Good suggestions, but Newark looks like it ships primarily from the UK and I need a few parts here and there. I've taken to finding old electronics and taking them apart to get some IR sensors from wheel mice, but can't for the life of me get it to work.
First of all, it's really difficult to tell if the IR LED is emitting anything at all ;p I'm also not sure if I should be reading the sensor analog or digital, and my analog pins have crazy amounts of noise on them. Yikes.