IP address on host and guest

I am missing the basics of how this works and i need help.  running a linux host and a linux guest with 2 NICs.  i want the host and guest to each use 1 nic and have their own ip address.

So the host works ok and is on eth0.  I ran the vmware-config.pl script and told it to do bridge from eth1 to /dev/vmnet0.

But now i dont understand what to do?  do i start eth1 on the host OS?  If i do that then i cannot start networking on the guest os because his IP address is already in use.

I saw some posts from an ifconfig -a where people had /dev/vmnet0 with an IP address.  I think that is what i want to do but dont understand how.

thanks