Well, now that I've been playing for several hours throughout the day, I've finally run into the first real problem:
I reopened my game after a break, and it spawned me to a completely random location. This was extremely distressing because I had put in quite a good bit of time creating a village/farm and it was going really well. Despite using the 'mark' command, I was unable to return home. :C
After hunting around on the web for some way to possibly find home again, I read that the 'setspawn' command will allow you to return to a specific spawn point each time, but regardless, it was too late.
That said, I think it would be great to have some sort map or blueprint of the world that you could craft. Minecraft has something similar, and what it does is acts almost like a little metal detector. The map opens up along the bottom of the screen (or in front I don't remember...) and one side of the map will glow or be shaded. That shaded area will get bigger and bigger until you eventually hit home. This would be something specific to the player, so you're not running into 100 other structures if you're playing on an open server.
Maybe this is already something you have done? If so I would love to know how to get back to my little project, because I hate to lose so much time, even if it is my first day playing.