If you go Canon, I'm getting huge mileage out of my 40D. No it's not recent, but there's little point in getting anything newer until you get to the 70D because that edition came out with a big jump forward in technology. Plus the newer cameras produce huge files and that's great if you want to print them, but just sucks up drive space if you're shooting for web.

I went for the semi-professional camera because it fits my hand well and is lighter than the top-level cameras (4D, 5D etc), which are 1.1kg just for the body, never mind the lens. I've a small hand and find holding close to 2kg camera plus lens a trial for any length of time.

I can't say much about the Nikons, many people love them, they just didn't feel good in my hand so that was the deciding factor. Try lots of different bodies until you find something that just loves your hand. And get good at shooting on Manual in RAW because then you can tweak a lot of minor errors away post processing.

Most of all, just enjoy yourself!