Matt, Is the soil sandy? If it is, be very careful with raised beds because raised beds of very sandy soil/sandy loam in our climate can dry out very quickly. I am south of you between Marietta and Thackerville but have mostly dense red clay, so we have built raised beds that sit between 4 and 8" above grade in our main garden. Even those will dry out faster than I like in summer, but we have to have them raised somewhat in order to have good enough drainage when we have the occasional flooding rainfall. At the end of the garden where we have a band of sandy soil on the west end, the beds aren't really raised above grade level. It is just that the slope of the land drops so quickly that they look raised. This year we are adding another growing plot in a different location from our big garden. It has very sandy soil in much of it and just one area with dense clay. When I improve the sandy soil, I will add clay soil to it (dug from other places on our rural property) in order to help it hold water. Otherwise, I think my sandy area will drain too quickly in summer, even with organic matter added to it. You have to consider the slope of your land and the way water drains from the land when you put in your garden. You want for your raised beds to run crosswise--across the slope, not with the slope. If you make the beds run across the slope, each raised bed with catch and hold rainfall and generally will keep most of the soil in the raised bed. If you run you beds up and down with the slope, soil will run downhill with the rain and you'll have constant erosion issues. If your soil is very sandy, you'll need to enrich it with organic matter that will help it hold moisture and that also will improve its fertility. If you have dense clay, amending it with organic matter is just as important. An irrigation system, whether you use some form of drip irrigation like T-tape or whether you use soaker hoses will help keep the garden well-watered and moist. Mulching helps conserve moisture and keeps the soil cool as well. Avoid overhead watering because moisture on the plant foliage can contribute to all sorts of diseases. There are lots of ways to garden with children and make it fun. Planting a pizza garden is a popular activity and if you Google, you'll likely find all kinds of plans for pizza gardens. Many school gardens plant a pizza garden to help get first-time gardeners interested in the process. Giving each child their own small raised bed and letting them plant it and tend it can turn kids into little gardeners. When our son and nieces and nephews were young I loved planting a superized bean teepee not just with beans but also with mini pumpkins, small decorative gourds, cucumbers and/or sugar snap peas in spring or pole type southern peas in the summer. I made the TP big enough that 2 or 3 kids or a kid and a dog could sit inside the TP and play. I just left one pole out of the teepee in order to have a 'doorway'. I also made sunflower houses for the girls or sunflower forts for the boys by planting the sunflowers in a cube shape to form 4 walls. Then, once the sunflowers were a couple of feet tall, I sowed morning glory or other vining plant seeds at the base of each sunflower. The vines climbed the sunflowers to fill in the walls. For a 'roof' I ran garden twine back and forth between the sun flower walls about 6' above the ground and the morning glories grew across the twine and made a roof. You also could use some sort of edible crop instead of morning glories if you want. Be sure to leave an open space for the doorway. You also can create a bean or cherry tomato arch or tunnel where the kids can play beneath the arch or tunnel once it is shady while harvesting tomatoes or beans from it. Different kids get interested in different things. DH's best friend's grandson wasn't that crazy about the garden except for the watermelons. We grew mini refrigerator melons and he loved to search through the vines to find a melon or two to take home and eat. He also liked the cantaloupes, cherry tomatoes and eggs gathered fresh from our chicken coop. Because we had a lily pond in the backyard, we always had frogs, toads and turtles and he enjoyed the water garden as much as the vegetable, herb, flower and fruit garden. Another young child who often visited our garden really just wanted to play in the dirt, though she did like picking and eating fresh strawberries too. She was pretty young so was more interested in the flowers than in the edible crops the first year. Even kids who don't like veggies in general often will develop a taste for their own veggies as grown in their own gardens. If your pizza-eating son doesn't develop a fondness for veggies, you still could encourage him to grow things that are fun.....like a "zoo garden" full of plants named after animals, or a decorative garden full of gourds, pumpkins and red stalker corn for fall decorations, or an herb garden from which y'all could harvest Italian herbs to flavor home-made pizzas. Sometimes kids who don't get all excited about veggies will get real excited about homegrown peaches, plums strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, grapes, etc. However, fruit plants are more of a long-term thing that may not return much of a harvest for the first couple of years. (It is a great way to teach kids to work towards a long-term goal though.) I'm going to link a great book that is very helpful for beginning gardeners. It has actual layouts of beds, including showing you how you can plant them not only the first year, but in subsequent seasons and years. Then, Google and find the books about gardening with kids by Sharon Lovejoy, like 'Sunflower Houses', 'Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots' and the later one that has something about Toad Cottages and Shooting Stars in the title. It is always better to start smaller the first year and add to the garden each year so that you are not biting off more than you can chew that first year. Enact weed control measures very early and keep after the weeds and grass religiously because once you get way behind on the weeds, it is easy to get discouraged and just walk away from it all. Pulling weeds isn't a fun chore for anyone and can really discourage young gardeners from enjoying gardening if they have to spend all the free time pulling weeds. It is better to mulch well early in the season and keep the weeds from establishing in the first place. You success or lack of success hinges on the soil more than anything else, so improve it first. Even when we built raised beds above the grade, we still improved the soil as deeply as we would beneath the raised bed areas before we built them. At first, because we had dense clay, we could only dig or rototill to a depth of 6 to 8" because the ground was so compacted. We enriched that soil and built raised beds above it, and now we can dig down a couple of feet after 14 years of gardening in those beds. Every year the soil gets better and better, but in order for that to happen you have to keep adding organic matter to feed the soil as it breaks down. In our climate, heat eats compost, and eats it up quickly, so amending the soil is a constant job, not a one-time thing. Good luck and keep us posted on how it is going. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Starter Vegetable Gardens

Agreeable Gray by sherwin williams is actually the color I would suggest! I like Pure white for the trim. For the rest of this, I am going to make a list of suggestions. tile: Baja Tecate (12x24) with sahara beige grout (matches agreeable gray wonderfully) carpet: ride it out -whisper (shaw floors) stain- weathered wood. It's a gray stain. I would do a heavy stain on shaker style cabinets. (I know you're wanting white, but this is just for thought). perhaps bathroom cabinets? cabinetry hardware: Remington with barpull hardware (something like Hickory Hardware Bar Pull in stainless steel finish) They're very clean looking, and I love having actual handles instead of the little knobs on cabinets. countertops (kitchen): viatera quarts- cirrus backsplash: Nove Hex- Steel Mix with frost grout kitchen sink: siligranite- single bowl -anthracite black (I LOVE the single bowl sinks) bathroom vanity tops and showers: gray swirl (I don't have more information on this at the moment, but I can post pictures of what I am referring to) for lighting, door knobs, faucets, etc: keep things brushed nickel and chrome

We finally decided on white pea gravel, and while it took quite a while to find a supplier (all garden stores nearby were sold out), we're delighted with how it turned out. When weeds pop through we can dig them out (decided on no landscaping fabric), and the kids have decided that gravel is almost as much fun as sand to play with (not to mention it doesn't get tracked in the house as easily.) On dark or rainy days - quite common here - the white reflects some light into the house, unlike the old bricks which just got darker and felt gloomy. We left the brick pathway to the door for now, as well as enough to be a border and hold the gravel in place, so we still have solid walkways and aren't worried the gravel will wash away. The curve of the brick path and the uneven border of old bricks means the patio is an odd shape, which I'm not sure about but my husband likes. The gravel is not as soft as grass, but isn't too painful for walking across barefoot to the table and chairs. I had planned to just do the main patio, and see about the rest of the space later, but we ordered so much my husband got inspired and cleared out the mud and brick pit near the door. That's now a play place for the kids; they love having their own little space and we love that they're happy and that the toys don't get scattered everywhere! For anyone who's interested, we ordered 8-16mm size gravel, at a weight of 600kg (more than 1200lbs), and it cost under 140 euros, including delivery. For convenience we had it delivered in a pallet of 20kg bags instead of the cheaper bulk bags since our back yard is hard to access. That amount covered the lower part of our garden nicely with plenty left over, so I may use that in the the back muddy area, which is currently just hosting ivy and old kids' toys. We layered the gravel at about 1-2 inches deep, but if that's not enough (or if it shifts too much) we may add more or try using the honeycomb-shaped gravel stabilizer grids. So far the amount seems fine for light traffic and playing, and hasn't been too wobbly for our patio furniture. It took months to figure out what we wanted and where to buy it, but in the end it ticked all the boxes: low maintenance, child friendly, not exorbitant, practical for walking on. And as as bonus, every time I look outside it reminds me of an Italian or French garden, which makes me want to brew a cappuccino and go enjoy some sunshine. Thank you to everyone for the input and ideas; may all your design dilemmas have happy endings.

Would have a landing where the stairs end now, and then add landing width steps coming off of it toward the front and to lawn level. Expand existing lower patio to accommodate whatever needs are desired. Does not need to extend in front of left half of home. Landscaping/planting can make up for whatever "balance" issues are perceived.