Adding curb appeal on a budget

Today my father and father in law finally tackled our front yard. I'm excited because we've been lacking in curb appeal for the last two years. This is how our house looked when we first purchased it. It was funny because my niece came to my house and when she approached it she looked at me and said that I had the ugliest house in the neighborhood. I had to agree with her. I use to call our house the Mango house. It was an ugly bright yellow/brown/orange. When we were house searching I almost refused to look at our home because the outside was so ugly but thanks to our real estate agent Brian, he urged me to look inside the house. I was wowed by its soaring 12 feet ceilings, great open floor plan, rare large single story, low maintenance concrete backyard, and move in ready condition.

After we bought our house, first thing we did was repaint the outside and patio, knock down the door and added sidelights, and installed a new garage door with windows on top. Two years later, we are finally adding to the list of curb appeal. 

Heres a close up of the non existing flower bed. Bags of mulch and plants are ready to be replanted. 

Total cost of flower bed project: Under $30

I bought two small plants for our flower bed at $6 each. 

My father in law had two potted plants that he gave me so they just replanted it right on our flowerbed. 

Mulch was from Home depot. We purchased three bags at $5 each. 

I was shocked at how much plants cost. WOW is all I can say... I plan to open a nursery now. I looked around for affordable plants and ended up with two baby plants in the middle. They look pathetic but I refuse to pay so much for plants that overtime will grow. They look good enough to me for now. Lucky my father had two potted plants for me to replant. I love free stuff. I can't review the work load because I didn't do any real work. I just told them where I wanted the plants to be replanted and they did the rest. Project took two men about an hour total. 

Here are the before and after photos: I can't do the exact same angle to compare yet because the sun is in my way. I'll try to update with the same angle later. But overall I love the new update because it defines our front porch so much better. Its amazing how a little bit of dark mulch and some plants can do to our boring house. I also love that all of our trim and doors are the same white.