Herb Garden

Last summer I purchased a tall plant stand and 6 Mexican hand painted pots for my various herbs. It was an experiment, seeing as I do not have much gardening experience on my resume of life. But as I have begun cooking, I use a lot of fresh herbs. It can get expensive buying fresh herbs all the time. A few things went well... like the cilantro did okay for a while and mint turned out great. Bryan's pepper plant did well, except that we forgot to pick the peppers. Bosco destroyed the parsley, as it was on her level. Then eventually the herbs were scorched in the sun when I forgot to water them. And then Bosco managed to destroy all the pots but one. (That one now sits atop my fridge in the kitchen with some dried flowers in it.)

But with the approaching warm weather, I've been thinking about trying herbs again. This time inside. My plan is to add a few shelves in my laundry room which is mostly windows, but I think I could put a few small shelves up.

In a few weeks I'm going to take a week off and this will be my paint the laundry room and start my indoor herb garden week.

The Plan:
1) Finally paint the laundry room the light blue of my kitchen. NO MORE YELLOW!!!
2) Paint and install shelves.
3) Purchase terracotta pots and paint them the dark teal of the kitchen.
4) Purchase these saucers for the pots.
5) Purchase starter herbs or from seeds (I haven't decided yet) and plant them in newly painted teal pots.
6) Put it all together and enjoy fresh herbs for as long as it will last.

Anyone have any advice?

Lightbulb Conundrum

When we bought our house, it came with two small light fixture/fans in the kitchen. They are great. We especially love the dual fans in the warmer months. However, they light the kitchen with an odd shaped light bulb. We've probably wasted $50 on light bulbs that do not fit.

Not only finding the right size super annoying, but they burn out frequently. They generally burn out every 3-6 months. We've replaced all the bulbs multiple times already.

At this point I'm so frustrated I'm willing to buy new fixtures.

Any ideas as to why we're having problems keeping light bulbs in these suckers?