OK, you have an easy kitchen to work with. Tips/suggestions in no particular order (because it's late and I'm blurry-eyed!)
1. Easiest to use a countertop that has off-the-shelf side splashes and end caps. You can make your own but it won't turn out well for a beginner.
2. Buy a trim router and an edge bit. I have a Ridgid I think I paid maybe $75 for brand new and I've easily made my money back on all the counters I've used it for. You will need this for trimming the excess from your end caps. You can trim it with a file but it's time consuming and doesn't look as professional.
3. Use contact cement to glue your end caps to the cut ends of the countertop. Don't try to exact match the counter profile on the top side - you want the top to have excess, which you're going to trim off with that router I mentioned. Try to get the bottom as flush as possible to the bottom of your build-out. The end caps in the kit come with heat-activated glue that you're supposed to use an iron on, but it sucks. Trust me on this. Contact cement is the only way to go. Get the stuff in a can and a couple of toss-away chip brushes to apply it with - you don't want the wand in a bottle.
4. Speaking of build-outs (these are small wood that thickens the cut-end of the counter): it's easiest to nail these in place with small finish nails in an air nailer. You can use the little nails that come in the kit but they're a pain and often split the particleboard. If you use an air nailer make sure they're short nails that won't come through the top of the counter. If you don't use one, put a bead of construction adhesive down first before using the nails in the kit.
5. Put your end caps on before you mount the countertop. It's easiest to trim the laminate if the counter is floating free.
6. Use construction adhesive to glue your splash panels in place. You can either use them on top of the counter, following the profile, or glue them to the wall and flush the counter against them. I like putting them on top because it's more protection for water. I usually don't bother using them where water is not an issue. Put a color-matched bead of caulk between the splash cap and the counter either way.
7. Put a coat of oil-based polyurethane underneath the counter where the dishwasher goes, the front of where the sink is and the entire cut-out hole for the sink. Those are the major swell-up areas on laminate countertops.
8. Unless your walls are seriously wavy, don't bother trying to scribe the backsplash as a beginner. You can do serious damage that you can't undo, and a small gap is easily filled with color-matched or paintable caulk.
9. Make sure the screws you use to screw the cabinet corners into the counter aren't too long to poke through the counter.
10. Build out the tops of your cabinets before you put on the countertop, and use a long level to check that it's level all the way across. Pull the stove out and check for level across those two cabinets. Also remember that your main goal is that it looks good, so if you have to choose between looks and perfectly level choose looks. Some houses/cabinets are so bad that if you make things perfect by the level you'll have huge gaps everywhere. So if for example you have a bad slope that your cabinets follow, it is better to let the counter follow the slope than to level the counter to where the slope is extremely obvious by the end. If you can interrupt errors with breaks in the counters (such as where the stove goes), you can somewhat correct errors on each side so that it looks good.
11. When you cut your counters make sure you use a fine-tooth circular saw, support the counter everywhere so it doesn't cave in your cut, cut it upside down, and put at least a 1" strip of painters tape down the middle of the cut line before you start to keep chipping at a minimum. And don't force the saw.
That's about it for now. I'm sure I'm missing things that I can't remember right now so if I do I'll put them up here.
