My founder did cooking and alchemy, that worked very well. So if you have supernatural that is a good option giving you elixirs for the rest of the dynasty, her husband did the gardening for her so he could grow her alchemy ingredients.
There are some nice wishes with nectar making I found out when one of mine did it, I'd ignore the vizard of vine challenge to be honest, it's buggy and too much hassle, my nectar maker was after my gardener generation. One of her 5k+ wishes was make 500 bottles of nectar I then sold them all at consignment and completed those challenges, so 3 nectar challenges and 3 consignment.
Charisma I messed up there really as I cut myself off from journalism because I already used it, my gardener used it as it was part of his lifetime wish, so yes with hindsight I'd say save charisma for that career.
While I'm here I'll give some info on mermaids I've learnt, a bit like what was mentioned with vampires a mermaids hydration is affected by very little, a shower wont quite fill it but a bath will, swimming obviously, the moodlet manager and motive mobile works, a witch hygiene spell doesn't.
Base game and ep plumbing items work fine but any store items such as the outdoor shower or the skylight studio one do nothing, the dirt defiant LTR doesn't help either, and I found my mermaid was pretty lax at looking after herself and would let herself just dry up if I didn't keep an eye on her, unlike plasma fruit that will fill a vampires thirst kelp is more like eating any other produce, it only partially fills them up so they are hungry a lot too, although the hardly hungry LTR does help with that.
On the plus side though I found they can be astronauts as their hydration lasts just long enough for a day in space, it's very low when they come out but at least they don't dehydrate while at work, worried the life out of me the first time though, I really thought she wouldn't last the day.