Number of Items in Cart

I can't seem to find an answer to this question. Here is what I want to do. For my shopping cart link, instead of it just saying cart or shopping cart I would like it to do the following:

Your shopping cart contains 3 items.

I want the underlined shopping cart to be the link to the cart page. I have that. I would like to set it up so the number of items in the cart changes depending on the amount of items in the cart. I realize this would take added coding. I am sure it is out there though as I have seen it everywhere. Any zen guru out there able to help me?

In the Downloads section is an Abbreviated shopping cart sidebox that contains the syntax you need to replace the regular shopping cart link. NOTE: you will have to do a little "programming" to do exactly what you want.