What's a good easy project to start out with that help me learn? For example, I've heard that when learning PHP it's good to begin by making a guestbook or a simple blog. Should I just create a site entirely in flash ?

No, that's more then you can chew.... start by doing some simple buttons, and making shapes move when certain things happen... then go from there

I think he wants to jump into making RIA's over simple animation. I'd recommend learning how to make a simple contact form using PHP as a way to learn how to pass variables to PHP.
Here is one of 100s of tutorials on this
http://www.fwzone.net/ShowDetail.asp?NewsId=756

Well, I was using PHP as an example where you can learn it by working through simple projects (although, this goes for any programming language), I have no actual knowledge of any PHP. I actually made a better post about this issue. I probably should have just stuck it in here...

Oh, and btw, I'm a girl.