FlowerLady here, and a bit freaked as several have said I would know what to do here. YIKES! I've been gardening on a shoe string for years. I grow natives, shrubs, annuals,perennials, roses, herbs. I live in the s.e. part of the state though. I have not been able to grow lavender here, except as an annual. It does not like the humidity. I love my roses, jasmine, cat's whiskers, moses in the bullrushes, basket plants, snake plants, ferns, plumeria, bougainvillea, crotons,plumbago, hibiscus, palms, succulents, Mexican heather, Mexican bush sage, Mexican petunias, chicory, elephant ears, aloe, flame vines, other flowering vines, orchids and many others. I grow from seeds and cuttings. I just mingle everything together for my own kind of tropical cottage garden. Visit the Florida Gardening forum here at GW. I'll leave a link at the bottom and you will get lots of great ideas for your part of the state. Check out what people are growing in your area also and look in garden centers. I love your house and think you will have lovely gardens once you are moved in and playing in the dirt. What are the little shrubs in your circular garden surrounding the palm tree? Whatever you do, don't stress, just have fun as your garden comes together. It's an ongoing process, something to enjoy every day. FlowerLady Here is a link that might be useful: Florida Gardening

There is a free software to download scanned pics of house then you can "paint" to see if you like it? They have several major paint supplers in the paint database. Takes some time but really works.

I normally lurk once in a great while but thought I'd chime in here. I agree with the others. I like the craftsman style door the best with your house and also think your door hardware and light fixtures are too ornante for craftsman style. We just got the occupancy permit on our house which is also craftsman-inspired. We used a fiberglass craftsman style door from ThermaTru (model CCA230). We plan to use the gel stain on it (once the weather is nicer) so that it looks like wood but it can be painted, too. The door is available without the dentil shelf or with one of two dentil options. You can also get different kinds of glass to go in the 3 windows or keep the plain. The door is my second favorite part of our house and I highly recommend it. It would look great with your house. You can Google the model number and manufacture to find pictures of it. For the lights, we used a very simple jelly jar light by the door and double bullet-style lights for the sitting area of the porch, both with a black finish. I would have loved to use more square craftsman style lights for those areas but we were on a tight budget and figured they'd be easy to change later if we wanted. For the door hardware, we went with a simple lever style with a rectangle backplate and a separate deadbolt, all in a matte black finish.

dont have PS, but I can see that if you want to add some dimension and color the obvious things would be to paint the shutter and the front door a bolder color, then MAYBE if she sees how nice that changes things, she might be more likely to repaint the front steps and the wooden steps to the right. She could also paint the concrete base of the house a darker color which would anchor it better. I could also visualize a window box on front window (left of the doorway) or maybe on all 3 windows? hmmm, not sure. those could also be the same color as the shutters? I'm sure someone will come along with PS and mock it up for you.