Block with teaser list and thumbnails

I would like to display a block on the front page that lists some "teaser" text a "link" to the node that contains the actual content AND a "thumbnail" of an associated image.

I have looked at the following modules

• Contaires Teaser Module: After trying this and resolving the installation issues by manually creating the required columns I couldn't find how to then list these teasers and images in a block. I also couldn't find out how to use the nodeapi "View" function. I then just gave up because of the lack of documentation
• Summary Module: After reading through the posts on this I see that this module utilizes node image and this module is not being maintained in later versions of drupal so assume its not a good way to go

I have looked at the code snippets on how to display latest news etc, and this is all fine but I struggle with the next step of associateing an image with a node and then printing a thumbnail along side the nodes teaser line in a block along with a link?

I have installed image and image_assist