Thanks for the pointers guys. I am about as cheap as it comes when building things. So I think Picaxe is the way to start. At $5 anyone can be willing to mess around enough with it to learn and not feel bad if you end up breaking it.

The project I have in mind is that I am looking to make a control panel for my alien autopsey table. The panel would have about a dozen or so LEDs in which I want to make the LEDs light randomly for a certain amount of time. Maybe expand upon in the future so that they all flash when an event occurs.