My first ever electronics project was an altoids tin with two 9Vs, a 7805, and a USB port on a piece of protoboard I found in my grandfather's old electronics parts bins. I followed an Instructable to make it. After that, I was hooked. My next project was a dice roller I got from a copy of Make magazine. I ordered most of the parts off digikey. I loved the little projects in Make magazine, I thought it was so cool that you could just build your own electronics.