Trying organic weed control: Vinegar and friends pt 2

Hello!

So in retrospect the thing i have learned is that there are no shortcuts in landscaping.
For the vinegar as herbicide it was suggested that the mixture was sprayed on the leaves of the plants however I decided it would be wise to dump the gallon haphazardly out on the weeds(most of which are tall slender crabgrass). Not unlike the fashion in which Cousin Eddy empties his RV tank in Christmas Vacation.

The purpose of spraying the vinegar directly onto the leaves of the plant is due to the fact that it works by leeching the moisture out of the plant leaves. This did work on the weeds that I had dumped the vinegar mixture on that laid closer to the earth with fanned out leaves which ended up coming into contact with much more vinegar.

ugh

A little shriveling on the broad-leaf weeds

But the hand weeding had to happen.

However this will not work if it is simply being poured into the ground where the weeds are.

I still have a crabgrass problem but I ended up hand weeding most of the large ugly monstrosities. I just got pre-emergent weed control i plan to use after pulling out the rest of the crabgrass.
The main issue is still that i have planted nothing in this garden bed and i didn't remove the grass underneath before laying down the landscaping fabric and mulch. I am considering pulling the landscaping fabric up and dumping the mulch onto the driveway so that i can dig into the (hopefully mostly dead now) grass below and dig a garden bed trench.
I plan to plant some creeping ground-covers plants so that they can have priority over the earth there and hopefully crowd out the weeds.
Like these guys:

Live and learn.
I'll take pictures of updates as they come.

In other news I tried trimming our crazy hair metal shrubs in our front yard over the weekend. I bought shears, these ones actually:

They work on the newer shoots coming off the branches but the rest of the bush was too thick and woody and I assume i need a sawing tool.

Our neighbor across the street noticed my futile struggle and came over and offered up his electric hedge trimmer. I was terrified of it but politely accepted the offer.

It went swimmingly and achieved exactly what I needed it to. 

I did, however, cut through my extension cord towards the end, apparently this is a common problem. I am thankful it was not a body part instead.

I just trimmed it back a bit because i read that you shouldn't cut it back too aggressively in the summer.

I am contemplating buying one of those as well as a snow blower as future purchases. (Last winter our neighbor came over and offered to slow blow the heavy wet snow on our driveway because they noticed my struggle(If you couldn't tell most of my interactions with our neighbors involved them rescuing me from my inability to do anything right)) 

What has been your experience with learning how to take care of your yard? Misery loves company.

<3
Maeghan