Sprucing up the front

Well hello there! Hope you are having a wonderful week!!
I. tell. you. what. – the weather (in Indiana anyway) is freakin’ me out. I am pretty sure it was high 40’s last week, and today we hit 93. Good. NESS.
It’s also rained about 50 out of the past 60 days. (You think I kid.) And now that it’s not raining, it’s 90 degrees. GOOD. NESS.
So anyhoo, we have a list a mile long of projects we want to accomplish outside, but we haven’t be able to get to much. But between the heat and the rain, I’ve finally finished one project that was high on our list.
The summer after we moved into our house, I did a TON of work out front. The first project was to pull out the low lying junipers the builder planted across the front of the house:

(source)

And they just looked WEIRD. Way too low and not enough of an impact for our house. 
In their place I planted azaleas…beautiful azaleas! I’m kind of half and half with my plant success – roses and hydrangeas hate. me. Lilies and azaleas and I get along fabulously. 
Last month (on a rare decent day), I started sprucing up the front of the house again:

As you can tell, it needed it. ;) Our shutters were looking a hot mess. We haven’t touched them in seven years and they desperately needed to be repainted.
I started by removing the broken slat --
And then I power washed the shutters, installed a new piece of cedar and then repainted both sets of shutters.
I used a brown paint from our little deck revamp last summer, and it’s SO close to the original brown of the shutters, but not exact. So I went ahead and painted the window boxes again too:

I usually plant the wave petunias in the boxes, and I wish I would have done that this year. They always end of spilling out of them so beautifully! These haven't done much. ;)
I wanted to add some potato vine (vinca vine is too skimpy) – but I can’t find it anywhere.
I finished the spruce up by clearing out the dead stuff and weeds:

And then I waited for Mother Nature to do her part:

She done good. ;)
I mentioned a couple of summers ago that a little varmint had been digging into my azaleas and eating the roots. I lost my middle bush to this little booger, and it’s taken me two years, but I finally found the same type of azalea in a decent size to replace it:

It’s actually two plants, but whatever. ;)
I’m hoping with some Miracle Grow and some lovin’, they’ll catch up to the others.
But for now, I’m thrilled, because projects one through five of 485 are DONE!
Doesn’t it look SO much better?:

I tried spraying the little birdie artwork off and it won’t budge. ;)
Perfect timing bird.
Now…I just need to find a brave soul to get up there and paint the shutters on the second level:

Can you tell they are just a tad darker? Hubby swears you can’t even notice it but then again…he KNOWS ME. :)
I can’t wait to start the rest of the outside projects – but it will have to be next week because it’s supposed to rain for the next FIVE days. At least the grass will stay green!
Have you tackled any landscaping projects yet? What is your favorite perennial? One I won’t kill? :)