Examples of schemes for Microcontrollers STM32
There are tons of examples under STM32 in several places. We develop extensively on STM32F1 and F2 series. All we have done is to use the examples provided in the standard peripheral library. Go to STM web site and download the STD Peripheral Library, all the examples you need are there. 

For starters, I would get Olimex Debugger and one of the Olimex F1 boards. I strongly recommend Crossworks as the tool chain. If you have some experience with embedded system from having hardware at hand to getting some basic serial communication will take less than 10 hours. (it is how long it took for me and I haven't coded for more than 10 years, probably less then 2 hours if you are expert)

Best of luck.. The key links are here.. Also, there are tons of other sites, but I never needed to look for any other resource. 

Olimex ARM Tiny USB debugger

STM32 standard library (for F2, F1 you need to look any F1 part)