Photo?

Yes, sorry. having trouble getting the photo to post.

picture added. Finally

How big is the bed? It doesn't look that large. Would you be willing to forgo shrubs for a flower bed? i.e. mixed bed of perennial and annual flowers? Would take a bit more work than shrubs but could look great.

I would add a tree that has winter interest diagonally off the front corner of the house, swinging the bed out and around it. In front of the windows I would plant things that are low growing and mostly evergreen. Anything that is taller should be really airy and see through such as some of the mid-height Thalicturms or Columbine rather than dense and bushy, but those wouldn’t have much impact from a distance.

Do you know if your soil is acid or alkaline, and where are you generally such as nearest large city?

“I just would like for it to have some life during the winter.” Good instincts.

I suggest that you do something really low in front of the windows and leave a 3 foot or so grass path for access to that bed. Then plan a sweeping bed all the way from the driveway to the left side of the house planted mainly with low-to-medium height shrubs and perennials. You might benefit from a landscape architect to plan this all out.

Another idea would be to terrace the whole front yard and so make a level area adjacent to the front steps but deeper. Then you could plant along the edge of this terrace away from the house. Again, a landscape architect could be of help to you.

The problem of using blue spruce or similar evergreen is that people want to maintain it in shrub form, with foliage to the ground. After it starts getting big, it becomes difficult of impossible to maintain without its "eating" the house. A tree form, with the canopy raised, is much more forgiving.

I think it's a mistake to cover much of windows, limiting whatever you plant in front of them to low material.

There are soil tests you can do by yourself or you can get a soil sample and send it out to be tested. Most land grant universities will do soil testing for a fee of typically less than $50, and sometimes considerably less. Here is the page for Missouri’s cooperative extension soil tests.

http://soilplantlab.missouri.edu/soil/testfees.aspx

You can ask on the soil, compost and mulch forum about both home and pro tests, but I like to know at the very least the soil texture, percolation, pH and organic matter, all of which can be done at home, pH with a test kit and the others informally. This slide show from Rutgers will give you some basics about soil and describes some of the home tests you can do, though it may be geared more towards ag crops.

http://www.mgmcnj.org/lectures/Soils_Fertilizers_and_Compost.pdf

Another resource for you is the Missouri Botanical Garden in the Western suburbs of St. Louis which is a world class botanic garden. It would be either a really long day or a couple of days trip if you wanted to visit in person to see various plants, but they also have an online plant finder which allows you to choose various characteristics such as height and width ranges, season of interes, zone hardiness. etc. So you could do multiple searches for plants with different characteristics, leaving any that aren’t important to a particular search blank. So 0’-1’, zone 5, winter interest will give you different plants than 0’-2’, zone 5, flowering.

http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/plantfinder/plantfindersearch.aspx

Off the top of my head, there are low growing Spiraea, some with gold foliage and all with flowers, low growing junipers with evergreen foliage in a range of shades of green, gold, and blue, and many flowering evergreen groundcovers such as Dianthus Firewitch and Veronica Georgia Blue.

Notice in Yardvaark’s sketch the long flowing curve of the bed line, the added depth of the bed front to back, the groundcovers, the placement of midsized shrubs to hide the bare front edge of the steps and around but not in front of the windows.

some ideas: