I think I may not have made my level of understanding clear enough. The programming level of it all I'm comfortable with from the Keil Simulator to atleast the level of blinky led =). More likely I'll have little trouble getting an LCD control up and running. Also I have a book that should be here today that should help a lot.

I agree that it would be easier to start with a development board...but even just designing this circuit has greatly increased my understanding, hence why I requested here to have others more experienced to catch where I misunderstood or missed something.
What it comes down to is I'm interested in all the stages from schematic and component selection, to the final code being added. I may still yet go with a dev kit though I think I'll bang this around a little longer before I do.