Controlling 7 seg display with arduino ony 1 or 2 pins.

Hi, I am trying to make a morning reminder system on my door that I can remind myself when I get up to do things. It has a serial lcd that displays what I need to do. a red, and white led, red will flash if I have something to do, it will stay white if I am ok and don't need to do anything. and a push button will turn the system off or clear the reminder. lastly there will be a 7 seg display that has the count of how many reminders I have. I have broken my project into small chunks that I will get working and then integrate them together. How can I control the 7 seg display? I have the seven segs two cathodes to ground and each segment to a jumper wire in a row of empty columns from alphabetical order (I.E ABCD in order for pins.). I wanted to control the seven seg but am confused on how to control it and display a number without using a lot of I/O. I could use multiplexing with a shift register?

Just use a shift register, one for each display.

Or use a serial display https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11442

Let's say I have my shift register, and I only need to send two bits to the B and C segment to make a number 1. All I would need to do is send serial out and make it something like (if segments are in alphabetical order abcdefg D.P) "01100000" which is the byte of data I would send?

0x60.
0x06
pick one.

ilovearduinosomuch:
Let's say I have my shift register, and I only need to send two bits to the B and C segment to make a number 1. All I would need to do is send serial out and make it something like (if segments are in alphabetical order abcdefg D.P) "01100000" which is the byte of data I would send?

It depends how you wire it up.
Have you seen this?
http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Tutorial/Arrays.html