Ric,
I'm glad to hear you are making progress! Don't feel bad about the reference question, we see that a lot. Did you know you can add additional references to the project (add-in) templates with ProjectGen? Also, if you are interested in getting your add-ins to work like the ShapeApp samples (where the add-in dll's are automatically placed in %MyDocuments%\Host\AppAddins) check out my blog on this.
Good Luck!
-Melody