1st floor floorplan and renovation ideas

I sketched our first floor the other night using my architectural ruler I could scale 3/16"=1 foot.
Since we moved here, we've daydreamed about possible renovations, opening up rooms etc and so last week we talk to an architect. I picked up the survey may for the dept of planning and zoning and we awalked around our property with the architect. We wanted to get an idea of what was possible. The one thing we feel we should definitely do is add a garage so the first thing we needed to figure out is where within our set backs we could build one. It was pretty tricky just because of the angle of our house on our property and a drainage easement we have on one side.
One place we could surely make it work is where our dining room currently is and lose that room and then do an addition on the back of the house for the dining and family room.
Anyway since I have to do everything visually, here i added shaded areas where the changes would be..
We'll see. Half the fun is dreaming it up to me!

what do you think?
xo,
Elena