I've made several different soups from scratch: chicken noodle, 7-bean soup (with ham hocks and tomato juice), vegetable beef and barley, and chili. I esp love to make the chicken noodle from leftover chicken roast that I also made from scratch. I like to brine my chicken for the roast, and then stuff it with a mixture of herbs, veggies, and fruit (lemon and apple mostly). Also an herb-butter rub on and under the skin. The brine causes the chicken to suck in all of the juices from the stuffing and the herb-butter on the outside keeps the juices from escaping, so the chicken is always very flavorful and juicy. So then when I go to make my soup, all of that flavorful chicken gets added to the soup; it makes it so that not only is the broth flavorful, but also the chicken too.
Last November for Thanksgiving, I also tried making a butternut squash bisque from a recipe I found on Food Network's website. Although it was very good, the recipe called for a bunch of white pepper to be used, and we all agreed after trying it that the amount called for was just a little too much; that the white pepper tended to mask the taste of the squash rather than enhancing it. When my friend and I were on a trip down south, we went to a restaurant that had a pumpkin soup that was similar to the bisque. My friend enjoyed it so much that she talked with the chef and was able to get a copy of their recipe so she made that for Thanksgiving the year before I made my bisque. One of the main differences was that the actually prepped a pumpkin broth before actually making the soup, so the final product was much smoother and more like a soup than my bisque. Also they tended to use more of the spices associated with pumpkins: cinnamon, cloves, allspice etc. so it was a little more sweet than the savory bisque that I made. Both were excellent, though, and I'll probably make it again sometime for the family.