Your kitchen is beautiful. If you bring your vintage items back, may I suggest that they have a theme i.e. a collection e.g. old jugs etc. If you ever decide to let go of the sofit and then fill in the space all the way from the top of the cabinets to the ceiling, I love the idea of white frosted glass cabinets as suggested above. IKEA has them and they are comparatively inexpensive.

I agree with taking the shutters off on the one side of the house, as it looks unbalanced. A trim color on the house and garage door arches and sides would add a little life. I would then paint the entry area a little lighter version of the main house color. Since you are in a fair weather state, a colorful outdoor rug could be used at the entry for color. And given there's an offset space there by the front door, I'd get a great little table....maybe something round and funky....paint it turquoise (?) or a color from the rug and do a dried display in a great pot on that. Or maybe even just a collection of various sized and colored pots. Artistic iron numbers that go vertical down the column to the right of the entry. I think your home could also handle larger, more interesting outdoor lanterns, if you're in the market for something like that.

Put the play yard thing in the kitchen area so you can carve out an area that is clutter free. I promise it will make you so happy (we did this in our house as well and we have a peaceful area to relax when they're asleep or to have snuggle/reading time on the couch - no point in a whisky if you can't relax while drinking it). Get a round dining table in white with a small pedastal and put it right where your play yard is right now. You can use your current table but it would be flush to the wall and a bit "blocky." If you keep it, try to recover the chairs with something bright. Stick the high chair behind the part of the wall that sticks out so when you walk in you don't see it. Move your red art to the wall where your dining table will be to define that as a dining area (or get something new). No rug underneath until they're 8 or 9. If your bookcase by the window will fit, put it on the little slice of wall beside where the play yard is now. If not, how about the bar cart there. Or move the ladder style shelf to that slice of wall so it's out of the way a bit more and move the bookcase to where the ladder shelf is - again less visual noise in the space and maybe less likely to get knocked. Maybe??? a white coffee table (or teal or green or red for a pop in the middle of that room) to pull the dark brown and white together from the two rooms and to lighten the center of that room. Lots of bright, bright, bright throw pillows for the couch (I find Ross, TJ Maxx, and Marshall's to be great for this or if you have a lot of pillows just buy new pillow cases on amazon so you don't have to store anything - they have some really beautiful bright ones - and they're washable for chocolate or sweet potato fingers). Replace the lamp by the window with one with a white lampshade. Get a new blingy lampshade for the cute brown lamp on the side table. Mount the tv because it really can't go anywhere else (safer for the kiddos too). If you find a light weight and patterned curtain that you love, that would be great too! It will draw the eye into the far end of the room and the light and away from all the things that come with having kids. Get a kallax shelf from ikea (4X2) and some bright "bins" to put in the shelves and stick it under the window in new play area. Put the little table and chairs where the ladder shelf is now for the time being. Most of all - don't put any other furniture in there until you get some of it out of there. ...I think your sofa looks cozy and it's the perfect material for kids. I'd save the investment of replacing that for another time. Throw pillows and throw blankets will make it less overwhelmingly brown.

My best advice is to pay the relatively paltry amount of money required to hire a landscape architect to draw up a plan. If you do the hands-on work yourself, the cost for the actual plan shouldn't be prohibitive and will likely save money in the long-run. They consider so much more than plants and shrubs. In our first (newly built) home, hubs and I just couldn't figure out how to lay out our front beds. We finally contacted a local landscape architect who -- keeping in mind that this was about 30 years ago -- came to our home, chatted with us, went away to do his magic, and brought back THE perfect plans for the entire front of our home for $125. Did it again in our second home, where it was about $300 give or take, for front and rear (pool area) plans. Probably costs more now, but worth every penny. You might even contact nearby (or zone comparable, anyway) schools with landscape architecture programs to ask professors about recommending a promising (and more affordable) student there. Might even do it free for the experience. Anyway, hubs and I then bought our own plants and shrubs according to the plans, and implemented all ourselves to save money. If you choose not to go with a pro's plan, then I agree with poster "ianblue" that the plants are actually far less important than overall design, curves, and flow changes. Personally, I would first use paint the foundation the dark hue. No brainer. Next, I'd use a garden hose to lay out a much larger, sweeping border line like the one in ianblue's picture, marking it with simple dark steel edging for now. (You can always upgrade edging down the road if you'd like). Then, I'd waste no time in removing that straight sidewalk to replace it with one that CURVES down (and possibly toward the drive). Seriously, the house screams for it. As to the walk demolition, I wouldn't think it would be overly pricey (although the curving redo might be) but I've never priced it. That said, if a pro jackhammer removal is too costly, try craigslist? I mean, seems like it's a simple matter of concrete, muscle, jackhammer, and removal truck, but someone who knows might school me on that. Regardless, it will give authenticity to your home's Tudor heritage as well as make the house pop. Then, with the concrete gone, you can just sod new grass where the walk was, and if the money isn't there at that point to add the new curving walk, then just use a stepping stone trail to the drive until you're financially ready. Those 3 things alone, with no other changes at all, would make a huge, HUGE difference in your elevation, even if the outlined beds had nothing AT ALL in them but basic soil prep for future plants. This is, I suspect, what ianblue was trying to express: design changes first, plants last. Otherwise...I vote no to the terra cotta (but perhaps some other color besides dark brown?); yes to painting the downspout; no to "shudders"; yes to window box on front AND left side of house (kitchen?) but making them slightly longer than the windows, slightly taller than I see here, and quite a bit wider in terms of depth from house; no to the cherry in front of the window or fireplace--rule of thumb is that trees should always frame a home rather than disrupt the view of it; and yes, I emphatically agree with poster "bellburgmaggie" on use and placement of evergreens (plus at least one large and lush fir, staple of any Tudor), on extending the beds around the side of the house (and far side of drive if possible), on the trellis over the drive whenever feasible, and to an overall English garden look, all of which have traditionally complemented Tudor architecture so beautifully. Oh, and whenever the occasion arrives down the road that your roof has to be replaced, I'd go dark instead of light. Probably a deep, deep brown. And my last piece of advice? Take a deep breath and remember that it all doesn't have to happen this month, or this year, or even this decade. Think in terms of stages. Your home is so pretty, and has the potential to be an absolute show-stopper someday. For now, though, the key is to figure out your **ultimate** front elevation goals. Only then can you determine the order in which things need to be done, the costs, what you can do yourself, what needs to be done by others, and a general timeline for doing it. Starting with plants is putting the cart in front of the horse, which I'm afraid you and the horse--or house--will almost surely regret later. JMO, FWIW.