@racemaniac: 
I see your angle and I find it a noble challenge to have everything coming out from the same uC. For me as a HW-guy the main fun is to put together the modules to a functioning whole and then have good libraries to see the fruits of my development right away (being an engineer I'm lazy and inpatient). I actually was thinking about playing 2 sounds at the same time, one coming from the MP3 module and one from the uC, on the same speaker (disclaimer: I did not do a feasibility study yet...), so if you have a working prototype share with us!!! I'm interested.
@integra386: I was not aware you used 3mm LED's. Actually in mine LED string blades I've always put 5mm LED's. I think that if you keep them apart a bit more, you do not need to many and on top of that it might even turn out to be brighter. Somehow I have the bad feeling that putting very bright LED's with a narrow emission angle head to tail actually has the emitted light absorbed by the next LED and therefore a waste...