My front yard - new and improved

I thought I would share some pictures of my front yard. Phil and I have been working really hard on getting it in shape and looking good.

This is the "mature" flowerbed (ie., this is the 2nd year for the grass, boxwoods and hostas - the Japanese maple is 5 years old - we brought it over from our old house):

This is the left side of our house. We just added the evergreen tree and the three boxwoods down the side of the house. In the corner where that hiddeous gas meter is, there is a very small yucca plant but you can't see it in the picture. It's planted right in front of the meter in hopes that it will grow big enough very soon to shield it:

This is a new bed that we just planted on the far side of our garage (right side of the house). The tall evergreen tree will eventually get up to 12 ft. high and 5 ft. wide. The small plants on either side are just some perinneals that bloom in the fall:

These plants were also planted last year. The evergreen tree to the right was about a foot smaller last year when we planted it. The two grassy-looking plants are miniature irises (dark purple) which are getting blooms on them now. The plant in the middle is a hosta. The chair in the background was my special project. It was an old white wicker rocker that my aunt gave me. It had a hiddeous flowery pillow that I quickly got rid of, and I painted the chair a dark brown. I LOVE it, and it adds SO much to my front porch:

Finally, our labor of love and most recent accomplishment...my newly painted door!! The door before was the same color as the trim and was completely dirty and disgusting looking. I repainted the trim while Phil painted the door, and I personally think it looks FABULOUS! Really adds a lot to the curb appeal of the house. The color is actually a reddish-brown color, though it difficult to tell from the photo:
Hope that you enjoyed the pictures. We've worked SO hard on making everything look and feel like home. OK, so Phil did far more of the "grunt" work than I did (thanks, Honey!!), but I'm still really proud of it. Plus, the artist ideas of it all can be attributed to my brilliancy! LOL!

So now the fun part starts...next project - tiling the master bathroom floor. Anyone know how to do that??? Lots of indoor projects to do (painting, laying tile and laying wood laminate downstairs)....followed by backyard projects (landscaping, adding a sitting/firepit area, getting the playground layed out and done). Should be fun...yeh, right. I'll keep the pictures coming as things progress.

Cheers!