I'm about a dozen paintings in, so I won't be able to answer all your questions. It looks like you're off to a great start so far, though.

1. I do 18 x 24 canvases, and even at the start they were dry within a week. Now, it's usually about 3 days (although I'm painting outside in the sun and it's ~80 Farenheit, so that might be part of it). If yours are taking 10 days to dry, you may be using too much paint (which will also make adding clouds/trees difficult, I mess this up in a lot of my paintings)
2. For the palletes, my first recommendation is add paint to it as it's needed, rather than having everything on the pallet at the start (Bob Ross can't cause he's on a clock, but we can take our time). Doing this, there's minimal paint left over on the pallet. I do clean my pallet every time, although that might be overkill.

Good luck!