That's incredibly cool, Guy

Are the snowflakes halo particles?

Re: Cycles

I think the Cycles integration will get better and better and/or there will be a few workarounds to make things easier than having to build node trees for every mapped object.

Re: getting the proportioning on textures

When you're in the UV editor, any texture that you've pulled in is repeated. If you want more of the image (ie. tiling) across the object, just select ALL ("a") in the UV editor and make it larger than the image.

Peace

James