I'm a sucker for variegated yellow or red twig dogwoods. I'd say yellow branched in your case. Make sure you get dwarf ones.

Mine are the more standard non dwarf variety. They're planted at the edge of a damp spot in mostly full sun. Every year or two I severely cut them back to keep the twig color.

My vision is of them yellow twigs sticking up 36 inches or so all winter long getting folk's attention!

If you paint the downspout by the front door beige to match the pillar it's in front of, it'll be less noticeable (the part below the pillar can be left brown or painted to match the bricks).

I don't think you need a porch railing. Black wrought-iron would look good with your brick, but since your trim is two other colors, black would needlessly complicate the color scheme.

On the side of the garage that faces the street, you have a large expanse of brick which cries out for some good-sized shrubs. It's the perfect place for large evergreens, preferably something that won't grow above the roof and doesn't have to be pruned. I'm not sure what's growing in the trellises, but they look deciduous. I don't understand why one was placed in front of the window. Anyway, you have plenty of other locations where they could be moved.

You're in zone 5B (I looked up your zip code); unfortunately I have no idea what shrubs would be appropriate there. However, the Missouri Botanical Garden is in that zone, so you might enjoy looking through their Plantfinder:
http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantfinder/serviceplantfinder.shtm l
This page lets you search by height, amount of sun, and other characteristics:
http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantfinder/Search.asp
[If you choose too many characteristics, you may not get any results. Just omit a few fields and search again.]

To get an idea of how shrubs in various places would change the look of the house, you can cut pieces of green paper to different sizes and shapes and place them on a photo.

For a higher-tech version, open a copy of a photo in Paint and draw in the shrubs (Paint is one of the free programs in Windows, so look in "Accessories" in "Programs").

So for plant selection, your best bet is to visit your local nurseries and look around, buy what you like,
and then arrange it to please you when you get home. You can always leave space for more shopping
trips later in the season as nurseries get new stock all spring and summer, sometimes also in fall.

If you don't like just shrubs, of course you can augment them with perennials, but I do agree a shrub
presence is called for beside the garage. Perhaps you'll come to enjoy and appreciate shrubs once they
are in the right places.

As for your front door, I think your layout is very cool, very convenient and frankly more attractive than seeing
the garage door from the street. The little garden beds the driveway leaves you can be filled with a better
selection of plants and would be quite attractive.

Because the porch is dark I suspect it will be most pleasant if you keep the plants in front of it low, and
having perennials there will give you something to watch change over the seasons as you come and go.
What you do to the right of the door depends on how much work you want: The least work is extending
the grass all the way in, or you can have garden all the way along the house. There I also think what matters
most is what you want to see when you come home or hang out in the yard. Deciduous shrubs will only work
if you prune them as you would with coloured twig dogwoods, as most will lean out from the house toward
the light. Evergreen plants do this less (and conifers least of all) but I don't see that you need a lot of bulk
there, so a perennial garden wouldn't be the worst thing there either.

You probably get snow in winter and have to clear the driveway so a garden alongside it that goes dormant
might not be the worst thing at all.

KarinL