I am in a similar situation...
What I do, is go out to codeplex, and there are tons of Powershell-Sharepoint projects.
http://www.codeplex.com Also, checkout PowerGUI, great tool. -
http://www.powergui.org/index.jspa There is a lot that has already been done, no need to re-write the wheel... :)
But I have just been picking it up along the way, taking a look at other peoples scripts and functions.