Welcome Kel. we will try to help you in your move to DIY, but don't expect to save any money, all you will do is get more blinky flashy toys
Well I think that Sydney being in the middle should have the next big mini , but then again I'm biased
Welcome to this group of fanatics. I also am not a DIY person in terms of building my own boards and controllers, but I do do a lot of soldering in modifying my light strings. I find I can do a lot using standard hardware/software packages, just costs a little more, but saves time.