In the second shot I added the hairlight at 1/4 power. In the third shot I added the background light using minimum power. The fourth shot is my complete setup as I left it for the night.

None of the shots were edited other than a quick crop in LR3.

Any advice would be appreciated. I used to have a mannequin head but I sold it before I moved so all I have to work with this late at night is Minnie Mouse. But I figured that the height of Minnie on the stool would be about the height of my kids standing in the same spot.

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My daughter has the same Minnie. It looks good. I am confused about the gelling the background part. Are you trying to use a white background and gel it say pink or blue or something and get consistant results? Or are you trying to gel with a color temp gel to match ambient lighting?

With your low white cieling and using the shoot through umbrella, you are going to have light scatter every where. Because of that, I would use the shoot through as a fill light. The Halo will to a lessor extent do the same thing, so using a softbox for key may give you more control.

What you have there looks pretty good. Question is if that is what you wanted or not.