I made my first one on a breadbored, just paid £3 for the Atmega168, and away i went.
Keep the one you have as they do some stunning thing that will come in handy the more you find out about them. (using it as a ISP is my next plan)
anyway here is the link to the breadbored Arduino with Serial Connections for programming your code (you can leave out the Serial Connections is you already have a arduino, as you can just program the chip on that and then transfer to run on the breadboard)
http://www.imagearts.ryerson.ca/sdaniels/physcomp/tutorials/Arduino_standalone/ard_hack.html
Im i total noob, but you pick things up so fast, and everyone is super nice here, where there is no such thing as a stupid question!