Thanks everyone. Smick, the roof is polycarbonate panels from LHS, they come in clear, white, smoke and green. dcarch, we hope for snow and hardly ever see it here in central Arkansas, Sorie,the southeast, Sunnyca, it's not real square, but the doors and vents work fine and with a lot of caulk and paint on my part it looks fair and I had thought of the sign over the door idea, DH suggested "The Win-Door Astoria", since it's made from windows and doors.Thanks for the ideas. Syble

April Showers arrived in San Antonio around 1am this morning. It rained for several hours. Now it has started to rain again. Thank goodness we had put compose on our yard last week. I hope it will be clear this weekend, so we have a beautiful day for the plant swap. Barbra

Ha ha! When I first saw the post-it note idea it didn't seem especially helpful. Then it came time to empty my kitchen, a daunting and discombobulating process. After checking and rechecking the same cupboard for about the tenth time, I remembered the post-it notes, which suddenly sounded genius! Thank you all for your words of encouragement! I'll post updates.

Really nice home. Like your landscaping efforts on the left but there is still a lot of concrete. If you could move the fence on the right side of the garage (that is now even with and continuing the same line as the front exterior wall of your garage) or replace it with another, preferably natural wood finish fence set back several feet from its current location, then you could create a green planting area in front of it. That could help offset so much concrete -- especially if you could use a few visible treated posts for supporting that fence -- posts to which you could add brackets for hanging pots of blooming plants. Budget permitting, perhaps you could add a forward facing gable roof on the left side of the house … left of and extending a few feet beyond the front exterior wall of the garage. Doing this could both create a usable front porch left of your existing steps overlooking your garden/landscaping and it would add curb appeal by making your front entrance more prominent -- more the focal point of your home -- rather than your garage. From a porch on the left, you'd have only a couple of steps down (or ramp) to stand on the top of the slope and the beginning of a walk path path near/alongside the tall shrubs on the left of your home (along the same path as your white edging) through your front yard garden/landscaping. Adding a simple concrete bird bath to any landscaping can add interest. Make sure the bowl is wider at the top so if the water in it ever freezes, the water will be able to expand without breaking the bowl. If decide to build the porch: If your porch is supported by posts with a natural wood finish you could link it to the garage by adding an arbor over both garage doors in the same finish, keeping your current garage doors and having them painted the same color as the siding or replacing one or both of them with a wooden door with window above.