Week 1 was spent researching LEDs and testing randomized lighting code.  I think I have a good start on the coding end.  I ordered 400 of the below LED’s:

http://www.ledssuperbright.com/5mm-led-c-6/100-5mm-flat-white-led-20000-mcd-p-193

Next steps – once I have the LED’s I want to check their actual brightness to determine how many LED’s I’ll be stringing per “cloud” so that I can make some determinations on power needs.  I also need to finalize a plan as far as how I’m going to connect all of these LED’s to an Arduino (multiplexing, shift registers, different board type, etc.).