Dont forget the curious inventor SMD soldering 101 video. There is also a dude on youtube who has a video of professional SMT Drag soldering.
look at AMB's website for some nice schematics. Theres a few basic components you should learn about: resistors, capacitors, and inductors. between those and various chips thats all there is to a circuit. You get the pinout for a chip and then mess around with the input/output current and voltage for those pins so that the chip knows how to handle it.
My tips for beginning:
1) buy a proper soldering workstation. I just finished my first projects using a weller sp40 pencil iron and it was an awful experience. Spend the money on something like a Weller WES51 soldering work station. you will seriously regret it if you use a crappy 20 dollar iron for any project more complicated than soldering wires together for your home.
2) get all the soldering equipment you need first and see how each thing works. make sure you learn how to take care of your soldering iron. My first tip became completely corroded into a hook shape and broke a couple of my pins. my second tip looks good as new even though the iron itself is corroding.
3) get the proper chemicals. Paste flux, desoldering wick, chipquick, liquid flux. and make sure all of it is approved by members who know what they are doing on here. My Y1 and y2 project is now completely ruined because i used acid flux instead of rosin flux because i didnt know there were different kinds of fluxes. now I need a new board and new parts.
Take your time, make yourself a macro lens for a crappy point and shoot camera. Simple magnifying glass in a cardboard tube will work wonders for taking close up shots of your projects.
Also, watch as much EEVBlog stuff as you can. MIT also has opencourseware for basic electronics stuff. Theres tons of online classes you can find that will go into the details of resistors, capacitors, inductors, and kirchoff's laws.
