Figured I'd post some follow up pics of what we did in the front. I failed hard at taking a bunch of "before" pics, but tracked down a picture of our house around the time we bought it. It was Winter, so it's a pretty crappy representation, but suffice to say, there was rock all around the house itself, there was a 15' diameter rock planter around some sort of big, but crappy, tree (not many leave and dropped some sort of brown furry-looking balls that weren't attractive at all) and a rock planter in the middle of the yard along the left side of the driveway.
We enlarged the big planter that was previously in the center of the front yard and put in all new bushes, hostas and ferns along with bark and edgers around the house. We also moved the planter that was centered in the lawn to the left of the driveway so it was right along the edge of the road and added perennials and a couple of bushes around the mailbox and pool waste pipe along the road, so it's a lot easier to mow and less trimming.
The stripes in the grass are courtesy of the Lawn Stryper I bought off amazon.com in a moment of weakness, but I really like the way it makes the lawn look. I think it takes it up a notch vs. a nice-looking freshly mowed lawn. Let me know what you guys think. By the way, I'm still planning on completely ripping out the big overgrown mess of bushes and the inoperable lamp post in the front yard, but there are a few things in the backyard we're working on right now that are taking a priority over that.