thank you , you two! LOL Sunny...(are u our sunny from the KT by any chance?) no, not a man with pants, but a chainsaw bear. Will post a picture later. lol i was thinking of attaching these above the garage door permanently somehow.. sans the bows though!

Azan, no offense to others expressing their opinions, this is where you really do need the service of a competent designer, who truly understands what constitutes good design which you will NOT get from the contractor who's giving you a quote that covers design, materials & labor, or friends, family or neighbors. Speaking of which, do you live in an HOA? If you do, get a copy of the design standards or architectural guidelines and find out what you have to do to get your proposed alteration through the review committee. You may well be stuck. You currently have a modern builder's silly notion of what constitutes a "colonial". I am so sorry to say, again no offense to others who think it's a beautiful colonial house, it isn't. And there are probably another 20 down the street from you, with minor variations, all designs that would have given colonial era master builders (where design and construction are combined) a convulsion. There are all kinds of things wrong with the facade composition, like 3 different window proportions and shapes, which no amount of landscaping will solve and you are absolutely right that the porch is a problem, but it's not about brick vs stone. Changing a consistent material on a house is the last thing you should do to "improve" the look. When I was in graduate school, a one-off course was offered on "facade composition" one summer. Finally, a professor teaching us aspiring architects how to design a facade, rather than all that nonsense about "form-making"! I stayed just to benefit from his wisdom. Guess what, there were 30 plus grad students taking this course, and the historic preservation expert told us, we will team up in pairs, analyze historic facades, and we'll talk about it. Really, that's the class? Yes indeed, it's called a graduate seminar. Imagine that happening in med or law school! (Hey, I may be the professor but I am not a practitioner, why don't we just get together and learn from one another?) He didn't teach us the principles and theories of facade composition, though here and there he offered some useful observations. Undergrad & grad arch'l school, not one professor taught us anything about facade composition. Not one. Imagine! So I went to the library, dug up old architectural magazines, from the early 1900s, and taught myself, by analyzing facade compositions I admire. You can do the same. Get a couple books on historic colonial architecture, or better yet on your next getaway, go visit historic places filled with colonial architecture, like Colonial Williamburg, Annapolis or Alexadria (if you live in VA). Not everyone can design well or cook well, but everyone can learn to appreciate good design or good cooking.

Nice house. Adding the hardware needed for hanging flower pots and/or bird feeders or houses and/or wind chimes might be something to consider. I'd want a 5' porch swing or glider on each end. https://www.google.com/search?q=5%27+porch+swings+and+gliders+in+metal+frames&client=firefox-b-1-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiD1rGAo8nrAhVkg3IEHR1EDtQQ_AUoAnoECA0QBA&biw=1366&bih=654

I‘m in Cali too. Not sure, but it looks like the LA metro area. The thing that immediately stood out for me is the landscape mix of rocks and brick. I would have chosen one or the other. I could see a pale yellow on the stucco (I think the current color is too close to the roof color; reminds me of the popular colors of the 90s). I could also see removing the wrought iron decorative post (not sure if that is orginal based in the design) and put in a railing along that side, with a design tilting toward the 1950s. I am not the biggest fan of security doors, but understand why some really like the functionality of it. If it were my house, I would remove the security door and put in a stained wooden door. Love the original mail slot. I have a 1950s house too that is in Los Angeles proper that has the white wood siding too (vertical vs horizontal slats), but the stucco parts are a dark green with a dark brown painted front door. We also have wrought iron, but in the house. It acts as a wall near our staircase. I doubt ours is original too as the design does not fit the year the house was built (1958-59).