welcome breeze
When I started out I found the following starter kit to be helpful:
Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
Also some tutorial links:
Arduino Tutorial - Learn electronics and microcontrollers using Arduino!
Arduino - Getting started with Arduino
This is an important page:
Arduino - Reference
Get a servo or two to play with:
DealExtreme: $8.06 Dynam 34G Servo (B2232)
There was a handbook that I can't find for some reason, maybe look on the arduino page, it may be hidden somewhere. I will try to post my copy. Sorry, too big to post here.