Where Do We Begin?

We've been in the house almost a month now.  The master bedroom and bathroom along with the spare upstairs bathroom have been painted and "decorated", and I have just now begun to hang some pictures and begin to organize our lives here.  Other than daily memory loss and general forgetfulness, the transition has been smooth and we are happily settling in.  Owning a home for us has been several years in the making and now we finally have the ability to begin to put together our ideas and make something of them.  But where to start?  Prioritizing is obviously important yet proving very difficult.

Here's what we have come up with so far (not necessarily in this order):
1. Fence in a portion of the back yard.
2. Begin building and preparing raised beds for a garden.
3. Re-seed the at least the front lawn.
4. Plant some trees.
5. Landscape the front of the house.
6. Build a back patio.
7. Build a chicken coop.

The chicken coop is a long-term project.  I plan on re-purposing wood from discarded pallets and will obviously need time to collect all of it.  Plus, I'm not in a hurry to get chickens at this time.  I've done a little research on the type of coop I would like to build and have drawn up a few ideas of my own.  I've found that coops can range from very simple to really chic.  Ideally I would like a mix of both - simple chic.

I like the enclosed rectangular run on this one and the overall size.

This is more what I would like to do - construct the coop from used pallets. One like this would be modified to have an enclosed run to protect the hens from predators.













A backyard fence would be wonderful as it would deter wild animals, enclose our garden, and would provide Honza a huge space to run around in.  We are surrounded by farms, many of which have farm fencing.

  

This would be ideal but we have no idea what a fence like this would cost.

As for trees, I would love a cherry tree and crepe myrtle in the front yard.  We have located a person in our area that is selling plum trees for $3 each.  Perhaps we will get a couple of those.

It can be overwhelming to think about all of this at one time, but I have to remind myself that this is just the beginning.  Rome wasn't built in a day!