Gardening on budget: seeds & bulbs

How many of you have successfully produced a garden of blooms just by seed and bulb? I picked up SO many bulbs this spring from Sam's Club at $12 a box and almost all of them took. I tried seeds from HD but found the small seed cups I used still stayed to moist so I lost all of the seeds.

I'm a busy mom with rarely a moment in the garden but I want one darn it! I want flowers around again. So I'm busy mentally drawing up how I'd like the spaces in the yard to look. Currently it's a green slate. :)

I'd like to find more caladium bulbs but June is hardly the time for those to be for sale :( if I could find them I'd still buy them and put them in. You can mail order them but I'm always leary of that. I like to "see" and "touch" the product I'm buying.

Any suggestions on how to build the garden from scratch. I could buy the plants but with prices of everything I'd much rather buy as cheaply as possible.