Jeremy, here's the important thing, from your last set of pictures, I can see that you have a good composition-eyes. That's the most important and hard-to-get ingredient 🙂
As for 1.4 aperture, it's good for certain effects, just don't go machine-gun with it.
For most pictures, f2.8 and 4 will give you plenty of bokeh to play with without sacrificing too much details.
Gosh, I wish it's that colorful around here...