The more involved I get with Arduino the more I'm starting to come round to your ways of thinking, I've been looking into the minimum operating circuits of the chips.
I just wish the Arduino had a debugger! How I'd love to be able to set breakpoints and step through code.
I've snazzied up my plant waterer with lighting (currently only red and white) and an enclosure (a R.U.B), it now has a switch for the lighting going to 5v and 12v 4mm banana plug sockets so I can unplug them easily. I also tidied up (shortened) the wiring and used my favourite do everything 'stuff' to secure it all in the box - that being hot glue..
It's still only about 99% though, I need to add more lighting as I ran out of LEDs of the right colours.
I need ultra bright blue, green, white and red LEDs for a nice full spectrum, although the radishes have really sprouted quite well with just white and red during the night and daylight 
I look forward to munching my way through these in the coming months 
ps. I've noticed how obviously sites share information with advertisers, I keep seeing adverts for 'growell lighting' on different pages ever since I started looking at what I need, that and Thai brides.....