Your house could look really good with a few changes - you have a nice natural setting to start with. I'd stain the exterior wood siding and use a color as sunnyca suggested. Brighter/darker stains will fade faster so I'd avoid those. Paint the barge board the same color as the roof for a more substantial look. Make the door, door trim, and window trim a contrasting darker color or white, whichever you prefer. A larger porch would look great. Lay out a curving path to the front door from the driveway - make it at least 3' wide. The path could be bark mulch at first and later do stepping stones or many other choices. Leave about 6' for a planting bed near the house as you don't want to plant within the drip line of the roof. There can be several reasons for plant failure and the main ones are lack of sunlight, lack of moisture, and poor soil. It's essential to improve the soil before planting or you're just wasting money buying plants. Those large trees are taking all the moisture and nutrients from your soil and have done so for decades so it's almost impossible to grow most plants there. IMO it's too expensive to improve the soil over such a large area so you could limit the beds at first to the area near the house and amend the soil with lots of compost there. There is free compost offered in some areas so check on that first. You could also start making your own but that takes awhile. Otherwise you can buy it in bales or bulk, depending on amount needed, cost, and availability. If you want to have a lawn over that expanse of yard it will require a lot of expense and work as you'd have to amend the soil, seed, fertilize, and water, water, water. If this were my yard I wouldn't try to grow lawn but would make a few large beds and use ground covers and easy care plants or seed wild flowers. Don't try to do it all in one year but start at the house and work out. I suggest you drive around and look at some landscaping in other people's yards to learn what style of garden landscape you might like. Take pictures of plants you like and visit a nursery. It might also be helpful for you to join a local gardening club if there is one. Read all you can about gardening - most public libraries have books on landscaping and gardening. You might check out the link below for the regional forums here at GW. I'm not sure of your climate but perhaps the Southern Gardening forum would be most appropriate. You might find some good ideas for appropriate plants there. Here is a link that might be useful: regional gardening forums

Do just the Hardie siding…no need to add anything else. You will have a railing, garage door, lighting…I think that is enough and will be lovely when finished. Just posted above photo to show how the 3’ bump out and rail really will change the look of your house. I like this combo for your house…and would do a white railing to match trim. Charcoal black for trim. This color is one of your choices in Cedarmill .

Google "shutter colors for red brick house" and you'll see a lot of nice suggestions. I like the ones that show pale grey-blues or pale bluish-greens. I do think that red brick actually leans toward terra cotta, and red doors kind of clash with the brick. I could see the pale blues on both your shutters and door. I think I'd remove the shutters on the main window because being so close to the door, there actually might be too much color.

Agree with the comments above. Your garage door needs to be changed - at least painted, but a wood or wood-look door would be better. The shutters are okay to me. They could be painted a darker color depending on your roof color. The biggest improvement you could make is the landscaping and the walkway to your front door. Here are a couple of insp pics below for you but the best thing for you is to post in the landscape subforum here to get an idea of what works for your specific home. Wide welcoming walkway in a material different from your driveway. Have the walkway come further down the driveway. Landscaping that isn't a series of bushes lined up against the front serving as a barricade to the house. I prefer a lighter or bolder accent color on your front door as it appears to be sunken into the shadows right now. As an added step you could tie in your front door color with the same color plants in strategic locations. Bring some color and life to your home with the plants and deeper planting beds. Frame your home with a tree or two. The landscape subforum will be able to help.