Shell, if I'm hearing you correctly your backyard provides you an adequate place for dining and a play area for your girls but a nice view looking out of your house was lacking. Your neighborhood looks fairly new, where the builder came in and cleaned out the area, weeds, shrubs, and trees. It takes careful planting by you and your neighbors and years for things to mature into a more lush setting. Until then though, you can make your yard the best you can. What you have already is fairly nice. It's not known what your zone is but I would be inclined to purchase perhaps 2 sets of 3 columnar junipers and strategically plant them creating the greatest amount of privacy. You don't have to have complete seclusion to improve the feeling of separation from your neighbors. These wouldn't have to take up too much valuable footprint of your yard. I often use showoff.com which is a free online tool in which you can load a picture and play around with tree, shrub, flower placement. It has it's limitations but does provide you with a reasonable picture of what it may feel like having any tree, shrub or flowers in that location. Good landscaping and gardening takes patience. The best thing you can do to hurry that along, is to plant with purpose so the plant stays where it will and to fertilize properly to encourage the greatest growth.

Flag it. Or look along the bottom of your first post for the edit button. If it's still there use that. Duplicate post. Post here: [https://www.houzz.com/discussions/pool-backyard-design-ideas-dsvw-vd~5060728[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/pool-backyard-design-ideas-dsvw-vd~5060728)

There are many grades of awnings I like them because sometimes I just want the sun. As for the brand of outdoor furniture IMO that is decided with budget , Costco has some great pieces I often don’t like the cushion colors so have recovered them in a good outdoor fabric in a color that works .What I find is all the stuff is either all beige and brown or not print at all in a red .I do find solid color cushions seem to show the dirt quickly this is a company you can order from I just get the covers made or do it myself

Hmm not a kid friendly back yard for sure. Running a jack hammer is really not all that impossible and given your concrete is chunked with all the lines I see you could easily start near the grass and see how much you want to break up /remove. You are lucky you will have defined places to stop with no weird chopped edges given the blocking I see. What do you want for your child? I see all these super expensive play sets--and given the lifestyles of most families very little time at home to play on it is available. Back in the day we got away with a LARGE sand box, a swing under a raised deck (sand box was under the deck) and a Little Tyke's large climbing/slide apparatus. The wait a year and see is tough as kids grow fast and they need what they need NOW. If we are talking toddler #1 right now I would be hitting the garage sales and buying every riding toy I could find. We had a fleet of those things and quite a race way in our unfinished basement!! All that cement is premium rolling space. A kiddie pool will fit in one of your grassed areas...optimize what you have!!