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Have to agree a couple Buds is first choice.  Though a homemade IPA or a Blue Moon works if you're only having one or two.

Crevs - a couple things to focus on.  Zurf's right...practice or play, but they're not the same.  I try to spend a bit of practice time on learning a new song, a bit on scales or riffs or similar "exercises", and a bit on just improvising.  See that some of these practice moves are aimed at your pick/strum hand and some aimed at your fret hand. 

Be careful not to get too stuck on one strum pattern.  A common mistake is for all your songs to sound the same if you don't focus a bit on strum technique.  You can mix it up by picking songs from different genre's or one's with an arpeggio pick pattern.

Hope this helps and let us know how it comes along.

Steve

mrjay - sounds like you've got a nice vocalist, so focus on her...play to her.  One or two beers, no more.  Listen only to music you're going to play.  New strings and new batteries.  Tell the audience something about the song.   They're living the moment thru you, and they're on your side.  It's gonna be good so let us know how it went.

I think you should stick with acoustic (just my opinion).  You need to play "some" every day or every other day until you get comfortable.  If you do, and the strings are getting old you'll find the old strings not as supple or elastic.  Elixer nano (custom light) will make moving your positions easy compared to say Martin strings which I find are a bit "sticky". 
hrd3kids I hope you've bought a decent guitar, because no sense investing 5 yrs in a crap guitar.  Lastly take a few lessons.  You don't have to keep taking lessons, but you'll get a pro to tell you a few things you're doing wrong.  Don't stop playing.  It's just going to take time.  Hope this helps.

Welcome to Chordie, skydivr103.  I agree with geoaguiar.

I've had a Fender Acoustasonic 30 with 1/4" guitar input and a separate XLR mic input for a few yrs.  Love it.  I recently added a Crate Palomino all tube (electric guitar) amp.  Love it too.  I've played electric on the accoustic amp and accoustic on the "electric" amp, but clearly the accoustic guitar shines on accoustic amp and vice versa.  I think you'll be very pleased if you get an acoustic amp for your A/E guitar.   Expect to pay around $300.

Wonderful Tonight comes to mind.  The one guitar playing straight arpeggio and the other guitar playing either a soft strum or even just doing the solo melody you'll see in a full band.

Here's a version, but not the one I was thinking of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZNX96LYGng

The other idea would be both of you strum a song and one of you puts Capo on so you're playing different voicing but in same key.  For example Alan Jackson's "It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere"  with first guitar open playing and the second guitar has capo on 2nd fret and plays same chords two steps down. 

Good luck.  It's def cool to play along with other.

Allen - I too started at 41 and have found a passion that I put time in daily for 7 yrs now.  In about 6 months you should find you have something going on.  And it just keeps getting better.  Youtube is a good source, but I took lessons and found the pressure to be prepared for my lesson kept me on track.  Regardless, you're never too old and I applaud you and encourage you to come back and let us know your progress along the way.  Youtube and Chordie are your best friends.. there's ALL levels of player there so you can see you're not alone.

Thanks.  Always trying to learn.  People think all the talent goes on the left (fret) hand, but really it all adds up.

Nice collaboration and a good story to go with it.  Would be interested in particulars on the recording effort.

Thanks Alan. Funny how you learn one little thing after another and it all adds up.

Welcome Pesky.  Don't need to change to finger picking.  Just add new practice techniques to the ones you already do.  Keep in mind when your fret hand (left) stops making progress, you can still get better when your strum or picking hand improves some.  So if you give the left hand a break, the right hand can learn some stuff.

For picking consider the thumb in charge of strings 4,5,6 and first three fingers each are in charge of strings 1,2,& 3.  There are exceptions, but this is a general rule.  Try Landslide in a Travis pick (thumb, 1, thumb, 2)...where 1 is index finger and 2 is middle finger, etc.   Hope that helps.