I've always enjoyed programming small microprocessors. In recent years, most of my projects have been based on the Motorola 68HC11; I find it easy to program and it has plenty of on-board resources. The 68HC11 isn't ideally suited for all projects, so I started to look for a simple processor in a standard DIP package (or small surface mount). I tried the Microchip PIC processor (in particular, the 16C84 and 16F84) and while they were fast, cheap and small, I just couldn't get into their baroque assembly language and architecture. In 2002, I decided to explore the Atmel AVR series. The AVR's architecture and assembly language have some commonality with the 68HC11, so I had no trouble in learning it.
I bought the Atmel STK500 development board from Digikey, a sampling of some AVRs and started exploring. For my first "real" AVR project, I decided to port my LCDTemper8 program for the 68HC11. Here are the results.

AVR Projects My AVR page has:
2313Temper8, a program that reads multiple DS18S20s connected to an AT90S2313 AVR. Code updated: October 13, 2005

AVR2LCD an AVR assembly language program  that connects an AT90S2313 to a standard alphanumeric LCD that uses a Hitachi (or equivalent) HD44780 display driver. 

My 68HC11 page has LCDTemper, a program that reads a DS18S20 connected to a 68HC811 port bit.