Welcome to the landscaping forum and the world of gardening, but like Catkim I agree this might not be the right place for you to start your trip up the gardening learning curve. Your space is "designed" and it is gardening, not design, that you now want to do. We tend to stick to design questions around here, but lots of the other forums on GardenWeb focus on the plants instead. Learning about plants will involve learning about their behaviour (which is seasonal where I live, maybe less where you do) and what the boundaries for their use are. They are living things, and have needs and limitations. Just like dogs poop, trees have roots! And just as you can't get a cat and expect it to learn to fetch (OK, the rare one you can!), you also can't have flowers that don't at some point die off and leave you looking at bare ground, dead foliage, or a woody mass of stems. My own gardening learning curve was greatly helped by gardening magazines. I imagine there are several published in and for your area, otherwise there are national magazines that sometimes address your climate. What's nice about magazines is that they address what is going on in your garden now, and they remind you when to do things to be prepared for the coming season. So even if you buy a stack of older magazines at the thrift store rather than a subscription to current publications, try to read the magazines in the months for which they are intended. Gardening is, for better or for worse, a seasonal activity. You can also only buy things in season, such as bulbs or seeds, so making a habit of visiting local garden centres regularly will also help a lot. They usually bring in plants when they are blooming or at their showiest, so you can learn a lot and find things that address your flower needs at that moment. There may be specific design questions that come up as you garden, for example where to put trees and shrubs. Those you could certainly get help with here. KarinL

GHG, You should actually have more sun in that spot now than you did in the Fall. The trees were likely in full leaf on September 1st, but they aren't here on April 1st. As we go into summer the sun gets higher in the sky, so unless the object that provides shade is directly overhead you should get more sun not less. The way to deal with this is to just do a sun/shade study. Draw a map of the area. It doesn't have to be to scale, just get the large object like trees, fence, house etc. Then at 9 a.m. and again at Noon and again at 3 p.m. draw where the shade is. Do it now, again on June 21st and again in the Fall. The link below gives detailed directions. Steve Here is a link that might be useful: Mapping Your Shade

AHA! That cooking for 60 is something I can certainly relate to! (Actually I can relate to two kids, but rely on rhome410 (sound it out) to explain how larger families work.) I don't know how your family room lays out, but encourage you to search for threads about multiple islands, and check the Finished Kitchen Blog as well. Something that might help with all those people wanting to be in the kitchen, and define the areas for you, would be to have a really big seating island where your breakfast area and den wall are now. It could then be partly kitchen area and partly den, and substitute for the wall in separating the spaces, while keeping them continuous and open. You might not like it for the same reason you don't like the wall--having to go around it and all. But what you could do is put a beverage/snack area in one part (microwave, beverage fridge, maybe even an icemaker), and, unless you need more kitchen storage, art drawers and desk stuff drawers. Maybe even have a coffee maker cubby and sink for that, art, etc., as well as overflow food prep when needed. A great project area. And party central. That might be more than your house can take, or it might be a budget buster, but it might be worth considering. Since you want a new table, etc., you could also do something similar, sans plumbing, by combining some freestanding pieces (2 desks and a table, maybe) with a unifying surface on top.

You are training them well! Your comment about the hampers is correct. I end up having to collect clothes from their rooms. My 15yo daughter is the worst. I have to avoid her room if I don't want to ruin my day, and her clothes are the deplorable. The underwear, the deodorant stains, and she is the brute on the soccer fields, her uniforms are always stained up. She is a lost cause for now. I can just see your little guy sorting his clothes. ..I think I still have some time with my boys to get a few lessons in, after I learn them myself. I have been washing my clothes since I was 12, but I never learned how to properly do laundry, even in Home Ec.