Thank you all for the great advice! I apologize for not being more specific about our needs and wants and for those funny characters in my original post. To answer toronado3800's question, we are informal people so we definitely want an informal yard/garden. The yard feels vast and leads your eye right to the street. We'd like it to feel cozy and keep the interest at home. :) The tree issue is one we debate regularly, karinl and missingtheobvious. I know the tree in front of the door is terribly placed, but it is such a nice tree we'd hate to cut it down. The pine actually scares me a little (we are due for the big earthquake here in the NW...) but again, it is a perfectly good tree. We were thinking about possibly adding a third tree to the left of the pine (maybe a Dogwood - I know they don't mind acidic soil) to add visual symmetry. Planting a tree seems like a good, long term investment of the little money we do have. Karinl, extending the porch is something we have been thinking about. At this time, we can't afford to make it a true extension with concrete; what kind of material would you suggest using? We'd love to have a 2nd path from the street or from the driveway to the front door too. We love the rocks (I know some folks spend a fortune in rocks, and not just the diamond kind, either), but we don't know how to make them look like "God placed them" -any ideas? The dry river bed idea is really interesting. I'm trying to picture what it might look like. Does the "stream" just run the length of the gully or does it have a beginning point in the yard somewhere? We did look into having the gully filled in so we could have extra parking for friends and family, but it doesn't fit our budget at the moment. This seems like an interesting alternative. I work in a library, missingtheobvious, so it is funny you should mention that as a resource (one of the best!). I've looked at so many glossy photos and read so many ideas about what makes good landscaping that I'm a little overwhelmed by it all, which is why, Karinl, your idea not to think too much about individual plants but about size and shape and need first is great! I have been writing down names of specific plants like mad, but can't actually visualize them in the space when I go back to my list later. Missingtheobvious, thank you for the idea to try and figure out what plants we have first. There are several I am completely in the dark about. I will definitely try posting on the Name That Plant! forum. One thing that really bugs me is the chain link fence -it isn't very pretty and unfortunately there is a lot of it. I'd like to camouflage it in some way. Any ideas? Again, my thanks for all of your great advice! It is really helpful to "talk it out" this way.

Congrats on your new home. "Yes" to drought tolerant gardening. I'd suggest doing an google image search on "drought tolerant garden" to get a sense of what types of designs/styles you may like. There are a lot of options! I think a cute little english-garden look could be nice and it's possible to mimic a traditional english garden with drought tolerant plants. Have you bought a copy of the Sunset Western Garden Book yet? I recommend it. Sunset Mag is very water-aware and the book has tables listing plants for different situations (i.e. for fall color, or for shady areas) and they always list the water usage. (they also have a list of drought-tolerant plants). You can check out their website too though when I looked just now I wished their navigation was better. What did you imagine for privacy from the school across the street, low hedges or ? Some people put a fence or other physical barrier to create a more private front-yard sitting area. I personally prefer to see a cute house from the street than a wall, but everyone is different. Your yard looks small, so that might make it tricky. And...how are you feeling about the arbor? To my eye, the scale and placement of vertical beams feel off, and it's unusual to have it wrap all around the house. BTW, some CA cities were offering cash to residents who replaced their lawn with something else. I heard that someone from the city would need to visit before and after. So if you're planning to dig up the lawn, you might want to check into that and see if you can get some $ for it.

The roof is going to be a lot more expensive proposition than an arbor. It will require permits and inspections and possibly support posts because of snow load. The support posts will require footers to be dug to support the roof. It will have to be tied in to the header over the garage, wherever that happens to fall. Even if you could do it with brackets, you wouldn't have any support in the center because of the double wide door. You would need something like this instead. You would also need to add some kind of gutters because the smaller roof is going to drop rain onto the garage roof and it has to be carried away somewhere. You would be going from a small project to a much more extensive one.

"Any tips on which style/color shutter to get?" Ditch the shutters as shutters need to look like they could possibly be functional in my opinion and 2-wide windows that will not be the case. Brighter color front door would be good.