Starting a garden....

Thai bought a house a couple of months ago and we love the house... but the yard is awful!  Its not even a yard.  One side of the house is gravel and then the rest is dirt and stumps sticking out of it.  We have no grass or plants at all.  Soooo... one of our projects to make the yard a little nicer is a vegetable garden. :)  Thai is going to build raised garden beds so its harder for Winston and Raz to get into them. We're going to put stone tile around the beds and plant flowers and plants around them too.  I have never had a garden so this might be interesting....  I went online and printed a list of what I want to plant, when to plant them, and what month to plant them but any advice would help so much!

some gardens I would LOOOOVE to have....