Hi,

I've been advised to start with a small projects such as blinking LED, 7 
segment LED, etc.

Would this board do the trick:

  Digilent Digilab XLA FPGA Development Board XLA3

  I use a Mac or Linux for development ... don't have a windows machine 
for background.

Thanks.

The mentioned board is a VERY ancient one. So you cannot use the current 
toolchain, and you have to change to one out of the last millenium.

Also this board doesn't have an onboard configuration memory and so you 
must always load your design after power up from the PC.

My advice: go for a Spartan 3 board. Then you can use the Linux version 
of the ISE tools.